U.S. News

The latest U.S. News law school rankings are out, and you know what that means. It’s time to allow students and alumni to weigh in on their law school and their brand new rank.

The latest U.S. News law school rankings are out, and you know what that means. It’s time to allow students and alumni to weigh in on their law school and their brand new rank.

* Was the Obamacare case brought prematurely? Did the Supreme Court’s judicial intervention come too soon? Yesterday’s arguments before SCOTUS can be summed up in four simple words: “That’s what she said.” [New York Times]

* Howrey going to get out of this one? The defunct firm’s bankruptcy trustee, Allan Diamond, is trying to decide whether he’ll be bringing adversary claims against the dissolution committee and its members. [Am Law Daily]

* U.S. News is doing what the American Bar Association refuses to do: make law schools its b*tch. Listen up, administrators, because your next “reporting error” could cost you your ranking. [National Law Journal]

* Armed with a treasure trove of new evidence, Facebook has moved to dismiss Paul Ceglia’s lawsuit. What does his lawyer from Milberg have to say? A hacker planted all of the evidence, duh. [Wall Street Journal]

* Apparently Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s got hos in different area codes. He’s been keeping his pimp hand strong — so strong, that he’s been charged with aggravated procurement of prostitutes. [Bloomberg]

* Broke your nose trying to walk through a glass wall at the Apple store and now you’re suing for $1M? That’s an app for that! It’s called common sense, and for a limited time only, it’s being offered free of charge. [Forbes]

Law school falls in U.S. News rankings, and the law dean gets fired. Coincidence?

* Joe Amendola has filed a motion to dismiss the child sex abuse charges against his client, Jerry Sandusky. And if he actually thinks that’s going to happen, then he definitely needs to call 1-800-REALITY. [Associated Press]

* @AllenStanford’s motion for a #newtrial has been denied. The Ponzi schemer’s “conviction by journo tweet” argument has failed. Major props to Judge David Hittner for issuing a ruling in less than 140 characters. [Bloomberg]

* Everyone’s obsessed with the U.S. News law school rankings, but here’s a ranking that people should actually be paying attention to: the law schools that lead to the most debt. [The Short List / U.S. News and World Report]

* This defunct firm’s homeless Halloween party just won’t be as fun this year. Steven J. Baum P.C. has to fork over $4M to settle a probe over its alleged foreclosure abuses. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* St. John’s Law is planning to launch two new LL.M. programs, neither of which is in tax. This is newsworthy because people will apply anyway, and then bitch about the “value” of their degree. [National Law Journal]

* John Payton, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, RIP. [NAACP LDF]

We're going to reveal the people’s choice for the 15th and final spot in legal academia’s most exclusive club, as well as arguments for and against each of the contenders....

The latest U.S. News law school rankings are out, and you know what that means. It’s time to allow students and alumni to weigh in on their law school and their brand new rank.

Last week, we received our 4,000th response to the ATL School & Firm Insider Survey. We thought it would be interesting to compare how the vaunted T14 stack up based on our own survey feedback. Let's look at how the elite schools compare....

The U.S. News Law School Rankings are out, which means it's open season on law school deans. While deans from schools that dropped are trying to save themselves, deans from schools that went up in the rankings are crowing from the rooftops.

The latest U.S. News & World Report law school rankings are out - and there's a surprising amount of movement among the top schools. Who are this year's winners and losers?

It's hard to believe that another year has passed, but here we are. The weather is turning cold, the Republican presidential contest is heating up, and it's time to review this year's biggest stories on Above the Law. We'll refrain from offering our subjective judgments on the most important stories of the year. Instead, we'll identify the ten biggest stories of the past year as decided by you, our readers....

[A] law school could literally burn a huge sum of money and, as long as the flames were meant to teach something to the students — the craziness of the U.S. News algorithm, perhaps? — the school would benefit in the rankings. — New York Times journalist David Segal, responding to a reader’s question in […]

You know things are bad when U.S. News, the Holy Grail for students trying to figure out where to go to law school, is writing articles about all of the non-law-related jobs recent graduates are taking just to get by. Everybody who is in law school knows how difficult the job market is. But U.S. News is giving this sobering message about "non-traditional" legal careers to people who have not yet signed up for their own financial doom. And it turns out that even going to a highly-ranked school doesn't save you from having awful job choices....

* Now that DADT has been repealed, the Ninth Circuit has tossed the Log Cabin Republicans case. How does that Paula Abdul song go? Two steps forward, two steps back? [Los Angeles Times] * Is this a new way of protecting taxpayers? In early 2012, Bank of America is going to start charging $5 a […]

* Bob Morse announces that new jobs data may be used to change the methodology for calculating law school employment rates. Because Bob Morse has to do the ABA’s job for them. HIYOOOO! [U.S. News & World Report] * And speaking of employment (or lack thereof), it looks like UDel and SUNY Stony Brook have […]

All right folks, graduation is upon us. If you are a 3L who did not secure a post-graduate legal job, I’m sorry. Your life isn’t over, but law school didn’t work out as well for you as you might have hoped. At least not yet. Not that your law schools want anybody to know that. […]

On Monday, we talked about the big New York Times article over the weekend about the way law schools use merit-based scholarships to rope students in. When discussing the need to give out scholarships, the Times cites some very familiar language about how fixation on the U.S. News rankings guides the decisionmaking processes of many […]

Many people, especially law school administrators, bemoan the U.S. News law school rankings. Sure, they have their pedagogical reasons for hating the rankings, but there are larger issues here. When schools drop in the rankings, heads tend to roll. Of course, law schools deans rarely admit they were ousted because of the U.S. News. But […]

I graduated from Northwestern Law in 2009. It is now 2011, my loans are coming due (real due — not the fake, put ‘em in forebearance, due of yesteryear), and I am currently “employed” doing two things: reviewing documents at an embarrassing hourly wage on projects that start and stop without any sort of consistency, […]

Now is the season when law school applicants, having received their admission and rejection letters, need to make up their minds about where to attend law school (or if they want to go at all). We’ve received a number of inquiries from anxious 0Ls seeking advice about whether to matriculate at School X or School […]