Law Schools, Rankings

Back In The Race: Why The U.S. News Law School Rankings Will Never Change

The U.S. News law school rankings will come out later this month -- and won't be much different from last year's rankings.

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resume girlA few days ago, U.S. News and World Report announced that they will release their annual, infamous law school rankings on March 16. As usual, everyone on the losing end of the rankings will criticize the methodology and we can expect at least one law school dean to resign. The winners will shout to the heavens about how their great faculty or clinical programs contributed to their rise. But in reality, luck and a degree of randomness plays a role in a law school’s ranking.

The U.S. News rankings, as the most influential, have been criticized on a number of fronts. Commentators complain that the rankings incentivize law schools to raise tuition in order to game their rank, leaving graduates with massive debt. Law school deans and faculty resent having to rank schools that they know little to nothing about.

So with all of this criticism, it would seem prudent to change their ranking methodology to make it more accurate. So why don’t they do it?

First, I think they want the rankings to be stable, particularly at the top tier. A ranking system would be unreliable if every year there was a different school at the top. It would be confusing for both prospective students and employers. I also think that if schools like Harvard, Yale and Stanford were not listed in the top, the rankings will not be taken seriously. But it should be flexible enough to give those in the bottom an opportunity to move up in the rankings.

Second, any attempt to make the rankings more accurate will be unnecessarily expensive. U.S. News calculates its rankings based on information that I assume is easy and cheap to obtain: reputational scores, average GPA and LSATs, school acceptance rates, and post-graduate job information. They arbitrarily assign a percentage to each of these factors to come up with a final ranking. Given its influence, U.S. News has no incentive to spend money to do a detailed, unbiased evaluation of every law school in the country.

Lastly, even if substantial changes are implemented, not everyone will be happy. Those in the lower tiers of the rankings will complain about the methodology. They’ll call it unfair, racist, elitist, inflexible, or unforgiving.

Since it appears that there is little to no incentive for U.S. News to change its ranking methodology on its own, can the consumers of the U.S. News rankings do anything to influence change? I’ll look at pre-law students, employers and law schools.

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At the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools in New York earlier this year, Bob Morse of U.S. News said that they are doing the rankings to serve prospective law students and parents, not for the law schools or the deans.

Pre-law students and their parents can use social media to make their voices heard. They should tell U.S. News that cost of attendance should be part of the rankings criteria. That way, law schools will be motivated to lower tuition in order to improve their ranking. Or they can start a #boycottUSNewsrankings campaign. Or they can tweet about other ranking systems, like the ATL Rankings or Princeton Review.

Employers (particularly major law firms and government) should publicly announce that they will not use the U.S. News rankings in their recruiting and hiring campaigns. I have mentioned this previously. Employees with lower student loan debts are generally happier, more productive and loyal.

Law school faculty and deans should not rate a law school they know little to nothing about. If they were honest about this, I think most of them will only rate the law school they graduated from, the law schools they worked for in the past and present, and possibly a few schools that left a good impression on them. Another issue is that most law professors graduated from elite schools. So they will want to maintain the high ranking of their alma maters.

The problem is that I don’t think any of the above suggestions I described above will change things. Bob Morse will probably promise to “look into it” but nothing will come out of it. All of the controversy and criticism only prove how influential the U.S. News rankings are, and they will likely keep it this way.

Sponsored

Can there be a viable competitor to the U.S. News rankings? The ATL law school rankings continue to grow in popularity. Maybe state bars can issue their own rankings of schools in their state. Perhaps another highly read magazine, like Time or Newsweek, can create their own rankings system.

I see two possible ways for U.S. News to change its ranking system. First, if the current system hurts their brand. A few years ago, when the mainstream media exposed law schools’ past practice of manipulating their post-graduate employment statistics in order to increase its ranking, U.S. News responded by providing more detailed post-graduate employment statistics and adjusting their scoring criteria for employment. Second, if people stop relying upon and talking about the U.S. News rankings. Lawyers, law students and the media can promote alternate ratings systems; once the U.S. News feels the reduction of its relevancy, it will swiftly move to reform things.

Until then, we’re stuck with what we have now.

Shannon Achimalbe was a former solo practitioner for five years before deciding to sell out and get back on the corporate ladder. Shannon can be reached by email at sachimalbe@excite.com and via Twitter: @ShanonAchimalbe.

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