In the realm of law school rankings and affirmative action: "There is no subterfuge here."

I'm reading "Law schools love to hate U.S. News rankings. But some can’t let go. Yale law’s decision to stop cooperating with the publication landed like a thunderclap. Records show what other schools thought about the 'revolution.'"

Let me drag this key passage out of the middle:

As schools weighed their decisions, some questioned the purity of the boycotters’ motives. One theory: Some schools, correctly anticipating that the Supreme Court would soon strike down race-based affirmative action, could be planning admissions changes that would hurt them in the rankings but preserve diversity. The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board surmised as much, saying, “The Yale and Harvard announcements look like attempts to adapt in advance.”

When the University of Michigan’s law dean heard this theory from an alumnus, he dismissed it, saying in an email shortly after Yale’s announcement that his school’s decision to withdraw was “100% not connected to any Supreme Court ruling.”

“There is no subterfuge here,” wrote Mark West, dean at Michigan, which ranked 10th at the time.

U.S. News says the law schools withdrawing from its ranking system are in prep mode for the end of affirmative action.

I'm reading "Defending Its Rankings, U.S. News Takes Aim at Top Law Schools/The publication accuses Yale and other schools of trying to evade accountability — and sidestep a likely end to affirmative action — by opting out of its ratings" (NYT).

“Some law deans are already exploring ways to sidestep any restrictive ruling by reducing their emphasis on test scores and grades — criteria used in our rankings,” Eric J. Gertler, the executive chairman and chief executive of U.S. News, wrote in an opinion essay on Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal....

It's a little hard to figure out the causality. If law schools can't directly take race into account, why would they make an adjustment that puts less emphasis on test scores and grades?

"U.S. News & World Report will continue to rank all fully accredited law schools, regardless of whether schools agree to submit their data...."

"A few law schools recently announced that they will no longer participate in the data collection process.... However, U.S. News has a responsibility to prospective students to provide comparative information that allows them to assess these institutions.... We will continue to pursue our journalistic mission...."

Says U.S. News, quoted at Taxprof.

"I would hate to give up on my dream of becoming a family lawyer, just due to not being able to successfully handle this test."

Wrote Fariha Amin, "a full-time worker and mother to a 6-year-old son," quoted in "Law School Accrediting Panel Votes to Make LSAT Optional/Legal-education community has been divided over testing requirement and its impact on diversity in admissions" (Wall Street Journal). 

And here's a quote from John White, chair of LSAC’s board of trustees: "This proposal will be highly disruptive. The change won’t be worth it, and we won’t get the diversity we are looking for."

I wonder how he knows... how he thinks he knows.

There's also council member Craig Boise, dean of Syracuse University College of Law: "I find the argument that the test is necessary to save diversity in legal education is bizarre." 

How is it "bizarre"? It's something I've heard for more than 30 years. (I was a lawprof for more than 30 years, and I often served on the admissions committee. I've read many real applications and seen the relationship between LSAT scores and other aspects of an applicant's qualifications.)

The LSAT produces a hard number, and it feels secure to rely on such things. But you can rely too much, and the U.S. News ranking has for decades rewarded schools that rely heavily on this number. The question is who will contribute to the class in law school and go on to do good work, not who did best on one structured, high-pressure test.

"... Professor Dan Epps... hypothesized that Yale plans to make major changes to admissions in the wake of the expected Supreme Court affirmative action rulings, 'and they are doing this proactively'..."

"'... rather than dealing with any rankings implications later.' [Some] students [agreed and] speculated... that not having to worry about LSAT and GPA data dragging down its U.S. News rank will allow YLS to either (a) continue to use racial preferences in admissions or (b) water down its academic credentials. Furthermore... some sources suggested that Dean Gerken withdrew from the rankings because she feared that YLS was about to lose the #1 spot it has held for more than three decades—and she didn’t want that to happen on her watch.... One professor told me that... there was no sense within the faculty that YLS’s #1 ranking was at imminent risk. Instead... 'This is clearly part of a larger and deeper commitment on her part toward leadership in the law school industry when it comes to fairness, welfare, and equity.'"

