IU's Maurer Law School
(IU Maurer School of Law Facebook)
Yale and Harvard law schools recently announced their separation from the U.S. News and World Report rankings, refusing to send information to the once influential source.
Many law professionals, students and schools have disagreed with the priorities of the U.S. News ranking system for decades, said Maurer professor Jeffrey Stake.
“U.S. News and focuses the attention of law schools heavily on the LSAT, the standardized test for getting into law schools, and undergraduate grades,” he said. “And as a result, schools do not feel free to take the candidates that they feel are the best candidates for the legal profession.”
Despite many professionals agreeing with this criticism, no action went towards stopping it until recently. Many schools feared potential consequences arising after seeing withdrawals lead to a heavy drop in ranking.
The reputations of Yale and Harvard have prompted almost a dozen schools to follow their lead.
“The main message that should be gleaned from these announcements is that U.S. News is not doing the world any good,” Stake said. “U.S. News defends themselves on the ground that they're providing U.S. consumer information, but they're providing bad consumer information.”
Stake has studied rankings and their pros and cons for years. He believes that the U.S. News rankings create incentives for schools to do things that are not good for legal education. This makes it difficult for students to find a reliable source when looking for a law school.
Law and public policy student Bianca Foronda plans to go to law school after graduating in 2024. As a prospective law student, she hopes schools continue to follow Yale’s and Harvard’s decision.
“I do believe that the rankings aren’t a good kind of measure for any law schools really,” Foronda said. “I think it’s a smart move and I am kind of glad they did it because of the domino effect.”
Stake said he hopes all students realize how harmful the ranking system is to law schools.
Christina Ochoa, dean of the IU Maurer School of Law, sent a statement via email:
“The Indiana University Maurer School of Law is carefully evaluating whether to stop supplying data to US News. For many years, our law school, together with many others, have implored US News to be more responsive to the critiques and suggestions made to the magazine by law schools subjected to their ranking system. Our requests have resulted from our observations that the US News Law School Rankings employ a non-transparent and flawed methodology that results in severe and negative distortions in legal education that do not serve students well and are detrimental to society. We are aware that the US News rankers are in conversation with law school deans across the country and hope these discussions result in a more open dialogue leading to immediate as well as long-term substantive improvements. The Maurer School of Law is actively engaged in a process involving a variety of stakeholders considering what is best for our law school and our students.”
