US News and Law School Rankings: The Countdown

The law school rankings put out by US News will be published this week (April 23), with leaks probably taking place around Wednesday.  These rankings have been vociferously criticized and Brian Leiter has called on blogs to avoid posting them when they come out.   As he wrote:

• When the new rankings come out in a couple of weeks, may I suggest that you not post the overall ranking. You all know the overall rank assigned to a school by U.S. News is meaningless, often perniciously so. It combines too many factors, in an inexplicable formula, and much of the underlying data isn't reliable, and some of it (e.g., expenditures on secretarial salaries and electricity) isn't even relevant. You all know this. So don't report it. The fact that this garbage appears in a major 'news' magazine doesn't change the fact that it is garbage.

There is much truth to the criticism but the rankings have some advantages.  To the extent that they encourage law schools, for example, to reduce the faculty-student ratio, increase expenditures by raising additional dollars, or improving employment rates (particularly now), they push at least some schools in an appropriate direction.   For more on this, the methodology can be found here.

We will keep our eyes on things as they come out.  The big issue this year was whether US News would combine part time and full time divisions.  The effect would be to reduce median LSATs of most schools with part time (evening) divisions since most have lower median LSATs for the part time division.  By producing a separate ranking for part time division, US News is for now apparently not combining the two.

More as things develop this week.

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[Leaks Today]

lawschoolheadlines.com has the leaked rankings.