Thursday, May 11, 2023

USNews.com has outdone itself: it has made its law school rankings even more absurd than before!

There's not much to say about what is essentially a random ordering of law schools within tier groups.  Any student who made a decision on the basis of small (and, in some cases, even large) ordinal differences in this year's travesty really should have a cause of action against USNews.com.  (Some of the swings in overall rank are beyond bizarre!  UC Davis and Arizona dropped from the top 50?  Emory and George Washington dropped out of the top 30?  Is this a joke?)   I won't belabor the obvious, and will just repost an updated version of something I posted a year ago.  If anyone extends it beyond "the top 10," please let me know.

US News overall rank

School

Overall scholarly impact rank

Scholarly impact rank for faculty under 60

SCOTUS “per capita” placement rank

Academic reputation rank in US News

Avg. rank across the last four metrics [rank]

1

Stanford University

6

10

3

1

  5 [5]

1

Yale University

1

3

1

6

  2.75 [3]

3

University of Chicago

2

1

2

3

  2 [1]

4

University of Pennsylvania

8

14

15

9

11.5 [outside top 10]

5

Duke University

12

  8

  9

11

10 [10]

5

Harvard University

3

2

3

2

  2 [1]

5

New York University

4

5

5

3

4.25 [4]

8

Columbia University

5

9

9

3

6.5 [6]

8

University of Virginia

9

5

5

9

7.0 [7]

10

Northwestern University

15

17

9

12

13.25 [outside top 10]

10

University of California, Berkeley

6

7

9

6

7.0 [7]

10

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

13

13

5

6

9.25 [9]

 

https://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2023/05/usnewscom-has-outdone-itself-its-made-its-law-school-rankings-even-more-absurd-than-before.html

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