Statement on Rankings

Law School Rankings Are an Invaluable Tool, February 25, 2008
by David E. Van Zandt, dean, Northwestern University School of Law, Chicago

Ten years ago, I took a public position in supporting the U.S. News & World Report’s law school rankings. The controversy over the trustworthiness of the rankings (at least among law school deans and faculty) and whether law schools should cooperate with the magazine in their development has continued to rage.

An anti-ranking letter signed by most law school deans and sponsored by the Law School Admissions Council (the “LSAC”) that has been circulating for over ten years is posted on the LSAC’s web site urging law school applicants to ignore the U.S. News rankings. I have steadfastly refused to sign that letter, and my pleas to the LSAC to publish my dissent have been persistently rejected.

Basically, the letter tells prospective law students how to interpret a survey and then advises them not to rely on it. Should we law school deans presume that the best and brightest applying to our law schools do not have the ability to give the U.S. News ranking the appropriate weight in their decisions?

Besides, in the competitive world we live in today, the reality is that rankings are here to stay. U.S. News has access to much of the information it uses for its computations and has developed too large of a franchise to abandon the rankings, because some or even all deans will not cooperate.

That being said, the U.S. News rankings and any ranking are not perfect. Ideally, as I’ve said repeatedly, law schools should be ranked by a number of different independent publications that use different algorithms (ways to put data together). Applicants to our fellow professional schools in both business and medicine enjoy such diverse rankings produced by major and independent news publications around the world.

In the meantime, U.S. News, while its methodology is not perfect, offers prospective law students an appropriate analytical tool for a competitive environment. Applicants can base decisions primarily on schools’ objective performance and reputations, rather than relying heavily, as in the past, on advice of friends and relatives.

All the time, energy and money focused on denouncing and killing the rankings would be better spent on making sure that rankings provide consumers with the best possible information about choosing a law school. That means we law school deans need to continue to share our concerns about the methodology and weightings used by U.S. News. The survey to assess law schools’ reputations that U.S. News conducts with academics, practitioners and judges, in my estimation, is seriously flawed. Each respondent is asked to evaluate each of more than 190 law schools as “excellent”, “very good”, “good”, “satisfactory” or “marginal.” Yet, I, a law school dean for 13 years with extensive experience in legal education, have little if any knowledge of the quality of most of the schools on the list. Consider also that the survey of practitioners and judges has an extremely low response rate.

Another concern is that using a single scale to rank law schools that fall beneath the first 30 to 50 makes little sense. Most U.S. law schools serve local regions and markets and do not compete with national schools. As it does with undergraduate programs, U.S. News should divide law schools by region served or perhaps by stated mission.

Finally, while U.S. News’ algorithm is not unrealistic, the rankings should focus more on employers’ assessments of the qualities of recent graduates from each law school.

That said, no ranking is perfect, and reasonable people can disagree about how data is put together. The U.S. News rankings offer invaluable comparative data to anyone trying to make an informed choice. When organizations are not subject to external assessment (by whatever means), they tend to be operated for the benefit of their members rather than for that of their customers.

Rankings (whether by U.S. News or others) are a form of consumer information about a significant investment of time and money, the biggest investment of many law students’ lives. Many law school applicants take on substantial debt to pay for a legal education (often over $150,000) and devote three years of their lives to pursuing a law degree.

Competition has become fierce as law schools and their universities vie for the best applicants. Reputation is of paramount importance. Even if applicants ignore the rankings, law firms, the future employers of our graduates, often rely on schools’ reputations in deciding where to recruit or in assessing the quality of a law grad’s education.

Ultimately a school’s reputation will be based on the quality of its students, the accomplishments of its graduates and the strength of its faculty. For the time being, U.S. News is the publication that has best capitalized on the need to provide the information that applicants deserve to make a law school choice. In the meantime, we law school deans need to focus our efforts on improving our programs and convincing our applicants and employers of our graduates of our superior offerings.

The National Law Journal, March 23, 1998
Law School Rankings Are an Invaluable Tool
by Dean David E. Van Zandt, Northwestern University School of Law, Chicago

A LETTER SIGNED by deans of 164 American Bar Association-approved law schools was sent by the Law School Admissions Council to prospective applicants and prelaw advisers. [Law Schools, NLJ, March 2.] Why was I among the handful of deans who chose not to sign the letter? Because the rankings are an appropriate analytical tool for a competitive environment. Applicants base their decisions primarily on schools’ academic reputations. Attempts to provide such information through rankings represent a vast improvement over the advice of friends and relatives.

Although I share the concern of my colleagues about the methodology used by U.S. News & World Report, the data provided are invaluable to anyone trying to make an informed choice. The rankings offer important assessments by academics and practitioners, comparative data on the intellectual ability of entering students and placement results.

Competition has become fierce as universities vie for a declining applicant pool, and reputation is of paramount importance to applicants. And even if applicants ignore the rankings, law firms often rely on schools’ reputations in deciding where to recruit or in assessing the quality of a law grad’s education.

Detractors argue that to maintain a high ranking, schools will rely too heavily on Law School Admission Test scores. But a new program at Northwestern has demonstrated that it is possible to attract students with impressive academic credentials as well as the interpersonal skills, work experience and maturity needed. We became one of the first major law schools to encourage all applicants to be interviewed. Although we had surmised that our median LSAT score might fall because of these expanded criteria, the median rose because applicants were impressed by our personal approach.

Others have argued that, given the importance of rankings, educators will spend much-needed resources on public relations schemes. Ultimately, however, a school’s reputation will be based on the quality of the students it attracts, the success of its graduates, and the strength of its faculty. In any case, it is presumptuous for law schools to tell some of our best and brightest young people how to interpret a survey and then advise them not to rely on it.