It’s been a week since Yale Law School announced it would no longer participate in the U.S. News & World Report education rankings. Since then, nine other law schools have followed suit, with more likely on the way.
Law.com has been and will continue to be at the forefront of covering these developments. We’ll be updating this page regularly with news and analysis as more schools announce their decisions and these highly-influential rankings undergo potentially profound changes.
News
UCLA Law Becomes the First Non-T14 School to Dump the US News Rankings
“We are under no illusion that UCLA Law’s decision will have a substantial impact on how law schools are evaluated by U.S. News,” Interim Dean Russell Korobkin continued. “Approximately 80 percent of a law school’s U.S. News ‘score’ is based on publicly available data and the surveys of reputation that U.S. News itself conducts, so U.S. News undoubtedly will continue to rank all of the law schools, perhaps with only minor methodological adjustments.
With Duke Law, There Are Now 9 T14 Law Schools Boycotting US News Rankings
“[W]e believe that the U.S. News law school rankings” have become detrimental to legal education since “the rankings rely on flawed survey techniques and opaque and arbitrary formulas, lacking the transparency needed to help applicants make truly informed decisions,” Dean Kerry Abrams told the Duke Law community Monday.
Northwestern Law Becomes 8th T14 to Bail on US News Rankings
“[W]e are troubled that U.S. News relies in part on unverified data reported by law schools that can significantly impact outcomes,” Northwestern Law Dean Hari Osofsky wrote. “This approach has implications for the accuracy and fairness of the rankings,” further pointing out that law schools can only gain access to specific data by paying U.S. News.
University of Michigan Law Becomes 7th Law School to Boycott US News Rankings
“At its inception, U.S. News law school rankings provided valuable information for consumers—most importantly, students—that had not previously been widely available,” but “[t]his is no longer true” since “many more consumer information resources are available today,” Dean Mark West said in a letter to the Michigan Law community.
Stanford Law Pulls Out of US News Rankings, Joining 5 Other T14 Law Schools
Half a dozen law schools have now announced that they will no longer participate in the U.S. News & World Report education rankings, with Stanford Law School publicizing its decision late Friday night.
Columbia Law Becomes 5th School to Cease Participating in US News Rankings
“The potential benefits to be gained from continuing to share data with U.S. News are far outweighed by the constraints the rankings place on our ability to freely pursue our core scholarly, pedagogical, and programmatic objectives,” Columbia Law Dean Gillian Lester said.
Georgetown Law Becomes the Latest to Withdraw From US News Rankings
The Georgetown University Law Center announced Friday that it will cease participating in the U.S. News & World Report education rankings, becoming the fourth law school to do so this week.
Berkeley Law Joins Yale and Harvard in Rejecting US News Rankings
“Although rankings are inevitable and inevitably have some arbitrary features, there are aspects of the U.S. News rankings that are profoundly inconsistent with our values and public mission,” Erwin Chemerinsky, dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law at Berkeley, said in a statement emailed to Law.com on Thursday.
Harvard Law Follows Yale Law in Pulling Out of US News Rankings
“We at HLS have made this decision because it has become impossible to reconcile our principles and commitments with the methodology and incentives the U.S. News rankings reflect,” Harvard Law Dean John F. Manning said in a statement.
Yale Law Dean Says School No Longer Participating in ‘Profoundly Flawed’ US News Rankings
“I wanted to give U.S. News a chance to change and they didn’t,” Yale Law School Dean Heather K. Gerken told Law.com. “Now is a time to take a step back—especially because this is a moment when economic equity is at the center of conversations at every university about the role university play in society—it is a time to reflect.”
Analysis
Ahead of the Curve: Analyzing the Exodus of Law Schools From the US News Rankings
This week, we’re reviewing the T14 law schools that have declined to continue participating in the U.S. News education rankings.
As More Law Schools Drop Out, Are the US News Rankings in Danger?
Observers remain split on whether these moves will inflict any lasting damage on the highly influential publication.
Previous US News Coverage
‘They Can’t Tell You How You Will Fit In Culturally’: Why the US News Rankings Alone Shouldn’t Dictate Law School Choices
“It’s really impossible to come up with a one-size-fits-all rankings list,” said Aaron Taylor, executive director for AccessLex Center for Legal Education Excellence.
Ahead of the Curve: Law Schools React to US News Rankings
This week, we’re exploring what law schools had to say about the 2023 U.S. News & World Report Best Graduate School rankings released Tuesday.
Significant Shake-up Among 2023 US News Law School Rankings as Harvard Drops Out of Top 3
U.S. News & World Report has unveiled its 2023 Best Graduate Schools rankings. And while Yale Law School continued its long-running streak at No. 1, there were still plenty of significant changes near the top of the list, including Harvard Law School being bumped out of the top three for the first time since 1990.
The US News Law School Rankings Are Here, But Has Their Credibility Taken a Hit?
The new rankings have some familiar names at the top, a new student debt metric and the first-ever HBCU law school in the top 100.
US News’ Rough Year Just Got Worse: Law School Rankings Changed a Third Time
Problems with a metric related to law librarian teaching prompted U.S. News to change the overall law schools ranking just two days before its official release.
US News Makes Last-Minute Changes to Law School Rankings, Fueling Criticism and Concern
Legal educators are decrying what they see as multiple missteps by U.S. News & World Report in its handling of the upcoming law school rankings.
