A Radical New Law School Ranking Comes Up With Predictable Results

This isn't a bad idea in the middle of a legal jobs crisis, when many of the factors considered by the authoritative U.S. News ranking may seem irrelevant.

However, most of the top schools on the ATL list are also at the top of the U.S. News ranking.

That's because law firms, Supreme Court justices, and other top employers like to hire people who've graduated from prestigious law schools like the ones that make the U.S. News list.

ATL's ranking not only analyzes graduates' job prospects, but it also looks at the quality of those jobs and gives extra points for schools whose grads land Supreme Court clerkships.

Because of these criteria, some pretty predictable schools make the top of the ATL list. ATL ranked Yale as the best school, followed by Stanford and Harvard — pretty similar to U.S. News' top three of Yale, Harvard, Stanford.

But there were a few surprises. Southern Methodist University's Dedman School of Law was 22 on ATL's ranking and was only 48 on U.S. News' list.

Brigham Young University also fared better on ATL's list, snagging a number 28 ranking compared to its number 44 spot on the U.S. News ranking.

Tuition is also factored into the ATL ranking, since debt (as well as unemployment) is also a huge problem for recent grads. ATL gave BYU extra points for being affordable at $21,900 a year for non-Mormons. Mormons pay half that.

Despite these surprises, the appearance of so many well known names at the very top of ATL's list underscores how much a brand-name law degree means to employers.

As one law student previously told Business Insider, the law school crisis doesn't exist at places like Yale.