LAW SCHOOL RANKINGS & RATINGS by CanadianWolf Forum

[sanpiero]

flame

[CanadianWolf]

@Rand M.:Why? It does appear that a few of you are "flames". You criticize, but offer nothing to validate your simplistic statements.

[ec2xs]

OP, I appreciate that you're trying to find a new angle. Unfortunately, these two ranking systems don't "mesh" well enough to give a reasonably acceptable output. Noble effort, but I don't think you'll find much support on here.

[CanadianWolf]

Not in need of support, just constructive comments. I am surprised at the shallowness of several of the responders here, but attribute that to the liklihood that their favorite school did not do as well as hoped.
This is one reason that I feel compassion for first year law professors.
ec2xs: Would an "acceptable output" simply be regurgitating USNews results ?
This is why I find it difficult to believe that many of the posters here are law students or top 15% performers on the LSAT. Simplistic statements without any reason or logic.

[romothesavior]

Why does any ranking that has Yale fifth & any other school forty eighth disturb you?
Judging by your profile, you are much more intelligent than one who simply swallows everything USNews prints.

Thank you for the compliment (I think). I do not swallow everything US News says, and I think their rankings are pretty ridiculous at times. Brian Leiter has done a great job pointing out some of the more serious flaws, and you should check out his articles if you haven't already.

That said, Yale is number 1 for a whole variety of reasons. They send tons of people into academia, which is ignored by your heavy reliance on NLJ placement. Yale (and other top schools) also send their students into top-notch PI positions, which is also ignored by NLJ placement.

Overall, I do think NLJ placement is a valuable metric for determining a school's position relative to other schools. I wish US News used more employment data (and real ones, not bull shit ones provided by the school), but I think to allow NLJ to account for half of your methodology makes your rankings very questionable.

[CanadianWolf]

But USNews does utilize employment statistics & , as I wrote above, the two peer assessment scores probably incorporate a substantial amount of influence by placements in academia & federal judicial clerkships while NLJ results balance this out with real world verifiable placement data into the largest 250 law firms.
Again the purpose of this merging of USNews ratings & NLJ rankings is most important for those viewing law school as an investment in near term employment.

[Helmholtz]

Nice try! But USNews does utilize employment statistics & , as I wrote above, the two peer assessment scores probably incorporate a substantial amount of influence by placements in academia & federal judicial clerkships while NLJ results balance this out with real world verifiable placement data into the largest 250 law firms.
Again the purpose of this merging of USNews ratings & NLJ rankings is most important for those viewing law school as an investment in near term employment.

dude.....

[CanadianWolf]

Dude? Sorry that I criticized your proposed rating & ranking system, but it deleted objective data in favor of increased, unverifiable opinion data.
Again, I find it difficult to believe that any of you are really in law school judging by your posted comments.

[vanwinkle]

Kill it before it grows.

[CanadianWolf]

Actually I agree with you, VanWinkle.

[ec2xs]

ec2xs: Would an "acceptable output" simply be regurgitating USNews results ?
This is why I find it difficult to believe that many of the posters here are law students or top 15% performers on the LSAT. Simplistic statements without any reason or logic.

An acceptable output would take into account more variables (I know that's a broad statement). NLJ placement is not an entirely reliable statistic for the ranking of a law school...public interest, private practice, and other factors render that fairly narrow-minded.

Again, I don't mean to give you shallow praise. The qualities that make Yale undeniably #1 aren't always quantifiable. I just don't see NLJ placement as that reliable an indicator of a school.

[Helmholtz]

Dude? Sorry that I criticized your proposed rating & ranking system, but it deleted objective data in favor of increased, unverifiable opinion data.

You mean The Helmholtz Rankings which count assessment scores as half of the ranking formulation?

This is what Professor Brian Leiter of the University of Chicago had to say about USNWR's assessment scores:

"Contrary to what one sometimes hears, it is clear to me, and I imagine any other informed observer of school evaluations, that the reputational surveys are the one component of the U.S. News ranking that actually keeps the results tethered to reality...[W]hat can only be facetiously called the "objective" data that schools self-report is the source of most of the egregious trickery and deceit that renders the results dubious."

[CanadianWolf]

If that's what you want to believe, then it is fine by me. Although I still believe that you are missing the point of some of my posts which is that it is fine to disagree but at least offer a rationale or reason just as I did with your proposed system.

