Posts Tagged ‘Rankings’

Like it or not, the U.S. News & World Report’s annual ranking of law schools profoundly influences the way those schools are managed, spend resources and are perceived internally and by the outside world.

That is the conclusion reached by two sociology professors who interviewed more than 200 law school administrators, faculty members and prospective law students and combed through other statistical data. Their report, “Fear of Falling: The Effect of U.S. News & World Report Rankings on U.S. Law Schools,” has been released by the Law School Admission Council, which partially funded the research.

“One of the things that surprised us most is what a big impact the rankings have,” said Northwestern University associate professor Wendy Espeland, who co-authored the report with University of Iowa assistant professor Michael Sauder. “They affect so many aspects of legal education.”

The rankings have become a routine consideration in law school decision-making, according to the report, and pressure to move up in the rankings influences the way law schools distribute their resources.

The study’s conclusion that law schools have several ways of gaming the system likely won’t surprise the many critics who have charged that the rankings are easily manipulated and are harmful to the educational mission of law schools. Most of the interviewed administrators said that the rankings hurt law schools, but some believed that they add transparency and accountability to legal education. The magazine bases its rankings on reputation, selectivity, placement success and faculty resources.

The researchers considered ways in which that pressure has changed the role of law school deans, admissions officers, career services personnel and faculty.

[NLJ]

Why waste time weighing factors like faculty size and bar passage rates when choosing a law school when you can simply look at one factor — the number of Super Lawyers among the alumni?

At least that’s what Law & Politics, the publisher of Super Lawyers magazine, thinks.

Last week, the publication known for bestowing honors on attorneys unleashed its first ever law school rankings. And yes, the criteria are that simple. The No. 1 rated school, Harvard, has 2,354 graduates who have morphed into Super Lawyers, the most of any institution.

A pair of officials at Connecticut law schools that didn’t rank quite that high seemed skeptical of the new ranking system. But while quick to point out its flaws, they stopped short of dismissing it altogether.

Jeremy Paul, dean of the University of Connecticut’s School of Law, and Brad Saxton, dean of Quinnipiac University School of Law, provided similar analogies to bolster arguments that the biggest, rather than the best, law schools have an advantage.

“If you have one school that had 500 graduates and another that had 50, and there are three [Super Lawyers] in 500 or two in 50, which is better?” asked Paul. “According to their calculation, three are better because it’s more.”

[Law.com]

Ranking law schools and law firms. All of a sudden, everyone’s doing it.

A universe that used to contain one member, it seems — U.S. News & World Report — has suddenly gotten a lot more crowded. Princeton Review now ranks the law schools. The American Lawyer, with its annual A-List ranking, provides a ranking of sorts for law firms. Vault uses prestige as the measuring stick for law firms; Chicago Law prof Brian Leiter provides his own law-school rankings, here. The list, particularly in regard to law schools, goes on and on.

Well, let us add one more name to the parade. Law & Politics, the publisher of Super Lawyers and the cheeky magazines Minnesota Law & Politics (pictured) and Washington Law & Politics, will on Tuesday unveil its first ever ranking of U.S. law schools, based on one criteria only: how many Super Lawyers each produces. Roughly 5 percent of the lawyers in each state are selected to Super Lawyers lists each year. Click here for how those are chosen.

“We’ve been rating lawyers for nearly 20 years,” says Super Lawyers publisher and founder Bill White. “This puts us in a unique position to shed light on how well schools fulfill the ultimate mission of producing great lawyers.”

We asked White if the world really needs another ranking of law firms. In his opinion, it does. We chatted briefly on Monday with White, but a statement in a press release sums up White’s position:

[Wall Street Journal]

The Government Accountability Office has concluded that the U.S. News Best Law Schools rankings are one the key factors behind skyrocketing law school tuitions. That’s according to an October report by the GAO entitled “Higher Education: Issues Related to Law School Cost and Access.”

The GAO said that, “according to law school officials, the move to a more hands-on, resource-intensive approach to legal education and competition among schools for higher rankings appear to be the main factors driving the cost of law school, while ABA accreditation requirements appear to play a minor role. Additionally, officials at public law schools reported that recent decreases in state funding are a contributor to rising tuition at public schools.”

In addition, the GAO points out that “officials at most of the ABA-accredited law schools we spoke with and student representatives reported that schools compete to attract students and faculty and to increase their U.S. News and World Report ranking. This competition has had an impact on cost because: Rankings are determined in part by such cost-related factors as per student expenditures, student-faculty ratio, and library resources; according to law school officials, schools offer clinics and diverse elective courses to compete for students; to attract the best faculty, school officials reported that they may offer higher salaries.”

There are weaknesses in the report’s methodology. The GAO primarily relied on the views of a very small number of law school academic insiders and the American Bar Association. The law school academic community should have taken more direct responsibility for its own administrative actions that boost tuitions. Many legal educators believe that the ABA’s accreditation process, which has numerous standards for faculty and school facilities, plays a far more significant role in adding to the rising cost of legal education than GAO gives it credit for.

[US News]

For better or worse — and many law professors say for worse — the U.S. News and World Report rankings carry big weight with law school applicants.

But that emphasis ends up costing students more.

According to a report issued by the Government Accountability Office (embedded below), “the move to a more hand-on, resource-intensive approach to legal education and competition among schools for higher rankings appear to be the main factors driving the cost of law school,” the report says.

Specific actions schools take to increase rankings include (from pgs. 19-20):

* Strive for lower student/professor ratios
* Offer clinics and diverse elective courses
* Attract top faculty members, who require higher salaries

These are of course good things, but, since 1994, tuition has increased 7.2% for in-state public universities and 3.8% for private universities. In 2008, the report says, six public law schools reported resident tuition and fees of more than $30,000.

As the ABA Journal notes, the average debt for graduates of public law schools rose from $50,000 to $71,436. For private law schools, the average debt has risen from $75,000 in 2001-02 to $91,506 in 2007-08.

[Business Insider]

It’s a slow news day, time to catchup on the Princeton Review Rankings list:

[FIU, UM and Barry score well for diverse business, law schools]
[BYU and U. business, law schools among best]
[Princeton Review names law school 8th most liberal]
[Attention Law Schools, Your Princeton Review Rankings Are Ready]
[CUNY Law takes cake for most liberal students]
[The 2010 Princeton Review Law School Rankings]

– No.1: University of New Mexico School of Law

– No.2: University of Texas at Austin School of Law

– No.3: Florida State University College of Law

– No.4: American University Washington College of Law

– No.5: University of Miami School of Law

– No.6: University of San Francisco School of Law

– No.7: Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law

– No.8: University of Florida Fredric G. Levin College of Law

– No.9: University of Southern California Gould School of Law

– No.10: University of California, Los Angeles School of Law

[Hispanic Business Magazine]

* Note: We were tipped to the rankings before they were released and mistakenly posted last year’s. The list and link have been updated.