2014 Rankings Released Forum

[JCougar]

Anyhow, as of a last week they were undecided on what to use for the employment metric. I of course suggested the Employment Score.

Wow...I am surprised that it's still undetermined.

I just hope that schools like GWU and UVA aren't able to unduly benefit from that score due to their "fellowships."

[curious66]

Anyhow, as of a last week they were undecided on what to use for the employment metric. I of course suggested the Employment Score.

Wow...I am surprised that it's still undetermined.

I just hope that schools like GWU and UVA aren't able to unduly benefit from that score due to their "fellowships."

At a minimum, I think they need to get rid of the school funded job scam that is going on. UVA is greatly benefiting from that.

[JCougar]

Anyhow, as of a last week they were undecided on what to use for the employment metric. I of course suggested the Employment Score.

Wow...I am surprised that it's still undetermined.

I just hope that schools like GWU and UVA aren't able to unduly benefit from that score due to their "fellowships."

At a minimum, I think they need to get rid of the school funded job scam that is going on. UVA is greatly benefiting from that.

That's what I meant.

[ms9]

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.

Now I know I'm not some random TLSer, but Morse has been open to the changes I've suggested at every turn. He's actually remarkably easy to get a hold of considering how in demand his head is.

Some corrections on the office: I know of at least two others that work on the methodology, besides Morse, who are full-time, permanent employees. Moreover, the building is pretty nice inside in my opinion, though that's neither here nor there. Awesome location in Georgetown, that's for sure.

Anyhow, as of a last week they were undecided on what to use for the employment metric. I of course suggested the Employment Score.

Kyle, (Kyle, right?) I know that Assoc. Dean (and close friend) Don Welch formerly at your former law school talked with Morse on numerous occasions. But I also know of many schools that have tried persistently to get in touch with him and never have been able to. I think because of the invaluable role you play, how much Morse respects the work you guys do, and the correlation to what he does gives you access that most law schools and likely no prospective student would ever get.

In respect to his staff, US News continues to increase it's footprint in the rankings business so that does not surprise me he has some full-timers now. But I am curious how much the touch the law school admissions methodology/operationalization?

Finally, in respect to his lair...maybe I'm just spoiled by having worked in three brand new law buildings. I think I expected it to look more like the NCAA headquarters and less rundown.

[JO 14]

When I originally thought about lawyering the idea that I would need to move up north for law school never dawned on me.

I figured all I needed was to attend a major school in my state and pass the bar. However, like many of you I then discovered that there was a law school ranking highlighting the best schools that offered the greatest opportunity. I presume opportunity is defined as the number of firms attending OCI. If not, then I gave up three years of beachfront living for cold weather, a lot of potholes and a COL that challenges my checkbook!

[jenesaislaw]

Kyle, (Kyle, right?) I know that Assoc. Dean (and close friend) Don Welch formerly at your former law school talked with Morse on numerous occasions. But I also know of many schools that have tried persistently to get in touch with him and never have been able to. I think because of the invaluable role you play, how much Morse respects the work you guys do, and the correlation to what he does gives you access that most law schools and likely no prospective student would ever get.

In respect to his staff, US News continues to increase it's footprint in the rankings business so that does not surprise me he has some full-timers now. But I am curious how much the touch the law school admissions methodology/operationalization?

Finally, in respect to his lair...maybe I'm just spoiled by having worked in three brand new law buildings. I think I expected it to look more like the NCAA headquarters and less rundown.

Yep, this is Kyle.

I am skeptical of the schools that say they persistently tried to get in touch, frankly. On a few occasions, I've suggested people get in touch with him and voice their complaints to him instead of me as a proxy, and they were able to. Perhaps his openness has changed, though. My first contact with him was in Fall 2010. Were your data points before or after that time?

I'm pretty sure the two people I referred to in my post were just involved with education rankings, though they have expanded these a bit too (much on a bi-annual basis I think). Not sure when he hired them -- I met them for lunch in June 2011. Also, it does not compare to WashU's or Vandy's building, that's for sure.

PS I don't know that LST happens if I don't attend Vandy, and I only applied to Vandy because I had a fee waiver from you after a conversation we had at UNC in fall 2007.

[ms9]

Kyle, (Kyle, right?) ]

Yep, this is Kyle.

