They’ve been out for about a week already, but the US News & World Report’s 2008 Law School Rankings are out on newsstands today. Our school’s response is muted and focuses (correctly in this PR Guy’s view) on the school’s year-to-year improvement. (Am I reading it right that we’re not in the Top 10 for clinical programs???)
If you’re interested in methodology of rankings, we’re working on our own Value Ranking. We’re still working on the formula and tabulating results, so if you have thoughts, fire away.
Even though we’re building a case against the US News Rankings here at Fight The Hypo (stay tuned), we were pretty excited to see this leaked Top 100 of the rankings listing Catholic U at #86 (up 11 spots from last year)!! No matter how much we read about how bogus these rankings are or how much lower than American U we are ranked, we readily admit to being excited when they show our school moving up the ranks.
(h/t PrawfsBlog)
Also, Concurring Opinions is soliciting thoughts on how to change the US News methodology. Interesting discussion.
Everyone who has been through the law school application process knows exactly where their school sits in the rankings. The general perception is that the entire legal education market is a pyramid, and if you get better LSAT scores, you go to a better school, which gets you a better job, etc. (e.g. “If I go to law school at Harvard, I will get a top job at a New York firm and make lots of money.”) The converse is also assumed to be true.
Something has always seemed fishy about this to me. Looking over the data reported to the ABA, the so-called “T-14” only produces about 4600 graduates per year, or roughly 10% of the total number of law school graduates. Are they the only lawyers to get good paying jobs? Is everyone else out on the corner selling pencils? Of course not.
Continue reading ‘Top 25 Best Values in Law School’
