Last week, U.S. News and World Report published its annual law school rankings. After the AU Washington College of Law slipped from 43rd to 47th place last year, I was convinced we'd slide again - this time into the deep dark pit informally known as tier two (schools ranked 50 through 100). But instead we climbed to 46, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
Silly? Sure. I've been here nearly two years, and WCL certainly seems like the same school it was last year - as, presumably, do most other schools whose rank has changed. And yet students (and professors) take these shifts very seriously.
The most striking example of this appeared on the law gossip Web site "Above the Law" last Friday. This blog posted a school-wide e-mail sent by Dean Carolyn Jones to the University of Iowa College of Law (which slipped a mere three spots): "Indeed, we have been studying the U.S. News rankings at a very high level over the past year. Hundreds of hours of sophisticated thought by alumni, faculty and staff have gone into this project, informally dubbed the Apollo Project. We have been considering ways of bringing new resources to the law school that will enhance our rankings... "
Students like me obsess over the rankings, but deans probably shouldn't. Deans should not try to boost their ranking when doing so means focusing on arbitrary and often irrelevant criteria U.S. News values. The pursuit of higher rankings can also lead some schools to be dishonest. In an effort to boost their "selectivity" rating, some schools allegedly send out hundreds of fee waivers to entice more applications, which are then rejected wholesale. In January 2007 the National Jurist magazine reported an even shadier practice: Some law schools now hire unemployed alumni for a single day and then mark them as "employed" nine months after graduation. Such fiddling ultimately helps no one, least of all the students.
Partly at fault are the U.S. News rankings. Pure ordinate rankings lose their meaning when superimposed upon regional markets. For instance, the University of Alabama Law School is ranked 13 places above WCL, but for a student wishing to work in D.C., externship opportunities and connections with the local market make WCL the better choice.
The rankings should be location-centric, with most schools partitioned into regional bins and a few "national" schools on top. This approach would reduce noise by excluding from local rankings those faraway schools that cater to different legal markets.
Law school rankings are undoubtedly important to students and administrators alike. Recognizing this, U.S. News should at least make them meaningful.
Brittany Meyer J.D. Candidate, Class of 2009 Washington College of Law