I am skeptical of the schools that say they persistently tried to get in touch, frankly. On a few occasions, I've suggested people get in touch with him and voice their complaints to him instead of me as a proxy, and they were able to. Perhaps his openness has changed, though. My first contact with him was in Fall 2010. Were your data points before or after that time?

I'm pretty sure the two people I referred to in my post were just involved with education rankings, though they have expanded these a bit too (much on a bi-annual basis I think). Not sure when he hired them -- I met them for lunch in June 2011. Also, it does not compare to WashU's or Vandy's building, that's for sure.

PS I don't know that LST happens if I don't attend Vandy, and I only applied to Vandy because I had a fee waiver from you after a conversation we had at UNC in fall 2007.

Awesome. 2007 was in the day before fee waivers existed on such a wide-scale, so you much have impressed me by talking about college football or the Mets or made fun of the admissions reps around me (that was a surefire way to get a fee-waiver.)

I suspect Morse has come out of his shell in respect to speaking with others. Almost all of my data point are before 2010 and even Don Welch, I believed, could not get in touch with him after numerous attempt before succeeding and becoming phone buddies with Morse (I am not 100% on this but I believe that is how it played out).

[Elston Gunn]

Anyhow, as of a last week they were undecided on what to use for the employment metric. I of course suggested the Employment Score.

Wow...I am surprised that it's still undetermined.

I just hope that schools like GWU and UVA aren't able to unduly benefit from that score due to their "fellowships."

At a minimum, I think they need to get rid of the school funded job scam that is going on. UVA is greatly benefiting from that.

That's what I meant.

You know, I actually think we're a little over the top on the evils of school funded positions. If UVA and Michigan have identical job prospects in reality, but 40 UVA students who would otherwise be unemployed get paid a living a wage to work as an attorney for 9-12 months, isn't that a good thing? A) They have a job that lets them afford rent and B) they're gaining experience (assuming the school funded positions are at DA's offices or clinics or something and not literally at the law school as administration). Going 12+ months and getting *no* legal experience is a real killer, so even though UVA is definitely gaming the system, it's good for the students too.

[shortporch]

You know, I actually think we're a little over the top on the evils of school funded positions. If UVA and Michigan have identical job prospects in reality, but 40 UVA students who would otherwise be unemployed get paid a living a wage to work as an attorney for 9-12 months, isn't that a good thing? A) They have a job that lets them afford rent and B) they're gaining experience (assuming the school funded positions are at DA's offices or clinics or something and not literally at the law school as administration). Going 12+ months and getting *no* legal experience is a real killer, so even though UVA is definitely gaming the system, it's good for the students too.

Here's the metric that the transparency-oriented folks should be asking: of the raw number of students who received law school-funded positions, how many were employed in school-funded JD-advantaged positions? How many were employed in FTLT JD-advantaged positions 18 months after graduation? How many were employed in FTLT JD-advantaged positions by the same employers for whom they were working for free but paid by the school?

Because, if your choice is working as a barista for a small wage or working in a legal position for free, it's to your long-term benefit to remain in the legal position; but, to help incentivize the position, school funding may be neceessary. How many of those school-funded positions are what we call "JD-advantaged" is an important consideration. Additionally, if it's truly a "bridge," how many are employed after the period ends? I can't imagine many fund beyond one year. And, some schools boast they fund students at institutions that simply lack the money at the moment, or that aren't sure if they want to hire someone but extend permanent offers after the funding runs out; if that's the case, more details would be useful

[DaleCooper]

Agreed... it's hard to say that school-funded positions are necessarily good or bad. I'm only a 1L, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but from my understanding the vast majority of NYU's end up turning into full-time, long-term JD positions. I don't know anything about Virginia or Georgetown's fellowships, but I suspect their people also do well, just by virtue of who those schools tend to accept... just because someone strikes out at OCI or gets no-offered for some reason doesn't mean they won't be a good lawyer once they get some experience. And a lot of people at T14s have interesting non-legal backgrounds that make them one legal résumé line short of being really employable in government and nonprofit sectors.

I'm much more skeptical of some of the other schools, of course. On the whole, I suspect most of the school-funded positions in the country are $10/hour RA jobs that serve no purpose beyond gaming the rankings. But TLS, being TLS, tends to view all school-funded positions as some horrible might-as-well-be-dead outcome when the reality is probably a lot more nuanced.

