2014 Rankings Released Forum

[Ti Malice]

Also, I believe that instead of simply categorizing full-time, long-term, JD-required positions by "tier," it would be better to base the score off of income instead. That is, take the median starting salaries and divide them by the cost of tuition for 3 years to get a score; this score would be an incentive for schools to lower tuition in order to raise their rank while simultaneously being an indicator of outcome to potential applicants. Instead of being based on absolute values, it would be based on a curve so that schools would be directly competing with each other for points. To make sure that low salaries are not intentionally left out, the score would be multiplied by the % of the graduating class for which the income was reported (so x 1.0 if 100% of the graduates were accounted for, and x 0.8 if only 80% of the graduates were accounted for).

Can't get behind you on this one, Regulus. So many people at YLS self-select out of BigLaw and into top PI jobs that pay a lot less. I don't think rankings should only reward BigLaw placement. Placement ability would obviously be worth rewarding, but we don't have that data. Also don't think schools should be punished for having students that continue in PhD programs after getting their JD -- something also more common at YLS than elsewhere.

[ms9]

Hard to imagine all the politicking that goes on before THE LIST is published.

Surprisingly enough, there isn't all that much politicking that goes on. or at least not at the three law schools I worked at. For example, some schools have conducted studies on hiring tenured or tenure track faculty as it relates to the prestige ranking from other law schools (which is voted on from the Dean, Assoc. Dean for Faculty, and most recently tenured faculty member, I believe). Depending on the study, there seems to either no correlation or even a negative correlation between the prestige of the faculty member's school you hire from and your school's prestige ranking in USNews the following year.

I think the general consensus is that it is at the margins of Admissions (LSAT, uGPA, slectivity), Employment (including Bar Passage) and Expenditure per Student where gains can be made.

So politicking doesn't seem to exist is the strata I lived in. Anxiety I can assure you is high at almost all law schools.

[risa]

all of this employment data confuses/overwhelms me. Especially because it seems so easily manipulated by different schools. Also, since I'm not gunning for Big Law (my goal is non-profit work) it's hard to gauge how much those stats will affect me.

Is the general consensus though that the worst employment stats in the T16 or so are Georgetown, UCLA and Texas?

Also, I feel like there should be some way to distinguish bullshit school-funded jobs like temporary admissions positions I've read about (was that GW?) vs. something like the year-long fellowships funded by NYU. While the latter might not be long-term or as great as a permanent job, there's a significant difference in terms of its value to the graduate.

Can't get behind you on this one, Regulus. So many people at YLS self-select out of BigLaw and into top PI jobs that pay a lot less. I don't think rankings should only reward BigLaw placement. Placement ability would obviously be worth rewarding, but we don't have that data. Also don't think schools should be punished for having students that continue in PhD programs after getting their JD -- something also more common at YLS than elsewhere.

This. I understand what the folks suggestion a salary rating are getting at but some of us don't want to make a big salary after law school, or at least that is not a realistic option considering our ideal practice area. I like the average debt at graduation stat going into the rankings but I don't think you can necessarily factor in salary with that because that would disadvantage schools with strong/large public interest programs.

[20141023]

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[BlueJeanBaby]

That doesn't say anything to suggest they're not counting school-funded employment. They were planning on changing the job computation a while back. Under the old rule, unemployed students that were "not seeking full-time employment" were not counted as unemployed, as were students who went back to school for an LLM. As far as I know, the revised strategy still counts as "employed" anyone who has any job. So all the non-JD-required jobs still count. I'm assuming the school-funded fellowships fall into this category.

In other words, the formula is still extremely problematic, only slightly less so.

Is "not-seeking" going to count as unemployed in the new system?

[Lord Randolph McDuff]

That doesn't say anything to suggest they're not counting school-funded employment. They were planning on changing the job computation a while back. Under the old rule, unemployed students that were "not seeking full-time employment" were not counted as unemployed, as were students who went back to school for an LLM. As far as I know, the revised strategy still counts as "employed" anyone who has any job. So all the non-JD-required jobs still count. I'm assuming the school-funded fellowships fall into this category.

In other words, the formula is still extremely problematic, only slightly less so.

Is "not-seeking" going to count as unemployed in the new system?

Unless we believe that schools are going to influence unemployed graduates to dishonestly select "not-seeking," I see no reason why this category should count towards unemployment.

[Lord Randolph McDuff]

We don't know exactly how the methodology changed, do we? I bet they punish schools with high part-time scores, and stay away from taking a stand on the whole full-time JD required debate...

