How to Improve the Law School Rankings

Clerkship data

That suggestion is brilliant.

Line Item Improvals

As a current law student, the thing I want to see the most from the rankings is a more comprehensive approach.

Whether or not they will admit it, schools do look for quick fixes when their rankings drop in order to appease upset grads and benefactors. This usually means finding one line from the rankings the school scored poorly on, and funneling the current students into a dozen or so programs designed to improve that one category, which should theoretically improve the school's ranking.

Those line item improvals, however, do not actually enhance a students actual education, and in many cases force students into taking hybrid courses (many of which were not on the course schedule the previous year).

A more comprehensive ranking system would prevent this line item approach, and force schools to actually promote long term adjustments to improve their students and in turn their scores.

Measuring Legal Ethics

One (and possibly the only) objective measurement of legal ethics would be MPRE pass rates, which is data the NCBE collects.

So what?

You point out their suggestions...so what do you think about them?

Bob Morse responds: Collecting the % of each JD class that gets Federal clerkships is something we can readily do. We all ready collect the % with all clerkships and publish that. At a minimum we will seriously consider collecting this % with Fed Clerkship data and publishing it as a stand alone list. How to measure ethics and other areas of professional responsibilty, etc. needs a great deal more thought.