U.S. News

Adding ‘Diversity’ to U.S. News Rankings Wouldn’t Accomplish Much

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For all you know, everybody in this picture hates each other and are about to engage in gladiatorial combat.

We all know how important the U.S. News Law School Rankings are to our system of legal education. The jobs of law school deans depend on the rankings, and they therefore significantly impact what law schools are willing or able to do. It’s crazy that a for profit magazine has so much power over the future of legal education, but that power is well established and undeniable.

Given the importance of U.S. News, I understand why diversity proponents want the publication to start counting “diversity” as a data point when compiling the annual rankings. If you want law school deans to pay attention to something, you have to use small words and speak in the language of U.S. News. If the magazine started caring about law school diversity today, law schools would really start caring tomorrow.

But that doesn’t mean including a “diversity” component in the rankings would be a good idea. That’s just a half measure (and a confusing one to boot) that doesn’t get the heart of any kind of real problem…

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Latest Cooley Law School Rankings Achieve New Heights of Intellectual Dishonesty

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It’s Christmas morning here at Above the Law. Thomas M. Cooley Law School has released a new set of law school rankings designed to make Thomas M. Cooley Law School look good. Back in 2009, Cooley incredibly ranked itself the 12th-best law school in the country.

Now the farce reaches new and glorious heights. In this latest edition of Cooley’s own Judging the Law Schools rankings, Cooley has rated itself — wait for it, wait for it — the SECOND BEST law school in all that land. That’s right, #2! Harvard is #1, so according to Cooley, if you can’t get into HLS, you’d be making a wise career decision to go to Cooley instead of, oh, I don’t know — YALE. Click over to the Cooley website if you want to see the full list; I don’t want to befoul ATL’s pages with a breakout of Cooley’s top ten.

This, my friends, is funny. But it’s also serious. Because there are real people studying at Cooley right now, and I don’t think they understand how horrible it makes the school look when the administration publishes things like this….

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Villanova Scandal Watch: More Cryptic Emails From the Dean

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This Villanova scandal is going to get uglier before it finishes. On Friday, we reported that John Y. Gotanda, the dean of Villanova Law School, sent a letter to students and alumni in which he revealed that the school reported inaccurate admissions information to the American Bar Association.

The letter was light on specifics. According to comments made by a Villanova spokesperson to the ABA Journal, the problem involved Villanova providing the ABA with incorrect LSAT and GPA numbers.

The Villanova administration has not yet disclosed exactly what data was inaccurate, who was responsible, and what the school is doing to make sure that this kind of thing won’t happen again. That could be because the school is still investigating the full scope of the problem.

But Villanova students and faculty members are talking. Here’s what we’ve heard so far…

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Closing the Loop on the Crowdsourced Law School Rankings

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Last week we told you that The Conglomerate was crowdsourcing a set of law school rankings. It called upon participants to make head-to-head comparisons between different law schools, then crunched the numbers to produce overall rankings.

We covered the early returns, in which Stanford was leading, with Yale in second place. Then came the University of Michigan, followed by Harvard.

But those were just preliminary tallies. Now the final results are in, and you can check them out here. Professor Gordon Smith of The Conglomerate reports that 6,100 people cast over 300,000 votes.

At the top, there are not many differences from the U.S. News law school rankings….

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Law School Rankings: Crowdsourcing Makes Them More Awesome

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Everybody loves law school rankings, but these are special. These rankings are not based on a formula developed in secret by statisticians or prestige gurus. These rankings are put together by you. By us. By the mass of humanity that makes up the general mob. These rankings are crowdsourced.

The Conglomerate is putting together rankings based on what we think. But they’re not going with a straight popular vote. Instead, they’ve got a brilliant set up where they ask you to make a series of comparisons. Which law school do you think is better: SMU or Maryland? The rankings are based on answers to almost 200 questions like that.

I only answered 20 questions, but I’ll do the rest as soon as I get a free moment. It’s fun. Widener or Arkansas? Connecticut or Hastings? Screw what U.S. News thinks, what do you think?