It's kind of like the "business" category... at Columbia and NYU, "business" usually means "I was recruited by Goldman or PwC and I don't want to do BigLaw." At thomas cooley or Thomas Jefferson, I suspect, "business" usually means "no firm would hire me."

[20141023]

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[Lord Randolph McDuff]

Just count school funded as short-term, and punish schools for short-term employment.

[LSATSCORES2012]

Whether or not school-funded positions should be included depends on what USNews is actually trying to rank.

If they're ranking employment outcomes, then they should probably be included, especially if they often lead to long-term positions afterwards.

However, I think it's clear that the USNews rankings are looking to examine more than just employment outcomes (as I think they should - if you want a ranking of employment outcomes, there's a nice and simple report on LST). Instead, USNews is trying to get at some sort of abstract measurement of overall quality of the law schools. So in my view, the merit of excluding school-funded jobs is that the employment score will then function in a similar way to the peer review score, or judge score.

In my opinion, employment is an important measure of quality, even if the employment is actually funded by the school. However, perhaps more important is whether or not graduates can get the kinds of jobs they want to get. Assuming that most of the graduates who get school funded jobs don't want school funded jobs. excluding school funded jobs has merit on these grounds, too.

Obviously we have no control over what USNews does, but in light of this it might be reasonable for them to include both, perhaps counting the employment rate with school-funded jobs included as 1/3 of the employment score, and counting the rate with school-funded jobs excluded as 2/3 of the employment rate.

[Aroldis105]

The question remains, which is worse, going easy on schools who inflate their numbers with things like school-funded jobs or potentially hurting schools whose students actually land jobs in business or government that don't necessarily require a JD? UVA in particular comes to mind as a school accused of hiring students but also a school that assuredly send graduates to work in good jobs in DC doing non-legal work.
The problem is that everyone wants something different out of law school, some want big money from big law, others want public interest work, while others aren't sure what to do after undergrad and are just looking for a good job.
The best thing that USNWR can do (in my opinion) is to focus less on holistic rankings and give detailed reports on the schools and what kind of jobs every one of their graduates is (or isn't) getting.

[20141023]

.

[LSATSCORES2012]

Obviously we have no control over what USNews does, but in light of this it might be reasonable for them to include both, perhaps counting the employment rate with school-funded jobs included as 1/3 of the employment score, and counting the rate with school-funded jobs excluded as 2/3 of the employment rate.

Or, better yet, use a weighted system: count actual FTLT JD-required positions that are not funded by schools at x1.0; count FTLT JD-required positions that are funded by schools at x0.75; count FTLT JD-advantage positions at x0.5; count all other FTLT employment at x0.25; and count any non-FTLT employment at x0.1.

(This is just a random number system I thought of on the spot... however, I'm sure if someone put enough time and thought into it, they could create a meaningful weighted scoring system that took these factors into account properly.)

That's an interesting way to do it, too... but it does suffer from the problem given below:

The problem is that everyone wants something different out of law school, some want big money from big law, others want public interest work, while others aren't sure what to do after undergrad and are just looking for a good job.

Which, IMO, hits TLS's big problem in general on the nose: everyone seems to think that what they want out of law school is what everyone wants out of law school. That's one reason that LST is so nice, because you can rank schools based on how well they place into specific categories.

Though this still suffers from the problem which has been discussed for a while on here: those numbers just tell you what people did, not what they were able to do but decided not to do.

ETA: the problem suffered above, though, is suffered by all the systems that have been discussed, I think.

perhaps the best way to do employment scores is to have a survey that is along the lines of, "On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with your present job?" and then using that number

Of course, that would be ridiculously subject to alumni inflation - being like, "I want a better job, if my school's ranking goes up I'll get a better job, so I'll say I'm very satisfied, that will increase my school's ranking, and I'll get a job that I'll actually be satisfied in."

ETA again: Leiter's rankings are also somewhat useful here, because it breaks some of the different metrics that USNews uses apart to look at individually. But he seems to be choosy, in that he seems to pick categories that Chicago excels at. Not that I mind, since I'll probably end up there

[Lord Randolph McDuff]

Obviously we have no control over what USNews does, but in light of this it might be reasonable for them to include both, perhaps counting the employment rate with school-funded jobs included as 1/3 of the employment score, and counting the rate with school-funded jobs excluded as 2/3 of the employment rate.