[AngryAvocado]

I'm sorry, I just can't take any ranking by someone named "CanadianWolf" seriously. All I keep picturing is...

[Helmholtz]

If that's what you want to believe, then it is fine by me.

Would you say that you know more or less about law school rankings than one of the most cited law professors at the University of Chicago?

edit: also, I am calling flame

[vanwinkle]

Actually I agree with you, VanWinkle.

No, I don't think you do.

[CanadianWolf]

I'll take a dozen. And the rating & rankin used as sources was done by USNews & NLJ; I just combined them.
VanWinkle: Actually I do.
Sorry, Professor Helmholtz.

[Kohinoor]

Look at what you've done!

[Helmholtz]

Look at what you've done!

Pretty sure that there is still time to create a clerkship placement + usnwr specialty scores + local area zipcode rankings if you're interested.

[CanadianWolf]

At least that would be based on objective & verifiable data. And, depending upon the purpose of the rating & ranking system, might be useful.

[danquayle]

Dude? Sorry that I criticized your proposed rating & ranking system, but it deleted objective data in favor of increased, unverifiable opinion data.

You mean The Helmholtz Rankings which count assessment scores as half of the ranking formulation?

This is what Professor Brian Leiter of the University of Chicago had to say about USNWR's assessment scores:

"Contrary to what one sometimes hears, it is clear to me, and I imagine any other informed observer of school evaluations, that the reputational surveys are the one component of the U.S. News ranking that actually keeps the results tethered to reality...[W]hat can only be facetiously called the "objective" data that schools self-report is the source of most of the egregious trickery and deceit that renders the results dubious."

He refers to it as if its an official publication accepted by academia. Heh heh.

[boss]

ITT: People who are drinking USNews Kool-Aid.

[GeePee]

The biggest problem isn't the data you're trying to mesh, it's the way in which you're doing it. Taking USNWR ratings and then just adding in a number based on how many of the top 48 schools in the NLJ rankings a school is better than basically ridiculous. If you were to, instead, replace the "employed at graduation" and "employed 9 months from graduation" with "NLJ250 placement", then you might have some support from people interested in private sector work. Still, these numbers wouldn't account for self-selection, but I think you'd be hard pressed to say that they aren't better than the current crap that USNews is throwing in.

[CanadianWolf]

Clearly a good option to consider. I do not agree that adding in the inverse number of NLJ placement is unreasonable, however. For example, the USNews top 18 law schools are still the top 18 schools--although in different order--in the combined rankings. This is due to the minor differences in position of the leading law schools. Northwestern University School of Law as the number one of fifty NLJ "go-to" law schools received 50 points added to its 82 points received from USNews--the largest portion of which was derived from opinion peer assessment scores--while Columbia received 49 additional points added to its 91 point USNews total.
The purpose of the rankings can be helpful in determining the reasonableness of the components. Since this ranking is primarily for assessing the value of the top law schools in terms of employment prospects, it is an improvement over the USNews rankings, but not perfect since there are some highly rewarding placements such as federal judicial clerkships that are accounted for in an unknown amount. We simply do not know whether Yale's double 4.8 peer assessment scores were based primarily on federal judicial clerkship placement or appropriately so.
In short, I did the best with the data that I had available to me. The data information was gathered by third parties--NLJ & USNews--and fashioned into results by them. If you have verifiable, objective federal judge law clerkship data available for the same or basically similiar period then I or we can craft a way to incorporate that into the ratings & rankings.
Public interest law placements, janitorial placements or any other type of career placement can also be factored in if obtained in an objective, verifiable manner & relevant to the newly stated purpose of the rankings. For my purpose, public interest placements do not need to be included beyond their inclusion by the USNews formula.
Tell me your purpose in wanting a ranking of accredited law schools & a method can be developed to try to accomplish that goal. Most posters seem to be concerned with obtaining lucrative law firm employment shortly after law school graduation in order to repay large loans. If you want to rank law schools in order of prestige, then that is easy, especially for peer prestige as that is what the peer assessment scores really signify for the most part.

[insidethetwenty]

Why can't we all agree that rankings and ratings are different for different people based on who cares about what?

For example:

*NLJ250 placement is not really meaningful to a person who is committed solely to Public Interest.

*Being in Washington, DC is not really that important to someone who doesn't want to work in the federal government.

This is the grain of salt with which you should take any and all law school rankings...