Law schools in the US range in quality, sure. There are nearly 200 ABA-accredited law schools in this country. Canada has nowhere near that many, even when you adjust for population. Most of these 200 suck and offer mediocre-to-poor job prospects. Graduates from these law schools tend to earn lower starting salaries (30-60k/year) and some can't find jobs at all. The unemployed JDs from low-ranked schools might end up working retail or going back to their old careers, sure.

All that being true, the top American law schools are still, by far, vastly superior to any Canadian law school.

The US has a greater range of quality, but is also home to the best schools. Graduates from the top US law schools also tend to make much more than attorneys from the University of Toronto or any Canadian law school. The problem is that most American law students don't go to these top schools.

I would agree with you that most Canadian law schools are better than most American law schools, but since there are around 200 ABA-accredited law schools, this doesn't mean much. I'd also say that Canadian law schools have much less of a quality gap, meaning that most of them are roughly equivalent in quality and prestige, which is why hiring statistics are better in Canada and more stable. The legal market in the US is much less stable for JDs because of the range of quality. Make no mistake, though, the top US schools offer superior job prospects to any Canadian school, and some Canadians even go to top American law schools with the intent of working in Canada because they realize how much more prestigious Yale, Harvard and Stanford are than the University of Toronto.

As far as faculty goes, even terrible law schools in the US have good faculty. To break into legal academia in the US, even at low-ranked schools, you need to have graduated from a top-six school for the most part. All law students take basically the same classes and have the same types of professors. I'm sure Toronto's faculty is excellent, but I don't know if it's comparable to Harvard or Yale. Harvard and Yale attract the best in the *world*. Toronto attracts the best in Canada. Just not the same league.

Finally, and this is a difficult indicator, but it's much harder to get into a top American law school like Harvard than it is Toronto or any other law school in Canada.

If I walked into Best Buy and there were a bunch of lawyers there I'd be horrified too!