Or, better yet, use a weighted system: count actual FTLT JD-required positions that are not funded by schools at x1.0; count FTLT JD-required positions that are funded by schools at x0.75; count FTLT JD-advantage positions at x0.5; count all other FTLT employment at x0.25; and count any non-FTLT employment at x0.1.

(This is just a random number system I thought of on the spot... however, I'm sure if someone put enough time and thought into it, they could create a meaningful weighted scoring system that took these factors into account properly.)

This would be an improvement, but I still don't think you should punish students who take JD advantage or other professional jobs. Assumptions have to be made when creating a ranking system, but we can still keep them to a minimum.

We can all agree that (almost) no one wanted to come to law school and spend three years working their ass off to get a part-time or a short-term job. We cannot all agree on what type of full-time, long-term job everyone wanted to get. Let's keep it simple.

[Lord Randolph McDuff]

Which, IMO, hits TLS's big problem in general on the nose: everyone seems to think that what they want out of law school is what everyone wants out of law school.

+43542

We're best friends.

[Crowing]

Which, IMO, hits TLS's big problem in general on the nose: everyone seems to think that what they want out of law school is what everyone wants out of law school.

+43542

We're best friends.

I don't think it's a problem to assume on a basic level that everybody wants a job that gets some sort of utility out of their degree.

[banjo]

I still think rayiner's UN-employment graphs could work as the basis of a new ranking system. He was very generous about not excluding certain types of employment -- he counted 100% of PI, 100% of gov, and 50% of business. The only controversial bit was that he declined to include school-funded, opting instead to establish an upper bound on bad outcomes. It's not perfect, but it might be as close as we'll ever get.

[LSATSCORES2012]

Which, IMO, hits TLS's big problem in general on the nose: everyone seems to think that what they want out of law school is what everyone wants out of law school.

+43542

We're best friends.

I don't think it's a problem to assume on a basic level that everybody wants a job that gets some sort of utility out of their degree.

Of course not. The problem comes when people say, things like I want to go to biglaw, therefore, law school rankings should be entirely (or largely) based upon the percentage of graduates who go into biglaw, which is really the central problem being discussed in the merits of school-funded employment, or weighting different kinds of employment differently.

[Lord Randolph McDuff]

Which, IMO, hits TLS's big problem in general on the nose: everyone seems to think that what they want out of law school is what everyone wants out of law school.

+43542

We're best friends.

I don't think it's a problem to assume on a basic level that everybody wants a job that gets some sort of utility out of their degree.

1/4 people I go to school with disagree.

[Lord Randolph McDuff]

Which, IMO, hits TLS's big problem in general on the nose: everyone seems to think that what they want out of law school is what everyone wants out of law school.

+43542

We're best friends.

I don't think it's a problem to assume on a basic level that everybody wants a job that gets some sort of utility out of their degree.

Of course not. The problem comes when people say, things like I want to go to biglaw, therefore, law school rankings should be entirely (or largely) based upon the percentage of graduates who go into biglaw, which is really the central problem being discussed in the merits of school-funded employment, or weighting different kinds of employment differently.

+ same amount of points from last time.

[Rahviveh]

Which, IMO, hits TLS's big problem in general on the nose: everyone seems to think that what they want out of law school is what everyone wants out of law school.

+43542

We're best friends.

I don't think it's a problem to assume on a basic level that everybody wants a job that gets some sort of utility out of their degree.

1/4 people I go to school with disagree.

http://abovethelaw.com/2012/09/the-view-from-0l/

[Crowing]

Which, IMO, hits TLS's big problem in general on the nose: everyone seems to think that what they want out of law school is what everyone wants out of law school.

+43542

We're best friends.

I don't think it's a problem to assume on a basic level that everybody wants a job that gets some sort of utility out of their degree.

Of course not. The problem comes when people say, things like I want to go to biglaw, therefore, law school rankings should be entirely (or largely) based upon the percentage of graduates who go into biglaw, which is really the central problem being discussed in the merits of school-funded employment, or weighting different kinds of employment differently.

But that's not what the LST employment score reflects. It only reflects full-time, long-term legal jobs. And if you go to LS without wanting to get one of those, well then you're retarded and it doesn't really matter where you go anyway, so I see no reason to cater rankings to that minority.