Law Schools, Rankings, U.S. News

Open Thread: 2016 U.S. News Law School Rankings (15 – 30)

Do you have something to say about your law school's U.S. News ranking? This is the place to do it!

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Welcome back to our series of open threads on the latest batch of U.S. News law school rankings. Last time around, readers weighed in on the law schools that ascended to the tippy-top of the rankings — the Top 14 law schools. With Harvard and Stanford tied for second place (again), Duke’s moving up to eighth place, Michigan’s departure from the Top 10, and Georgetown going back to putting the 14 in T14, there was certainly a lot to talk about.

Today, we’ll be looking at some additional top-tier law schools that sit just below the coveted “T14.” And much like the ups and downs we saw play out among our nation’s most elite law schools, there were some pretty significant moves worth noting here.

Here are the schools ranked #15 through #30, per U.S. News & World Report. We’ve noted the difference between last year’s ranking and this year’s ranking parenthetically:

15. Texas (no change)
16. UCLA (no change)
17. Vanderbilt (-1; tied at #16 last year with UCLA)
18. Washington University in St. Louis (no change)
19. Emory (no change)
20. Minnesota (no change)
20. USC (no change)
22. GWU (-2; tied at #20 last year with Minnesota and USC)
22. Alabama (+1; ranked #23 last year)
22. Iowa (+5; ranked #27 last year)
22. Notre Dame (+4; ranked #26 last year)
26. Arizona State (+5; ranked #31 last year)
26. Boston University (+1; tied at #27 last year with Iowa)
28. Washington (-4; tied at #24 last year with William & Mary)
29. William & Mary (-5; tied at #24 last year with Washington)
30. UC Irvine (first time ranked)

First things first: let’s talk about the one and only law school that fell out of the Top 20 this year. Our condolences go out to George Washington University Law School. Perhaps if GW Law’s selectivity hadn’t dropped — allowing its acceptance rate to climb to 45.19 percent — and if it hadn’t padded its employment rates with school-funded jobs (16.5 percent of the class of 2013), the school wouldn’t have lost its heralded Top 20 ranking.

Meanwhile, Alabama, Iowa, Notre Dame, and Arizona State are law schools that are on the move, in a very positive way. Congratulations to these four law schools for doing something right — we’re sure the class of 2015 is thrilled to be graduating from an almost-Top 20 school (and an almost-Top 25 school, in ASU’s case). On that note, we suppose we’ll see next year if Iowa’s LSAT-exception boondoggle for its undergraduate students will help or hinder its powerful forward progress in the U.S. News rankings.

Another school that suffered in a major way because of its graduates’ employment situation was William & Mary. After a nine-point increase in rank last year, largely due to its employment of recent graduates in school-funded jobs, the school is now being spanked for… employing graduates in school-funded jobs. Funny how these things work.

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We noted last year that this section of the rankings is famous for its sports rivalries. On the West Coast, it looks like USC and UCLA hold the exact same ranks as last year, so that’s not terribly exciting. On the East Coast, however, BU keeps rising, and yet again, BC is… nowhere to be found. Two years ago, the schools were only separated by two spots. Now BC is seated at No. 34, up two spots from last year. What happened here? Sorry, BC, but you’re getting smoked by BU in the rankings, and you may not be able to recover.

Last, but certainly not least, UC Irvine made its debut in the rankings this year at No. 30, even though Dean Erwin Chemerinsky promised for years that his school would be in the Top 20. Here’s what he had to say about it in an interview with the National Law Journal:

“This is so much higher than any other new law school has debuted. We’ve got to be proud of that,” Chemerinsky (left) said. “It’s crucial to do everything we can to be a top school. If we create a top school, the ranking will take care of itself.”

Don’t stop believin’, Dean Chemerinsky!

All in all, it looks like there’s a moral to be had in the story of this year’s rankings. The fact that students are merely employed after graduation means nothing — they have to be employed as lawyers, and they have to be employed as lawyers in real law jobs, not school-funded jobs. This apparently still comes as a shock to some law deans. In the end, we’re left wondering whether these law schools are worth their sticker prices. They might not be as exalted as the Top 14, but many of them charge just as much.

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Is going to one of these schools an investment worth making? Sound off in the comments.

Earlier: Open Thread: 2016 U.S. News Law School Rankings (1 – 14)
The 2016 U.S. News Law School Rankings Are Here!

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