1 Aug, 2007
MoneyLaw Reworks US News Rankings...
You may have heard that the US News and World Report will change the way that it measures 9 month after graduation employment statistics in its next published law school rankings.
The general consensus is that change will help eliminate "gaming" of the employment statistics that some say exists in law schools in order to make the school look better in rankings.
Read more about the results below and what it means for Pre-Laws...
MoneyLaw blog has had the best coverage of this change on the web (here, here, here, here, and here).
And they actually reworked this year's (2008) rankings based on the change in the way schools must report employment statistics. Here's the link.
What does this mean for pre-laws? Pretty much nothing. It's interesting to see the results, but really these changes do little the overall layout of the rankings. And smaller changes in rankings like this will not do anything to schools' reputations.
However, there are a couple schools that seemingly take a huge step back in the rankings. This should make you wonder about how these schools may have presented their employment data in the past. So if those schools are on your list of your potential schools, keep an eye out for how their employment statistics change next year.
But generally this love-hate obsession with the US News Rankings among those entrenched in the world of law school cannot be of too much concern to you.
The US News law school rankings are useful as a shorthand starting point for those of you initially looking into law schools. But you have to do your own research and pick out the data that are important to you based on your personal goals.