Changes in US News Data

According to Bob Morse's blog (here), law schools can expect some changes to the data reported in connection with the US News annual rankings:

In an effort to make our law school employment data more reflective of the current state of legal employment, U.S. News has modified how we calculate the employment rates that are used in the new law school rankings. We will also be publishing more detailed law school employment data on our website as part of the new rankings. * * * 

At U.S. News, we work to make meaningful and fair comparisons, based on industry-accepted data. We provide a great deal of information to prospective students and serve an important function as an intermediary between them and schools such as yours. We have become popular because people value the information we provide, and many schools have benefitted from the exposure our coverage has given them.

To accomplish this, we rely on a certain amount of goodwill and ethical behavior from the various institutions that we survey, and our experience has been that the vast majority of them behave ethically. It is not our role to be setting industry standards nor enforcing them. However it is our responsibility to provide accurate information to our readers. To eliminate some of the gaming that seems to be taking place, we have changed the way we compute employment rates for the rankings due out March 15. In addition, we will also be publishing more career data than we have in the past in an effort to help students more completely understand the current state of legal employment. We think more still needs to be done.

The main responsibility to gather data and implement quality standards lies with the ABA, which also accredits law schools. For whatever reason, it appears that some schools do not treat the ABA reporting rules with the seriousness one would assume. We understand that the ABA is working toward the creation of tighter, more meaningful standards, which seem promising.

The statement that US News recognizes that the "main responsibility to gather data and implement quality standards lies with the ABA" reminds me that (unfortunately) US News -- not the ABA -- is the tail wagging the dog of much of what is going on in legal education.  

Comments

[Greg McNeal]

It seems (at least according to some conversations on Listservs) that the changes to the rankings will favor employed at graduation rates over employed at 9 months. If true, this is really unfortunate because it disfavors certain types of important jobs that require bar passage. Small firms, public interest, and government jobs oftentimes fall into this category. I imagine many of us have mentored students who have a high likelihood of employment with a DA or PD's office after graduation, usually couched in terms of bar passage and availability of public funding. The at 9 months ranking takes account of this (measuring employment after bar results and closer to when employers will know if they have funding for a position). If the rankings eliminate the at 9 months measure, it will be tough to ever ethically count those graduates as employed. Of course, it's not hard to see where all of this might lead, possibly creating institutional incentives to disfavor public interest, government, and small firm employment. I'm hopeful this won't happen, and if it does I'm hopeful (albeit pessimistic) that we as a profession will push back against the change.

Of course this is all speculation because Morse won't tell us what changes he and his team are implementing. It's almost comical that there is a lack of transparency about changes intended to favor transparency.

[Greg McNeal]

Just to put stronger emphasis on my final line, and to ensure what I've written is clear ---I'm just speculating. There's no evidence that the rankings focus will change in the manner I've articulated, just discussion on some listservs. It's not clear what will happen next week, but if the speculation is correct, this would be a bad result. I couldn't edit the comment after posting, my apologies for the two comments.

[Are you kidding?]

This blog, and the narcissistic mediocre law professors that write on it, are equally comical. You are all part of the problem.

Pepperdine has particularly dirty hands, and is a large part of the reason Bob Morse has begun to understand the crap law schools are engaging in.