U.S. News & World Report Law School Rankings Are Out

Fresh off the presses, the controversial U.S. News & World Report 2007 Graduate School rankings (U.S. News) came out last month. Law schools around the country wait all year for the magic day in April when their school is matched up against all other schools and ranked according to specified factors.

According to U.S. News, ranking factors are based on two types of data: expert opinion about program quality and statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school's faculty, research and students. The opinion data is gathered by asking deans, program directors and senior faculty to judge the academic quality of programs in their field on a scale of 1 ("marginal") to 5 ("outstanding"). In law school rankings, professionals who hire new graduates are also polled in order to gather opinion data.

Statistical indicators are measured in two categories: inputs, which are measures of the qualities that students and faculty bring to the educational experience, and outputs, which are measures of graduates' achievements linked to their degrees.
Output measures in law include how much time it takes new lawyers to find jobs, and includes state bar exam passage rates. When all data is scored, quality indicators determine the final score for that particular institution. In some instances, quality indicators are adjusted to where a low value in a quality indicator indicates a higher quality, such as in the category of acceptance rates. Weight is applied to each indicator based on relative importance and schools are then placed in the U.S. News ranking order.

Specifically, quality assessment was measured by two surveys conducted in the fall of 2004. Quality assessment has a total weight of 40%, with the dean and three faculty members at every law school accounting for 25%, and lawyers and judges accounting for 15% of the total quality assessment score. Selectivity is given a weight of total weight of 25% in the overall score. This was determined by combining the LSAT scores (50%), median undergrad GPA (40%) and proportion of applicants accepted (10%).

Placement success accounts for a total weight of 20% of the overall score, with employment rates for 2003 graduates accounting for 30%, employment nine months after graduation accounting for 60%, and the bar passage rate accounting for 10%. Last, faculty resources account for 15% of the overall score, based on the average 2003 and 2004 expenditures per student, library, and supporting services (65%) and on all other items including financial aid (10%). The 2004 student/teacher ratio accounted for 20% of the resource score and the total number of volumes and titles in the library accounted for 5% of that score.

Every school's score on every indicator is standardized. After the scores are weighted and rescaled, the top school receives 100 and other schools received a percentage of the top score. There are also specialty rankings based solely on votes by law faculty who are listed in the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) directory of Law Teachers as teaching in the field. After naming up to 15 of the best schools in each field, schools receiving the most votes were listed.

There still remain longtime critics of the ranking system U.S. News has implemented. In 1998, AALS went so far as to send out a letter to 93,000 law school applicants warning them that the U.S. News rankings may not be as valid as they seem. AALS cited a study done for them by Stephen P. Klein, a senior research scientist and a senior partner with the consulting firm of Gansk and Associates, which found "many serious problems" with the way U.S. News evaluates law schools.

Deans of most law schools caution students that the designated factors used in rankings such as those in U.S. News should not be the only factors in evaluating a law school. Examples of factors not taken into account by U.S. News are those used by soon to be out "The Princeton Review's Best 117 Law Schools Rankings." Princeton Review surveys current students as to their opinion on the education they receive in which VUSL fared well among student opinion.

However, for those students that still go by U.S News and were left with a lot to be desired after this year's rankings, the wait is on for next year.