From "Yale And Harvard Law To U.S. News: Drop Dead/Two leading law schools have withdrawn from the influential law school rankings; will others follow?" by David Lat (Substack).

I remember when U.S. News first started this ranking. It was 1987, and I was 3 years into teaching at the University of Wisconsin Law School. From day one, the professors at my school were hostile to the rankings. We had our values, and how dare U.S. News attempt to influence our choices. 

Here's how the rankings looked in 1987. We were #20 at that point — the point when the game began. A decade later we were struggling for position in the 30s and we currently stand at #43.

"Above the Law leaked the latest edition of the U.S. News law school rankings last week..."

Wow! I didn't even notice. I really am retired.

"... but now the actual publication date is upon us, and the 2020 rankings are officially out. We’re very pleased to announce that all of our leaked information has been confirmed (with the exception, of course, of the Penn State schools and Rutgers, all three of which were curiously absent from the leaked data; we know their ranks, and will get to them in a moment)."

Above the Law blogs.

"Although the new 2017 law school rankings will be released online on Wednesday, March 16..."

"... the Top 50 has been leaked online."

The biggest winners are Houston (+9), Indiana (+9), UC-Hastings (+9), Wake Forest (+7), Boston University (+6), Boston College (+4), Ohio State (+4), Michigan (+3), Arizona (+2), Iowa (+2), Temple (+2), UC-Irvine (+2), Washington & Lee (+2)

The biggest losers are Alabama (-6), University of Washington (-5), BYU (-4), North Carolina (-4), William & Mary (-4), Duke (-3), Emory (-3), Fordham (-3), George Mason (-3), George Washington (-3), Utah (-3), Georgia (-2), Minnesota (-2), Wisconsin (-2)

The new U.S. News law school ranking is out.

Read and react.

My school stayed in exactly the same place, so... boring. Good boring, I guess. An interesting thing is that where we are is one slot below UC Irvine which appears in the ranking for the first time:

UC Irvine Law debuts at 30: University of California’s Irvine School of Law opened its doors in 2009, but this is the first time it was eligible to be ranked. The school was granted full accreditation by the American Bar Association in June. So how did it do? Not too shabby. It placed 30th, just behind William & Mary and a spot ahead of its sister public school, University of California-Davis.

ADDED: From the Above the Law analysis:

There’s a three-way tie for #31, a six-way tie for #34, a four-way tie for #42, a three-way tie for #47, a tie for #50, a four-way tie for #52, a three-way tie for #56, a four-way tie for #59, a four-way tie for #63, a four-way tie for #67, a four-way tie for #71, a three-way tie for #75, a four-way tie for #78, a five-way tie for #82, a seven-way tie for #87, and an eight-way tie for #94. There are 22 rankings ties within the Top 100 alone. UGH!

What the hell is with all of these ties?

All those ties are going to play havoc with the minds of applicants who were planning to make their decisions based on ranking.

"For those at Northeastern, breaking into the U.S. News top 100 was like landing a man on the moon, but Freeland was determined to try."

"Reverse-engineering the formulas took months; perfecting them took years."

“We could say, ‘Well, if we could move our graduation rates by X, this is how it would affect our standing,’” Freeland says. “It was very mathematical and very conscious and every year we would sit around and say, ‘Okay, well here’s where we are, here’s where we think we might be able to do next year, where will that place us?’”

Via Tax Prof.

"Washington & Lee’s Experiential Learning Seems To Be A Flop."

Above the Law looks at Washington & Lee's horrible 17-step drop in the U.S. News law school rankings (which just came out this morning, as we've been talking about here):

Please remember this the next time a law professor or law school dean tries to sell you a load of bull about “revamping” 3L year. Washington & Lee did just that. The school changed its third-year program to focus on so-called “practice ready” skills.

Employers didn’t take the bait. As we explained this summer, Washington & Lee’s job numbers are really down. Then this fall, we told you that W&L had the most dramatic drop in class size. The class of 2016 at W&L is down just over 40 percent.

Now, U.S. News has come in with the hammer. W&L has dropped from #26 last year to #43 this year. When reached for comment, George Washington and Robert E. Lee said, “THE CENTER MUST HOLD! Wait, what are we talking about?”

