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Why The New US News Law School Rankings Are Still Deeply Flawed

Mar 12, 2013, 21:59 IST

U.S. News & World Report has released its latest law rankings, and they're pretty much the same as last year for the top 10 schools.

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But this fresh crop of rankings brings with it new critiques of why the U.S. News list is flawed, even though U.S. News did a more in-depth analysis of what kind of jobs law grads get.

Steven J. Harper, a Northwestern Law professor, writes over at the Chronicle of Higher Education that the biggest factor in law school rankings is a "quality assessment," which accounts for 40 percent of a school's score. The quality assessment is just a survey U.S. News sends out to law school deans, scholars, and practicing lawyers.

"The category itself is a misnomer because it doesn't reflect quality at all," Harper writes. "Rather, using statistically suspect samples of scholars and practicing lawyers, it's a superficial and unreliable assessment of a school's reputation."

Twenty-five percent of a school's score comes from a survey sent to four people each year at every ABA-accredited school — the dean, the dean of academic affairs, the chair of faculty appointments, and the most recently tenured faculty member.

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These people — 63 percent of whom gave responses for this year's rankings — rank all the country's law schools on a scale of 1 to 5, or they can answer "don't know." They don't have to explain whether they know anything about the law school or have set foot on its campus, Harper points out.

U.S. News & World Report ratings chief Robert Morse explains the changes to his law school rankings methodology in this interview with Bloomberg:

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