Although I am not a big believer in the US News ranking system, today, US News released the Dispute Resolution Program rankings, along with their overall law school rankings. You can find the dispute resolution rankings here: http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/grad/law/dispute.
The rankings are as follows:
1. Pepperdine
2. Harvard, University of Missouri-Columbia
4. Hamline
5. Ohio State University, Moritz College of Law
6. Marquette
7. University of Oregon
8. Cardozo
9. UNLV
10. Fordham
Not surprisingly, I don’t agree with the rankings. I think that the rankings in the speciality areas reward publicity more than substance. But, perhaps that is just sour grapes on my part. Any thoughts?
After my initial burst of pride, I do want to say that it is a double-edged sword. The rankings make me cringe and there are certainly a lot of debate on the issue (I enjoy the discussions over at the Glom). Still, I do place some credence in the specialty rankings. Some schools may get recognized because they have a lot of CLEs and what have you, but as the specialty scores reflect (in some sense) peer recognition, I believe they also represent the legal field’s acknowledgment of great programs.
Having been a student at MULS who watched (as well as participated with) how the dispute res faculty and the interested students toiled over improving out standing (from 13 to 6, also having one year where we plunged into the 3rd tier but ROSE in the ADR ranks). I know that is our programs’ work to improve the discipline (and not popularity) that lead to our rise.
WOOOOOOOOO MARQUETTE!! (AKS&co rules!)