Just remember, when legal academics try to sell you on “practice readiness,” they might not necessarily have any idea what they’re talking about.

1. If they dramatically dropped class size, they avoided even worse numbers on various factors (LSAT scores, GPA, and acceptance rate). Other schools did that too. Who knows what the ranking would be without all the strategies schools use to play the U.S. News game?

2. The Washington & Lee plunge will be used against proposals to turn law schools more toward the experiential learning approach, whether that explanation for the drop is correct or not.

3. Presumably, prospective students will be scared off of schools leaning too far into the "experiential" approach, leading to even more of a negative effect in the rankings for schools that go this route, which will further hamper efforts to radically reframe law school education.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold the freaking phone. DUKE IS NOW IN THE TOP 10 OF THE U.S. NEWS LAW SCHOOL RANKINGS."

"The school had previously held down the fort at the #11 slot for several years, but has now climbed its way up the rankings. Welcome to the Top 10 of U.S. News, Blue Devils!"

What other kinds of shocking changes will we see when the rankings are released?...

We guess you’ll have to wait until midnight to get the scoop on the latest U.S. News rankings. Until then, all you can do is pray to the rankings god that is Bob Morse and hope that your alma mater fared well.

ADDED: The excited blogger at Above the Law indulges in 2 "hold" clichés: "hold the phone" and "hold down the fort." I'd avoid all clichés myself, but I'd particularly avoid doubling up on clichés that use the same word. Also, don't misuse your clichés. "Hold the phone" is used properly. What is the image we're supposed to get?

I believe this expression originated in the days where reporters needed to phone their stories in to newspaper editors from public phone boxes. As there was often a crush on the phones at the end of an event - like a sports game - the smart journalist would have most of the story written and get to the phone before the game had finished. However, if something exciting seemed to be happening, or if some other news event was being covered and there was some new development occurring, the reporter might even scream - 'hold the phone' - while he went to investigate this new twist in the story.

So, it was cornball to say "hold the phone." It's "held down the fort" which has to go. I think the writer confused holding down the fort with camped out, which both seem military. You hold down the fort is something somebody born in the first half of the 20th century might have said to a housemate when she (or he) was going out for a short time. "Camped out" is the phrase you want for describing those who are stuck in one spot and waiting expectantly.

"Which Highly Ranked Law Schools Operate Most Efficiently?"

Another permutation of the U.S. News Ranking.

My school comes out at #4 on this one, so I'm inclined to be impressed. The idea of "efficiency" is "Spending per student for each point in the overall U.S. News score." That is, the thing schools are visualized as competing for is U.S. News rank, and the less money you spend to get to whatever rank you've been assigned on the master ranking — "Best Law Schools" — the better you do on this "efficiency" ranking.

Another way of looking at this is — to get back to a popular old activity among law professors — is to impugn the master ranking. Here, one would say that what you can infer from this new chart is that many schools are simply buying their way up the rankings, overshadowing some deeper, truer, more substantive qualities that are revealed if the things money can buy are stripped away.

That's how folks tend to talk around here.

New U.S. News rankings.

Read, emote, carp.

ADDED: From Above the Law:

For better or for worse, these rankings set the presumptions of law school effectiveness for the next year. Students will overwhelmingly go to the best school that they can get into on this list, regardless of region or cost. Students who don’t go to the best ranked school they can get into will expect generous scholarship packages from lower ranked schools, meaning that students with worse starting credentials will end up subsidizing students with better credentials.

This makes it painful if the school you picked because of its rank drops below the school you rejected. Of course, it's self-inflicted pain. No one made you rely on the rankings, and you knew the rankings would change every year. Imagine if you picked Stanford over Harvard. Suddenly, you should have picked Harvard over Stanford. (Stanford and Harvard are now tied at #2. Last year, Stanford had the 2 position and Harvard was 3.)

