Law Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 2,406 law schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 1,776 law schools have some social media presence, having accounts on at least one of the three major social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. Of the schools that have a social media presence, the greatest number, almost 95% are on Facebook.

Visual Preferences

Color

Approximately 69.4% of the 2,406 law schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 11.3% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Blue (4.9%), black (4.7%) and yellow (4.6%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on law school websites.

The colors used on the websites of the largest law schools in the nation, are as follows:

1. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: grey 49%
2. Kaplan University - Davenport Campus: white 56% and blue 1.1%
3. Arizona State University: grey 34% and white 4.5%

Font

The largest number, nearly 42.4%, of law school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on law school websites include Verdana (26%) and Helvetica (6.7%).

The largest law school's websites use the following fonts:

1. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: Arial
2. Kaplan University - Davenport Campus: Times New Roman
3. Arizona State University: Arial

Social Presence

Exactly 1,117 law schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 157 YouTube channel subscribers. The law schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Harvard University: 28,331 subscribers
2. Yale University: 20,055 subscribers
3. Columbia University in the City of New York: 4,146 subscribers

Exactly 1,341 law schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 1,259 Twitter account followers. The law schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Harvard University: 69,704 followers
2. Indiana University - Bloomington: 27,945 followers
3. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: 26,204 followers

Web Metrics

Although all law schools have websites, only about 27% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 73.5% of law school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The law schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Central Arizona College: 93,584 broken links
2. Minnesota West Community and Technical College: 26,086 broken links
3. College of Saint Mary: 23,650 broken links

It is also interesting to evaluate the number of HTML and CSS validation errors on law school websites to get a sense of the quality of these sites. The law school websites with the cleanest websites, i.e., least number of HTML and CSS validation errors are:

1. Pima Community College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
2. Cossatot Community College of the University of Arkansas: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. California Lutheran University: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

The law school websites with the greatest number of HTML and CSS validation errors include:

1. Chippewa Valley Technical College: 121 HTML validation errors; 942 CSS validation errors
2. Bergen Community College: 178 HTML validation errors; 869 CSS validation errors
3. Gainesville State College: 73 HTML validation errors; 893 CSS validation errors