Law school rankings
Law school rankings are a set of college and university rankings that consists of 4 tiers: Top 100 (includes first and second tier), “Third tier” and “Fourth tier”. List is ordered by decreasing the rank of accredited law schools from the highest rank to lowest. Third (from 105 to 141 ranking points) and Fourth (from 142) tiers includes law schools placed alphabetically, which are similar in quality.
However, there are very subjective rankings based on the surveys of scholars, students, educators and statistics. The rankings are consulted by prospective students to choose what school to attend.
The most popular rankings are provided by Us News and World Report magazine. Their methodology is based on measures of quality 4 measures of quality: Quality Assessment, Selectivity, Placement Success, and Faculty Resources. Each of these indicators consists of several categories with weighted average marks so that highest law schools in rank gets 100 points and others percentage of the top scores.
Indicators are measured by opinion surveys, incoming student profiles and the acceptance rate, bar passage and employment rates, expenditures, library volumes, and student/faculty ratio. Every school gets 40 percent to reputation, 25 percent to selectivity, 20 percent to placement success and 15 percent to faculty resources. To arrive at school’s rank must be accredited by American Bar Association.
There are also special law school rankings based on votes by teachers listed in the Association of American Law Schools Directory of Law Teachers as currently teaching. These legal educators nominated up to 15 schools in each field.
To collect the opinion data, US News asked deans, program directors, and senior faculty to judge the quality of programs in their field on a scale of 1 (”marginal”) to 5 (”outstanding”). In law they also surveyed professionals who hire new graduates.
However, the law school rankings receive a lot of criticism. The American Bar Association has refused to participate in rankings. The Association of American Law Schools defined these rankings as misleading and deceptive. It happened because values that are given for schools in rankings are arbitrary. Another complaint concerns interests of prospect students. It is said that rankings provided by US News magazine can’t fit everyone and students have to choose by themselves. To respond to the worldwide popularity of rankings American Bar Association publishes the annual law school guide, which contains information about 190 approved schools. There are also sarcastic rankings of US magazines placed on the website, where US News is places alone in the Third tier.
In spite of criticism, law school rankings dramatically influence the fill ability of colleges and universities. As the school rank drops, fewer students accept to enter higher education in it that may cause people get fired. And if the rank rises school became over-enrolled and more applicants are rejected and had to find another school. “Gaming the rankings” in the various schools influence on the amount of money spent per student. So with the help of school rankings studying became some kind of profit-generating enterprise.
