Article About U.S. News Law School Rankings

It is that time of year again. On March 28, 2008, U.S. News is going to release its 2009 rankings. A very interesting April 2008 article about the ranking process entitled "The Ranking Czar" provides some background about the process U.S. News uses. The article heavily quotes Dean Paul Caron who owns this Network and blogs at TaxProf Blog. The point of the article is that while many view the U.S. News ranking system as flawed, the fact of the matter is that is what students, professors and yes, law schools will go buy. As the article states:

Everyone is well aware of U.S. News [rankings] and their effect in the real world,” says Frank Wu, who is stepping down this year as Wayne State University Law School dean. He describes the weeks just prior to the new rankings issue as excruciating. “There is always a sense of anxiety, foreboding, even dread.”

“It would be hard to overestimate the effect law school rankings have on everyday campus life,” says Paul Caron, dean of faculty at the University of Cincinnati College of Law and a vocal critic of the magazine’s methodology. “Students worry about how a ranking will affect their chances of future employment. Faculty worry about whether a drop in rankings will make it more difficult to be published in law reviews. Deans feel that they will be judged by how many places up or down the school moves in the rankings.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, behind all this angst is an equally broad-based resentment. Since it began the rankings in 1987, the magazine is often attacked as wielding too much power; its methodology is denounced as easily manipulated and too subjective to carry such inordinate weight.

Mitchell H. Rubinstein