Customer Reviews

Princeton Review: Best Law Schools, 2000 Edition

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Let's get one thing out of the way. The Princeton Review is a successful company that helps thousands of students every year to score higher on tests like the LSAT. HOWEVER, in seeking to make a quick buck by leveraging its name brand with hastily thrown together, innaccurate and cynical books like this one, the company seriously imperils its own good name.

Clearly, there is no substitute for visiting a school to decide whether or not to attend. But for many applicants, that is simply not an option. Knowing this, the Princeton Review paid someone to whip together an "inside" guide to the law schools. They must have either paid poorly, or not paid attention: not only is this book chock full of factual errors, it relies on a very lazy, and perhaps even unethical methodology. After sending surveys to students at the law schools, the Princeton Review author pulls a few quotes from the few responses he managed to cull, and writes around them as quickly and cautiously as he knows how.

Nowhere in this book will you find substantive or even detailed information about life at one of these law schools--such as how the specific strengths and weaknesses of faculty; structure of the first-year curriculum; residential life situation, etc. But you will find comical lists of statistics such as "hours of study per night," as if the responses of .2% of a student body could provide anything resembling fair representations worthy of standing as a comparative figure in examining various programs.

This book gives information on how students rate the teaching, community feeling, student body, faculty and more aspects of the different schools. It also gives starting salaries and more helpful information for making a decision. However, since it was published in 2000, its statistics are somewhat outdated. There you get more, and more accurate information. So go to the magazine section or to usnews.com and spend your $ on "The Best Graduate Schools" issue of U.S. News and World Report.

I love that the book provides narrative information of schools, but I would not rely soley on this book. I would use it with the LSAD-CD to give me my chance of being admitted and I would even use the USNEWS or the New Educational Quality rank to give me more information. While I agree that it is important to visit a school and talk with students and professors, this book gives a quick impression that can help add schools to a prospective students list. I would not cross a school off my list because it didn't receive a good Princeton Review, though. Also I thought the "Hits and Misses" were kind of silly.

This book is great, It helps pick out the best law school for you lets you know how much to score on the LSAT, to get in to the law school of your choice,