U.S. News & World Report Law School Rankings Are Out

Fresh off the presses, the controversial U.S. News & World Report 2007 Graduate School rankings (U.S. News) came out last month. Law schools around the country wait all year for the magic day in April when their school is matched up against all other schools and ranked according to specified factors.

According to U.S. News, ranking factors are based on two types of data: expert opinion about program quality and statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school’s faculty, research and students. The opinion data is gathered by asking deans, program directors and senior faculty to judge the academic quality of programs in their field on a scale of 1 (“marginal”) to 5 (“outstanding”). In law school rankings, professionals who hire new graduates are also polled in order to gather opinion data.

Statistical indicators are measured in two categories: inputs, which are measures of the qualities that students and faculty bring to the educational experience, and outputs, which are measures of graduates’ achievements linked to their degrees.
Output measures in law include how much time it takes new lawyers to find jobs, and includes state bar exam passage rates. When all data is scored, quality indicators determine the final score for that particular institution. In some instances, quality indicators are adjusted to where a low value in a quality indicator indicates a higher quality, such as in the category of acceptance rates. Weight is applied to each indicator based on relative importance and schools are then placed in the U.S. News ranking order.

Specifically, quality assessment was measured by two surveys conducted in the fall of 2004. Quality assessment has a total weight of 40%, with the dean and three faculty members at every law school accounting for 25%, and lawyers and judges accounting for 15% of the total quality assessment score. Selectivity is given a weight of total weight of 25% in the overall score. This was determined by combining the LSAT scores (50%), median undergrad GPA (40%) and proportion of applicants accepted (10%).