I really wish they would just stop giving points for employed at graduation given how schools game that.. 83% at Davis but only 40% at Hastings?

[BlueJeanBaby]

That doesn't say anything to suggest they're not counting school-funded employment. They were planning on changing the job computation a while back. Under the old rule, unemployed students that were "not seeking full-time employment" were not counted as unemployed, as were students who went back to school for an LLM. As far as I know, the revised strategy still counts as "employed" anyone who has any job. So all the non-JD-required jobs still count. I'm assuming the school-funded fellowships fall into this category.

In other words, the formula is still extremely problematic, only slightly less so.

Is "not-seeking" going to count as unemployed in the new system?

Unless we believe that schools are going to influence unemployed graduates to dishonestly select "not-seeking," I see no reason why this category should count towards unemployment.

I hope not. I'd like to think if I chose to spend the year after law school having/raising a child I wouldn't be hurting my law school's ranking.

[rad lulz]

That doesn't say anything to suggest they're not counting school-funded employment. They were planning on changing the job computation a while back. Under the old rule, unemployed students that were "not seeking full-time employment" were not counted as unemployed, as were students who went back to school for an LLM. As far as I know, the revised strategy still counts as "employed" anyone who has any job. So all the non-JD-required jobs still count. I'm assuming the school-funded fellowships fall into this category.

In other words, the formula is still extremely problematic, only slightly less so.

Is "not-seeking" going to count as unemployed in the new system?

Unless we believe that schools are going to influence unemployed graduates to dishonestly select "not-seeking," I see no reason why this category should count towards unemployment.

I hope not. I'd like to think if I chose to spend the year after law school having/raising a child I wouldn't be hurting my law school's ranking.

LOL it's a law school; who fucking cares

[Lord Randolph McDuff]

I hope not. I'd like to think if I chose to spend the year after law school having/raising a child I wouldn't be hurting my law school's ranking.

LOL it's a law school; who fucking cares

Woman feels guilt for having family. Man laugh. Har Har Har

[JCougar]

That doesn't say anything to suggest they're not counting school-funded employment. They were planning on changing the job computation a while back. Under the old rule, unemployed students that were "not seeking full-time employment" were not counted as unemployed, as were students who went back to school for an LLM. As far as I know, the revised strategy still counts as "employed" anyone who has any job. So all the non-JD-required jobs still count. I'm assuming the school-funded fellowships fall into this category.

In other words, the formula is still extremely problematic, only slightly less so.

Is "not-seeking" going to count as unemployed in the new system?

Unless we believe that schools are going to influence unemployed graduates to dishonestly select "not-seeking," I see no reason why this category should count towards unemployment.

Part of the problem is that schools have been dishonestly selecting "not-seeking" in an effort to boost their employment scores. There's really no objective way to verify this unless you have a third party agency call each unemployed student and make them swear they are telling the truth. By allowing schools to not count these people, it gives dishonest schools a very big opportunity to lie. Simply counting everyone that is unemployed as unemployed may not be perfect, but it at least solves the problem of those who lie faring the best.

[HBBJohnStamos]

This is why, in my personal statement, I guaranteed that I would raise the ranking of the school I attend by no less than 3 spots. I know what the adcoms are really thinking about.

I WAS BORN AND BRED FOR COTTON SUCCESS!

LOL

[Yukos]

This is why, in my personal statement, I guaranteed that I would raise the ranking of the school I attend by no less than 3 spots. I know what the adcoms are really thinking about.

I WAS BORN AND BRED FOR COTTON SUCCESS!

Harvard to rank 0!

[Lord Randolph McDuff]

That doesn't say anything to suggest they're not counting school-funded employment. They were planning on changing the job computation a while back. Under the old rule, unemployed students that were "not seeking full-time employment" were not counted as unemployed, as were students who went back to school for an LLM. As far as I know, the revised strategy still counts as "employed" anyone who has any job. So all the non-JD-required jobs still count. I'm assuming the school-funded fellowships fall into this category.

In other words, the formula is still extremely problematic, only slightly less so.

Is "not-seeking" going to count as unemployed in the new system?

Unless we believe that schools are going to influence unemployed graduates to dishonestly select "not-seeking," I see no reason why this category should count towards unemployment.

Part of the problem is that schools have been dishonestly selecting "not-seeking" in an effort to boost their employment scores. There's really no objective way to verify this unless you have a third party agency call each unemployed student and make them swear they are telling the truth. By allowing schools to not count these people, it gives dishonest schools a very big opportunity to lie. Simply counting everyone that is unemployed as unemployed may not be perfect, but it at least solves the problem of those who lie faring the best.

