In the realm of legal academia, the annual spectacle of the U.S. News & World Report’s law school rankings might stir the nerves of deans, but a recent study suggests that its impact on the aspirations of budding lawyers is largely negligible.
Conducted by Brian Frye of the University of Kentucky and Christopher Ryan of Indiana University, the study scrutinized a decade’s worth of data encompassing all 197 American Bar Association-accredited law schools. Their aim? To discern any correlation between shifts in rankings and the caliber of incoming classes. However, their findings unveiled a stark reality: the fluctuating fortunes of law schools on the U.S. News leaderboard hardly influenced the choices of prospective students.
“In essence, our research unveils a decade-long trend where the U.S. News law school rankings hold little sway over the minds of future legal eagles, a trend that has only grown more pronounced in recent years,” declares the study, christened “The Decline and the Fall of the U.S. News Rankings.”
Despite assertions from a U.S. News spokesperson citing the rankings’ purported impact on application numbers, the study’s revelations cast a shadow over such claims. While these rankings have been a lodestar for legal academia for generations, critics have long decried their adverse effects on student welfare, accusing institutions of maneuvering to inflate their standings at the expense of educational quality.
The aura of prestige surrounding these rankings, closely scrutinized by alumni and current students alike, owes much to the dearth of alternatives. Unlike the plethora of rankings in other disciplines, the legal realm finds itself predominantly beholden to the U.S. News monolith.
However, behind this façade of influence lies a harsh truth: the actual applicants, the lifeblood of these institutions, remain largely unmoved by the numerical gyrations of the rankings. Frye and Ryan delved into changes in LSAT scores and undergraduate GPAs of students enrolling post-rankings shifts, only to uncover feeble correlations that fizzled out in recent years.
The saga of the U.S. News law school rankings has been far from smooth sailing in recent memory. The specter of a boycott led by Yale and Harvard in 2022 cast a shadow over its credibility, a sentiment echoed by a spate of data mishaps in 2023. Major overhauls in methodology have further added to the volatility, notes the study.
“[The study] posits a sobering reality: law schools can afford to turn a blind eye to the U.S. News rankings, for their clientele remains unmoved,” it concludes.
In the face of mounting evidence, the once-vaunted influence of these rankings appears to be waning, leaving legal academia at a crossroads as it contemplates its future without the specter of numerical prestige.
