Law Schools, Rankings

Law School Gets Caught Lying About Its Above The Law Ranking

Don't try to lie to Above the Law about how Above the Law rates your school.

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I’ve got to give this law school credit for having stones. It’s one thing for law schools to lie or mislead prospective students about their employment numbers. It’s another thing for a law school to spin its U.S. News Law School Ranking in the most “positive” way it can think of.

But this law school here, these people just straight made up a number for its “Above the Law” ranking, as if somehow “Above the Law” wouldn’t notice! That’s some gumption, man. That’s like trying to adversely possess a house that is currently occupied. Good lord.

The school is telling prospective students that it ranks #77 on Above the Law’s employment rankings… which is interesting because Above the Law doesn’t DO an “employment ranking,” and our soon to be released law school rankings only go up to #50…

The second annual Above the Law Law School Rankings come out next week. Hold your deposits! Once again, we will break down schools based on their outcomes for graduates as opposed to the inputs from their entering classes. It should be fun.

Since we haven’t released the rankings yet, we didn’t expect to see anybody tout their Above the Law rank in a press release this week. But when has something as pedestrian as “facts” stopped a law school from saying what it wants? A concerned tipster forwarded this email he received from Nova Southeastern this morning:

Wut? Last year’s Above the Law rankings looked at only the top 50 schools. This year’s Above the Law rankings look at only the top 50 schools. There is no such thing as an Above the Law “Employment Rankings.” There is no such thing as an Above the Law rankings that is broken out by state. IS THERE SOME OTHER “ABOVE THE LAW” THAT RANKS LAW SCHOOLS THAT I AM NOT AWARE OF? Does Nova Southeastern rank #77 on Steven Seagal’s hit list?

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And while we’re here: Nova Southereastern is also “Rank Not Published” by U.S. News, which means it is at best worse than #150. LST doesn’t produce a “ranking,” and NALP doesn’t produce a “ranking” — those organizations are opposed TO THE CONCEPT OF RANKINGS!

I honestly have no idea what Nova is talking about when it says: “Five rankings of law schools’ employment data were recently released.” If I edit that sentence for truth, it would look like this: “Five rankings of law schools’ employment data were recently released.”

The lesson, as always, is that you can NEVER BELIEVE the information you are getting from a law school. If you can’t independently verify every statistic, every line really, in a law school brochure or email, you have to simply ASSUME that it’s false. Law schools have no obligation to tell you the truth, the courts have said as much. Independently verifiable statistics, or it didn’t happen.

Let me put it like this: we caught Nova “red-handed” here, but let me point out the most important misleading part of the email. Nova says: “In today’s legal job market it makes good sense to value bar pass and employment data heavily in your decision of where to enroll. NSU Law has proven and consistent results in both.” Proven and consistent bar results, you say? Well, here’s the Daily Business Review’s report on Nova’s most recent bar passage results: “Nova’s passage rate dropped from 81.8 percent in September to 69.6 percent.”

The truth is out there, folks. It just doesn’t come on law school stationary.

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