Cite? I'm not saying you're wrong, but this would be some Illinois style cheating. I mean, wouldn't they have to litterally erase the graduates response and replace it with a new one?

EDIT: Also why can't the ABA just take over the whole employment questionare business? They are already the ones that report the data!! Just increase the dues on the member schools and hire 5 new people to do this. All they would need is contact info.. Amrite or amrong?

[JCougar]

While it might not be fair to everyone who goes to law school, I do think that it would be beneficial to change the "employment rate" of the USNWR rankings to only count full-time, long-term, JD-required positions. If we assume that the purpose of law schools is to train lawyers, then the best way to assess a school's ability to achieve this purpose would be through excluding non-lawyer jobs from the employment rates. (If someone was interested in non-JD-required work but wanted to go to law school, they could use sites like LST to assess schools' placement into other fields.)

Also, I believe that instead of simply categorizing full-time, long-term, JD-required positions by "tier," it would be better to base the score off of income instead. That is, take the median starting salaries and divide them by the cost of tuition for 3 years to get a score; this score would be an incentive for schools to lower tuition in order to raise their rank while simultaneously being an indicator of outcome to potential applicants. Instead of being based on absolute values, it would be based on a curve so that schools would be directly competing with each other for points. To make sure that low salaries are not intentionally left out, the score would be multiplied by the % of the graduating class for which the income was reported (so x 1.0 if 100% of the graduates were accounted for, and x 0.8 if only 80% of the graduates were accounted for).

The above could be used to replace the current 18% (4% for at graduation and 14% for 9 months after graduation) of a school's overall score that goes to employment rate as follows:

10%: Employment Rate (Full-time, Long-term, JD-required Positions within 9 months of graduation)
8%: Income/Tuition*Reliability (A full 8% would be awarded to the school with the best (highest) ratio)

I'd like to see US news broken down into three different broad categories: raw reputation, inputs, and outcomes. Raw reputation is probably measured somewhat well already with the peer/practitioner surveys, although I'd up the "practitioner" weight and lower the "peer school" rate so that they are both 20%.

The inputs would measure LSAT and GPA, and account for about 20%. I do think the school's ability to attract students is a somewhat large factor, as it influences how flat the grading curve is going to be and, in general, better inputs lead to better outcomes. LSAT and GPA aren't the most comprehensive measures of inputs, but it's also hard to objectively measure other inputs on a standardized, industry-wide basis. I'd ditch the selectivity rankings, because these are just to easy to game with fee waivers, yield protection, etc.

The outcomes are probably the most poorly measured. This should be a balance between the type of job you get and your average debt at graduation. Maybe 25% for job placement and 15% for average debt. It would have a similar effect to the ratio you speak about. The current rankings place emphasis on "money spent on teaching" and "money spent on scholarships." But this creates perverse incentives, such as raising tuition but giving out more scholarships--instead of just lowering tuition across the board. An "average debt at graduation" figure would solve that.

I would be somewhat in favor of measuring placement success by salary alone, but that has problems, too. You'd have to adjust for the public interest IBR factor, sort out which clerkships actually lead to prestigious biglaw and which ones are just a 12-month cure for chronic unemployment, etc.

Either way, I don't think it would take educated people more than 1 hour in a room discussing things to come up with a much better ranking system than US News. If you could come up with a smart one, the effects on the entire legal education complex would be astronomical. One hour or two of work is all it would take. Yet no one wants to do it.

[JCougar]

Cite? I'm not saying you're wrong, but this would be some Illinois style cheating. I mean, wouldn't they have to litterally erase the graduates response and replace it with a new one?

EDIT: Also why can't the ABA just take over the whole employment questionare business? They are already the ones that report the data!! Just increase the dues on the member schools and hire 5 new people to do this. All they would need is contact info.. Amrite or amrong?

http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot. ... ously.html

[Sheffield]

Hard to imagine all the politicking that goes on before THE LIST is published.

Surprisingly enough, there isn't all that much politicking that goes on. . . . .there seems to either no correlation or even a negative correlation between the prestige of the faculty member's school you hire from and your school's prestige ranking in USNews . . . .Anxiety I can assure you is high at almost all law schools.

Thanks for the input. I am surprised the schools are not heavily promoting the reasons why their program should climb in the rankings . . . new library, millions spent on renovation, state of the art technology, improved employment placement, etc., etc.

I also thought schools placed a high value on hiring professors from elite schools, but you are saying, “not as much as one would think.” Correct?

