( Photo: Talbert Johnson )
For the third consecutive year since Maclean’s magazine began their professional school rankings in 2007, the University of Toronto’s law school has once again secured the title of best common law school in Canada.
The law school rankings, which gain credibility from the hugely renowned Maclean’s university rankings which began in 1992, are the featured aspect of the professional schools issue which hit stands last week.
The rankings are calculated based upon a set of criteria designed to weigh graduate and faculty quality.
To calculate graduate quality, schools are evaluated heavily on how many of their students become associates at Canada’s largest elite law firms. This category is worth 20 per cent of the overall ranking. The national reach of a school in terms of graduate jobs outside of the local region, how many of the much sought after Supreme Court clerkships a school’s students land, and the number of a school’s graduates that are law professors make up 10 per cent apiece.
The remaining 50 per cent is allocated to faculty quality which is measured by the number of citations the professors score in Canadian and international journals.
“[U of T] sort of stands out in all of the criteria” said Joe Chidley, editor and associate publisher of Maclean’s. He said U of T ranked either first or second in all criteria except national reach, where they were bested by Queen’s University and York University’s Osgoode law school (which moved up in the overall rank since last year to tie for second with McGill University).
“We’re thrilled about it,” said Kate Hilton, assistant dean of alumni and development at U of T. Hilton said that while the results weren’t really a surprise, the findings were still “powerful validation for the hard work that we all do.”
Daniel Jutras, dean of McGill’s law school agrees – to a point. “It needs to be read in two ways,” he explained. “It’s a sign of great success for us that we’re doing so well among common law schools and it’s also not fully representing what we are.”
He said he believes it is difficult to fully define and rank all that a university is, and that McGill might place higher if different ranking criteria had been chosen.
However, he maintains that those difficulties in no way take away from the significance of the rankings.
“We’re exceedingly happy that we’re making it to the top echelons at measure,” he said.
The professional schools issue of Maclean’s also investigates modern trends in business, medial and engineering schools.
This year the financial divide between the “underfunded” public justice system and commercial law firms was investigated, as well as the continued absence of women in engineering, and the fact that while more med students in Canada are choosing family practice, there still isn’t enough to comfortably handle the aging baby-boomer population.
But the law school ranking stands out as the single greatest resource for students, and not just for bragging rights.
“It provides a quick comparison of schools and certainly not the only thing that prospective students should look at, but it’s a way of starting the conversation, starting people thinking about what school might be appropriate for them,” Chidley said.
Hilton said it’s a way to make the whole sector better. “I think every time one of our law schools steps up its game, it’s good for all of us,” she said, referring to both McGill and Osgoode, which she assured, have very good relationships with U of T.
“They should try to close the gap and that’ll just make all of us better.”