right.com, Ahead of the curve: Will the US news ranking look the same again?:
Since November 16, I have written 44 articles (articles and columns combined) on US News & World Report, and the law school rankings are not yet available!
This has made me a bit of an expert: I will be participating in a session on US News Law School Rankings, June 15 from 4:30-5:30pm ET, during the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Institutional Advance Conference“Making a Difference in a Changing World” to be held virtually on June 14-15 exclusively for law school faculty and staff. [I will also be on the panel.] …
With each delay, the news agency has said that the cause of the delay is due to “an unprecedented number of inquiries from schools during the initial period of the embargo and verification of publicly available data.”
“The cryptic message from US News also blames the number of school inquiries, but it doesn’t say why schools are asking at such a high rate,” Dave Killon, executive director of PowerScore Test Preparation, told Law.com on 24 of April. .
“Perhaps US News has made errors in the data? At this point we don’t know, but the lack of transparency here further undermines the already tenuous credibility of these rankings,” she added. …
[Press] reports say that the law schools that boycotted US News are not getting what they hoped for.
I’m not sure about that: Wasn’t part of your goal to “blow up” the rankings, or at least point out deficiencies in the methodology?
If that is the case, I would say that the boycott has been a great success.
With everything that has happened in the last five and a half months since that fateful day in November when Yale Law, quickly followed by Harvard Law, announced its plan to withdraw from the rankings, will the rankings ever look the same again?
US News has overcome its fair share of controversy and credibility over the years, so it would be unwise to underestimate the resilience of these rankings.
But such a public and protracted battle may not be so easy to fight.
Previous TaxProf blog coverage:
- US Press Releases 2024 Law School Rankings Preview: Top 14 and New Methodology (April 11, 2023)
- Will law schools with strong fiscal programs get a boost in the 2024 US news rankings? (April 11, 2023)
- Will US news refuse to count the votes of deans, professors, lawyers and judges to boycott law schools in the reputation metric in the 2024 rankings? (April 12, 2023)
- US News delays publication of law school rankings by a week due to “unprecedented amount of inquiries from schools.” Is the bar data to blame? (April 14, 2023)
- The US News Law School Rankings: Say Hello to the New T14 (April 15, 2023)
- What’s Behind the Delay in US News’ Law School Rankings Release? (April 18, 2023)
- US News delays publication of law school rankings again due to ‘unprecedented number of inquiries’, including from schools that are apparently boycotting the rankings (April 19, 2023)
- US News indefinitely postpones rankings for law and medical schools amid backlash (April 21, 2023)
- NY Times: Schadenfreude Rankings: Elite Law Schools Boycotted US News, But Now They May Be Paying a Price (April 22, 2023)
- Muller: Some law schools don’t understand US news classifications, partly due to opaque methodology (April 24, 2023)
- What’s Causing the 3+ Week Lag in US News Law School Rankings? (May 3, 2023)
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2023/05/will-the-us-news-law-school-rankings-ever-get-its-mojo-back.html