While I don't mean to discount the importance of a law school, from a research perspective I think there is a massive order of magnitude difference between lack

While I don't mean to discount the importance of a law school, from a research perspective I think there is a massive order of magnitude difference between lacking an engineering or med school vs lacking a law school. MIT and Harvard solve this by partnering together for HST. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard%E2%80%93MIT_Division_of_Health_Sciences_and_Technology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard%E2%80%93MIT_Division_of... While Harvard is an exceptional research institution, I think it falls just a little too far short of Stanford and Berkeley in engineering and applied science to qualify as the top research institution. ... all of which would be hard-pressed to try to claim that they deserve that title more than MIT.