What is not surprising is that the anxiety level is high at almost all law schools, given that there are schools aspiring to lock in a T14 position while others want desperately keep their T14 rank. Then there are the schools wanting to jump up to the top 100, or from 2 to tier 1. Any truth to the urban legend that heads roll when a ranking goal is not achieved (or worse, if the school tanks).

[Crowing]

One thing about USNews rankings. I think people often assume (I did) that Bob Morse has a crack staff, resides in a palatial building, and had all kinds of resources at his disposal. In fact, it is Morse and a bunch of college age interns in an old, small building. This is not to say that they could change their methodology considerably or that he does not have the bandwidth to do so. But, I have a gut feeling that if one were to contact him and suggest mindful changes, it might not ever make it to him.

This is really crazy/funny considering how mich power the rankis have over prospective students and law school deans.

The deans should band together and buy him a better place.

[Lord Randolph McDuff]

Cite? I'm not saying you're wrong, but this would be some Illinois style cheating. I mean, wouldn't they have to litterally erase the graduates response and replace it with a new one?

EDIT: Also why can't the ABA just take over the whole employment questionare business? They are already the ones that report the data!! Just increase the dues on the member schools and hire 5 new people to do this. All they would need is contact info.. Amrite or amrong?

http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot. ... ously.html

Thanks.

Geez SCU is a dump. 2/3 of their unemployed grads weren't seeking? Still, the blog admits that SCU appears to be the only real offender here-- only 2 schools out of the 200+ reported half as many "not seeking" as SCU.

I'd rather provide more honest results for 99.5% of schools than worry about policing a few bad apples.

To the main herp derp going on--My pick would be to exclude school funded from the long-term category -- GW reports 80 such students -- because that is obvously a farce. I wouldn't cut out school funded though. All that is going to do is make it likely that schools will cut such programs, an outcome that no one wants. Also, I think it would be misleading to cut out all school funded jobs from the total employed numbers-- many of these people would have found some job had the school not provided them with a chance to essentially have a paid post-bar internship in a gov office.. I'd then give 1 full point to anyone employed long-term/ full-time, regardless of whether or not the job is JD required. I'd include law clerks in this, even though they are arguable not long-term (though at most schools they are well on their way to more permanent employment). Then I'd probably give half a point to any graduate working part-time, short-term, or both. It's simple and would be less controversial than trying to allocate points for certain firms, clerkships, etc.

[JCougar]

. I'd then give 1 full point to anyone employed long-term/ full-time, regardless of whether or not the job is JD required. I'd include law clerks in this, even though they are arguable not long-term (though at most schools they are well on their way to more permanent employment). Then I'd probably give half a point to any graduate working part-time, short-term, or both. It's simple and would be less controversial than trying to allocate points for certain firms, clerkships, etc.

And even this would be a drastic improvement upon what they have now.

[SydneyC]

So the idea is to just apply to every school you can and go to the highest ranked school right?

That's the idea. Even though I'm from Cali and want to work in LA, I'd choose Vandy over USC because 16th is better than 18th.

That's a joke right? No way Vandy sets a grad up better for a gig in LA than USC does. Half of LA went to USC.

[Lord Randolph McDuff]

. I'd then give 1 full point to anyone employed long-term/ full-time, regardless of whether or not the job is JD required. I'd include law clerks in this, even though they are arguable not long-term (though at most schools they are well on their way to more permanent employment). Then I'd probably give half a point to any graduate working part-time, short-term, or both. It's simple and would be less controversial than trying to allocate points for certain firms, clerkships, etc.

And even this would be a drastic improvement upon what they have now.

Thanks. I guess.

[rad lulz]

So the idea is to just apply to every school you can and go to the highest ranked school right?

That's the idea. Even though I'm from Cali and want to work in LA, I'd choose Vandy over USC because 16th is better than 18th.

That's a joke right? No way Vandy sets a grad up better for a gig in LA than USC does. Half of LA went to USC.

It does. It's ranked hire.

[jbagelboy]

I hope UChicago doesn't drop because then I'll have to drop out in shame as employers abandon the school IN DROVES.

Chicago is moving up to Columbia's spot. See my above post for full reasoning.

I'm going to have to disagree with part of this assessment.. CLS still has by some measures the best employment numbers nationwide (http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/ ... ospects-2/) and highest lsat median outside of hys. Like it or not, these are key indicators for USNWR. I'm going with chicago and columbia tied at 4th.

[Yukos]

1. Yale
2. Stanford
3. Harvard
4. Columbia
5. Chicago
6. NYU
7. Penn
7. UVA
9. Berkeley
10. Michigan
10. Duke
10. NU
13. Cornell
14. GULC