U.S. News Takes Steps to Stop Law Schools From Manipulating the Rankings

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The rankings are completely arbitrary. The top 50 schools are all great, but whether your 8 or 15 is so arbitrary. Its ridiculous how they do these rankings, and its only the 0L's who really care that much. Employers in the area surrounding a school KNOW if your school puts out good lawyers or not. I suppose ranking matters most for those trying to go on a national market.
US news is terrible imo.

John J of CA 1:01AM April 07, 2011

While I am all for objective standards in US News rankings (I think the weight given to the peer score for undergrad is absurd, and should be halved at minimum), I do think that one very negative trend that has come about in law school admissions is the placement of LSAT/GPA above all else (and I scored > top 5% on LSAT). Whereas the MBA is a degree that takes a much more holistic approach to candidate admission, because the primary factors that MBA programs are judged on is industry placement and total compensation - law schools place all of the emphasis on the hard stats of an applicant. That leaves you with a ton of high LSAT/GPA kids entering top programs who, quite often, haven't the first clue about anything and turn out to be much worse lawyers for that lack of experience.
It's a known quantity that law school admissions reduce to LSAT + GPA + Ethnicity, and I think that is a very flawed system that places all of the emphasis at the school on admission - and none of it on educational quality. A law school is now "good" because it has the highest stats at the front end of the process (which then leads to the highest placement stats, since the admissions stats are what matters - not the quality of the lawyer).
Again, I appreciate the objectivity in the JD rankings, but I think the cat and mouse game with law school rankings has caused things to go a little too far. Just something to think about.

WCE of CA 11:19PM June 25, 2010

except advocate and write? They think, Richard. They think.

MRH of AK 11:12AM June 17, 2010

I'm glad to see US News addressing this problem. Personally, I'm a fan of the rankings, and I think there's the potential to use them to make schools more accountable to their students. I would love to see some kind of transparency metric that effects a school's overall score. This could be as simple as taking account of schools' response rate to employment surveys. That would at least give them some incentive to try to get more accurate employment info, though depending on how it's weighted some schools would undoubtedly continue to deliberately exclude unemployed graduates from their reporting.

Tom Ballard of OK 5:48PM May 22, 2010

It would appear that the Dean of the University of South Carolina has not had his contract renewed because he honestly and meticulously reported his law school's data, which, coupled with other schools' inaccurate reporting, led to his school falling into the third tier. It also appears that any significant drop in ratings inevitably leads to this scapegoating behavior, in any school where it occurs.
As we have seen, some schools are reporting unbelievable (and positive) statistics to US News, who then, in turn, treats these numbers as valid. If these rankings actually deserve to be considered by prospective students, US News' high level of passivity, inattention and collusion with these ranking manipulations is scandalous.
The behavior is fundamentally different than gaming the ranking system by actually changing how a school does business (hiring more faculty, for example, for a better student/faculty ratio, or increasing scholarship funding to enhance the GPA of an incoming class). At this point, the numbers being reported for employment statistics for any law school are completely unreliable because there is no requirement for honesty and the cost of accuracy can be ludicrously high for administrators.
No one forced US News to take on the responsibility of ranking institutions of higher education. Realistically, this ranking has become very important. There is some fiduciary obligation that has been created, and the magazine appears to have failed in upholding it.

pre-tenure academic of DC 2:36PM May 21, 2010

when a school can be ranked #1 (for many years in a row) in advocacy and #3 for legal writing (top 5 for many years) and still be in the third tier overall?
What else is there that lawyers do everyday excpet advocate and write?

Richard of FL 12:41PM May 21, 2010

The "employed at graduation" number is entirely a fiction these days. No one has a job until they actually start working. There are so many firms that have deferred or no offered people so they could be "employed at graduation" but actually never start working. Or they could never pass the bar.
Once again you have managed to ignore the real problems with your rankings, and tinker with a flawed formula. Does this do anything to fix the real problem of employment stats? I think everyone would be pretty happy if they had real legal employment within 9 months -- try to find a way to really count that.

Josie Jones of NY 11:09AM May 21, 2010

Why is the "employed at graduation" number important? Many firms are not hiring these days until people pass the bar. In some states, this is more than nine months out. Instead of having this double secret system, why don't you just eliminate this stupid criteria from the rankings altogether?

Reasonable Man of NY 9:29AM May 21, 2010

It's about time something is done about this.
Given the ever changing economic landscape, the huge investments and sacrifices one must make to get into, attend and graduate from Law School in order to seek a career in the legal realm it is only fair that people aspiring to become lawyers have accurate data to base many life changing decisions upon.
Deciding which Law Schools to apply to and where to attend once offered admission involves considering many serious factors that can and will influence ones life and career in many ways (personally/professionally/family/friends/long term residence location, etc.) for years down the road.
Intentionally making little more than a manipulated/gamed statistic available for students to evaluate when deciding where to commit well over $100k and 3 years minimum when the ultimate goal of the endeavor and large basis of the decision making process is "will I have/be able to get a job after securing a J.D.?", is a major selfish failing of Law Schools seeking to gain numbers/ranking prestige by hiding crucial information from potential students.
http://www.lsatdiscussion.com/index.php/topic,822.0.html

Jeffort of CA 1:44AM May 21, 2010

Last week we actually wrote about how some law schools were unfairly taking advantage of this "x - 30%" formula:
http://blog.veritasprep.com/2010/05/new-wrinkle-in-law-school-rankings-game.html
Glad to see that you're making this change!

Adam Hoff of CA 6:05PM May 20, 2010