And the results so far are pretty cool too…

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ABA Considers Dropping LSAT Requirement for Admission to Law School

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Really, it’s a good news/bad news kind of thing. The good news: the ABA committee reviewing the accreditation standards for law schools is starting to remember it has some power over how law schools operate. The bad news: the committee is contemplating a change that will only result in making it easier for schools to recruit any and all with the ability to pay (or go into debt), while at the same time gaming the U.S. News law school rankings.

The latest brain nugget to come from the ABA is a proposal to remove the LSAT requirement for admission into law school. Currently, the committee requires prospective law students to take a “valid and reliable” test. But a number of schools already have a waiver so they can admit their own undergraduates without taking a rankings hit due to low LSAT scores. The new ABA proposal would simply drop the requirement altogether.

I don’t think the LSAT is indicative of whole lot more than one’s ability to study for the LSAT. Being able to take standardized tests is an important skill — at least if you ever want to pass your state bar exam — but it’s not the only skill. From an educational standpoint, I don’t think it really matters if students have to take the LSAT or not.

But given the proliferation of law schools more concerned about generating tuition dollars than preparing the next generation of lawyers, the LSAT exists as one of the few barriers to entry to a profession that is already overrun with applicants. Dropping the requirement is a move in the wrong direction that will only make it easier for diploma mills to churn out the next generation of unemployed, wage-depressing attorneys….

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Morning Docket: 01.11.11

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Julian Assange

* Judy Clarke, counsel to Jared Lee Loughner, is known as the “One-Woman Dream Team.” Here’s to hoping the prosecution doesn’t get played like Frédéric Weis. [USA Today]

* There is a time when the operation of the merger becomes so odious… plaintiff’s attorneys have got to put their bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and they’ve got to make it more expensive. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Toileteers rejoice! U.S. News might start giving numerical rankings to third-tier law schools. [National Law Journal]

* Julian Assange’s lawyer says the government’s Twitter subpoena amounts to harassment. #unfunnylegalblurbs [Bloomberg]

* This Times article explores the seedy underbelly of bail bondsmen. Apparently there’s more to bail bonds than sponsoring ragtag baseball teams full of misfits. [New York Times]

* Badonkadonk, Cute Face, and Wookie Kardashian Odom have been sued over a scuttled prepaid debit card-type thing. [CBS Money Watch]

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If you regret going to law school….

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and wind up unemployed and some six figures in debt, despite graduating from a highly ranked school, can you sue… U.S. News and World Report?

It sounds ridiculous, right? And yet….

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U.S. News to Disclose ALL the Job Info It Collects: But Let’s Not Lick Each Other’s Popsicles Just Yet.

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Last week, the people at the Law School Transparency project scored a major victory. They got U.S. News to agree to disclose all of the employment information the magazine collects about law schools, with the release of next year’s influential rankings.

According to stories around the blogosphere, U.S. News rankings guru Robert Morse is even giving the LST people credit for pushing the magazine in this direction. U.S. News, mind you, has more power over law schools than the freaking American Bar Association — but it was influenced by two young guys from Vanderbilt. Check out coverage from the ABA Journal, the WSJ Law Blog, and the National Law Journal (subscription). Major kudos to Team LST!

The changes are good, but they’re not the Holy Grail of law school transparency. U.S. News won’t be collecting any additional information. Schools will still be able to materially misrepresent some of their crucial employment statistics, and U.S. News is not increasing the weight given to outcome-oriented metrics in its rankings methodology.

It’s definitely progress, but as long as the ABA refuses to wield its regulatory power, there’s only so much a magazine can do…

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Non-Sequiturs: 11.05.10

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* U.S. News will be shutting down its print magazine. But the rankings should be safe. [Mediabistro]

* The ABA is coming for your internets. [Avvo]

* Prince Jefri of Brunei is a wild and crazy guy. [Law Shucks]

* Justice Stevens pontificates on Ground Zero Mosque. [BLT: Blog of the Legal Times]

* Prop 19 supporters are already gearing up for 2012. Yeah, cause it’s not like pot heads will lose motivation over the course of two years. [WSJ Law Blog]

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