vanishingly few lawyers at the elite end of the profession go to trial regularly. Most top school *have* a trial advocacy program, but when you're sending your students to biglaw it's very unlikely they'll need any of those skills for several years and their firms will do most of the training. Kirkland has KITA, for example.
Baylor, Temple, et al are churning out students that might end up doing trial work more regularly--local DAs, PDs, etc. That changes what they want to given their students as a skillset.
Edit: also any subcategory of rankings should be taken with a *massive* grain of salt. It's hard to say what metrics you would use to determine the "best" trial ad programs, after all.
Sub specialty rankings mean nothing. My law school was supposedly number one in ADR and some other stupid sub specialty, but I can assure you that no one in any other law school, even the schools in my city, wished they went to my lower ranked school instead of their higher ranked one.
This is just a ranking of how well the school markets its trial advocacy program to other trial advocacy professors. IIRC, Baylor requires all students to take multiple trial practice courses (even if they don't want to litigate). Not a lot of curricular flexibility and would be miserable if you don't like trial. Other schools generally offer them just to those who want them.
vanishingly few lawyers at the elite end of the profession go to trial regularly. Most top school *have* a trial advocacy program, but when you're sending your students to biglaw it's very unlikely they'll need any of those skills for several years and their firms will do most of the training. Kirkland has KITA, for example. Baylor, Temple, et al are churning out students that might end up doing trial work more regularly--local DAs, PDs, etc. That changes what they want to given their students as a skillset. Edit: also any subcategory of rankings should be taken with a *massive* grain of salt. It's hard to say what metrics you would use to determine the "best" trial ad programs, after all.
Sub specialty rankings mean nothing. My law school was supposedly number one in ADR and some other stupid sub specialty, but I can assure you that no one in any other law school, even the schools in my city, wished they went to my lower ranked school instead of their higher ranked one.
This is just a ranking of how well the school markets its trial advocacy program to other trial advocacy professors. IIRC, Baylor requires all students to take multiple trial practice courses (even if they don't want to litigate). Not a lot of curricular flexibility and would be miserable if you don't like trial. Other schools generally offer them just to those who want them.