I've always been fascinated with the law school world's love/hate obsession with rankings.

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The constant bashing of rankings by schools, but the fact that news of rankings increases are often used as a marketing fodder for law schools to attract students, exemplifies this fact.

For a little background some law professors get a little worked up one way or the other about Leiter's rankings of scholarly citations, which I think has almost no meaning to you as a future or current law student (or if there is any meaning, I can't think of it) unless you plan to work as a law professor.

I found interesting these observations by Daniel Solove of Concuring Opinions comparing these two rankings systems and commenting on the rankings obsession:

We all decry a magazine for ranking schools, but complaining and griping are not going to do much good. US News wants to sell magazines. They don't care about getting the rankings perfect -- just good enough to be plausible . . . good enough so that people buy the issue. Brian has created an alternative ranking system, which seems to me to be the best way to counter US News. If you don't like it, do it yourself!

We love to take pot shots at rankings, especially by claiming that they are valued too much. Just like we love to attack student edited law reviews, claiming that article placements are too random. But when it comes down to it, we still rely on them. Gripe as we might, the status quo exists because we accept it and don't take the effort to change it.

Marty's comments basically ask: "Why should professors take citation rankings seriously?" Marty faults them for telling us what we already know, but would they be better if they resulted in a list of esoteric scholars we'd never heard of? Brian's citation rankings work, despite their tremendous flaws, because they come close to approximating our rough sense of things. That's why the US News rankings work. Despite using immensely silly criteria, US News creates rankings that come close to our sense of things (albeit with some anomalies). If they were too far off, they'd be laughed at and discredited.

Like it or not, we take rankings seriously. Too seriously. Rankings are law professor crack, and whine all we want, we're addicted.

I think a lot of this rings true. I've heard of many people deride US News for publishing the rankings, but they're just selling magazines...using a formula based on numbers law schools give them.

Also mind the part about taking rankings too seriously. I've repeatedly said that as an incoming student, the US News may be a good start to research (because it does "come close to our sense of things"), but take the rankings for what they are...a very general rankings system and a means to sell magazines.

Look beyond the rankings into more specific categories of data based on what you need out of a law school. And consider your specific situation (financial means, ability to relocate, etc.) that the US News does not reflect.