Top Law Schools

I happened to be looking at the historical trend of rankings from the prelaw handbook and was wondering if anyone had any sort of insight with regards to why in the past decade UNC has dropped from 22 to tied for 39? This seems like a pretty big fall...especially considering they dropped from 29 to 39 in last year and then stayed there this year.

Thanks to anyone with info to contribute!

http://www.prelawhandbook.com/law_schoo ... 00_present

Tyler Hansborough graduated.

UNC, like some other state schools, has its class composition essentially dictated by the state legislature. In their case, max of 25% out-of-state. This makes it much more difficult for them to engage in recruiting tactics designed to increase (inflate) their US News rank.

NosferatuDracon wrote:.especially considering they dropped from 29 to 39 in last year and then stayed there this year.

They went back up to 30 this year, actually.

Several things hit UNC hard when it dropped into the low 30s.

Because it is a state school and the state's commitment to (relatively) low tuition in its academic programs, the law school relies heavily on funding from the state legislature. There was some ridiculously long period of time where the General Assembly did not increase support for the law school year-over-year. The result was difficulty retaining and recruiting new faculty and the student-to-faculty ratio got way out of line with peer schools. Also the couple of criteria US News uses that directly account for funding were out of whack.

At the same time, the school went for two years without a permanent dean when Gene Nichol left. There was a public rebuke of the deanship by Chemerinsky in which he went public about the lack of funding for the law school after being offered the job. During that time alumni giving was down too, since one of a dean's primary jobs is pumping alums for money.

Also, there were a couple of years where the post-grad employment rates were way off normal and the career services office had shrunk to like two or three people.

In 2007 the school got a permanent dean, who is quite capable. He promptly set out to fix some of the funding problems and appears to have been successful. The General Assembly coughed up a bunch more cash, the school raised tuition a couple of thousand a year and alumni money started coming in again. A couple of years later the school is back in the range (25-31) where it has been for much of the U.S. News rankings history. If you check the most current ranking, I think we're 30th.

Because of the commitment to serving state residents other people mentioned, the school will probably never be able to do the LSAT and GPA manipulations that other schools engage in, which is fine by me.

TarHeel11 wrote:Several things hit UNC hard when it dropped into the low 30s.

Because it is a state school and the state's commitment to (relatively) low tuition in its academic programs, the law school relies heavily on funding from the state legislature. There was some ridiculously long period of time where the General Assembly did not increase support for the law school year-over-year. The result was difficulty retaining and recruiting new faculty and the student-to-faculty ratio got way out of line with peer schools. Also the couple of criteria US News uses that directly account for funding were out of whack.

At the same time, the school went for two years without a permanent dean when Gene Nichol left. There was a public rebuke of the deanship by Chemerinsky in which he went public about the lack of funding for the law school after being offered the job. During that time alumni giving was down too, since one of a dean's primary jobs is pumping alums for money.

Also, there were a couple of years where the post-grad employment rates were way off normal and the career services office had shrunk to like two or three people.

In 2007 the school got a permanent dean, who is quite capable. He promptly set out to fix some of the funding problems and appears to have been successful. The General Assembly coughed up a bunch more cash, the school raised tuition a couple of thousand a year and alumni money started coming in again. A couple of years later the school is back in the range (25-31) where it has been for much of the U.S. News rankings history. If you check the most current ranking, I think we're 30th.

Because of the commitment to serving state residents other people mentioned, the school will probably never be able to do the LSAT and GPA manipulations that other schools engage in, which is fine by me.

Thanks for the great response! Other than the simple answer of it's a state school, this does provide a lot of additional background information! I do appreciate it and can consider my curiosity satisfied.