Here are the rankings by "peer reputation," which are preferred by those at schools who do better by this metric, which is based on a survey of "law school deans, deans of academic affairs, chairs of faculty appointments, and the most recently tenured faculty members [who] were asked to rate programs on a scale from marginal (1) to outstanding (5). Those individuals who did not know enough about a school to evaluate it fairly were asked to mark 'don't know.'" Think that's better than the hard variables like the LSATs and GPAs of the students?

"The National Jurist contains a law school ranking alternative to U.S. News & World Report..."

"... using the following methodology:"

Post-Graduate Success:  50%
Employment Rate:  22.5%
Super Lawyers:  12.5%
Partners in NLJ 200:  10%
Bar Passage:  5%

Student Satisfaction:  35%
RateMyProfessors.com:  20%
Princeton Review:  15%

Affordability and Diversity:  15%
Debt:  10%
Diversity:  5%

Some of those factors are incredibly lame/immensely manipulable, but I suppose I should like it because my school does well on it.

George Washington shouldn't have told so many lies.

Dishonored. De-ranked by U.S. News.

"Students are very, very worried about this,” said Scheckter, 21. "They are worried about graduating, applying to graduate school having a degree from a university that is now ranked the same as the University of Phoenix, which, no offense to them, is not the same institution. A lot of people pay a hell of a lot of money to come here, thinking they will get a degree from a top 50 university.”

The university ought to refund part of that tuition. I'm picturing a lawsuit.

Because "law-school applications have fallen... prospective students have gained leverage" negotiating for more scholarship money.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Robert Rasmussen, dean of the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, said students have become increasingly "price sensitive," and are pushing back on tuition figures and scholarship offers. "Students are much more willing to raise this issue than they ever have been in the past."

Enterprising or cash-strapped students have long negotiated with schools over the price of admission. But more than ever, schools are listening. For instance, the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law earlier this year sent letters to admitted students encouraging them to bargain. "We very much hope you find this offer competitive with others you have received," read one letter, dated March 2012 and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. "Please let us know."

It's a buyer's market: Don't behave as if you don't know it. Meanwhile, the sellers, the law schools, fret about the flow of information via U.S. News & World Report, which has the audacity to rank the law schools, partly based on GPA and LSAT, creating great power in the buyers of law school education who bring good statistics.

Applicants with high GPAs and LSATs are like the beautiful women who are served free drinks in bars, helping the bars draw more paying customers. So if you are one of the beautiful women, better get your drinks free. And if you're getting your drinks free and you're not that beautiful, maybe you wonder why you're patronizing that bar.

But there's no U.S. News & World Report ranking the bars according to beautiful people, not with specifically knowable statistics. If there were, and if everyone started marketing their beauty value to the best-ranked bar that would give them free drinks, there'd be a bar bubble, and it would have to pop. 

Of course, there is a law school bubble. It looks like this:

"With her attitude to the President, who was, like, a Harvard law professor, I'm like, take it down a notch, bitch."

It's Kathy Griffin, critiquing an Elisabeth Hasselbeck performance on "The View." The President had dropped in to share the couch with the ladies. The link goes to Donald Douglas's blog, where the big point is that Obama was not a Harvard law professor, and in fact, he wasn't even — technically — a law professor; he was a senior lecturer; and it wasn't Harvard, it was the University of Chicago; and so Kathy's a fine one to call Elisabeth a "stupid bitch." Video at the link.

All right. First, Kathy Griffin has a comic style. You either like it or you don't. She's all about bitchily ragging on celebrities. Second, "stupid" is not the key criticism from Griffin to Hasselbeck. It's that Hasselbeck is coming at the President with too much of a sassy, challenging edge. And Griffin is actually right about that. You need to treat the President — any President — with respect, even when you intend to give him a hard time and even when he deserves it.

Third — and here's where it gets really interesting to me — he was a Harvard law professor. Put aside the mistakes. This notion that you've got to pay special respect to law professors... as a law professor, I'm fascinated. Now, maybe it's just Harvard law professors that command this odd obeisance. Who knows how far down the U.S. News "Best Law Schools" list you go before Kathy's Etiquette of Respecting the Law Professor peters out? Maybe there's a gentle gradation of decreasing respect as you slide down through the top five, into the basement of the top 15 and beyond. I don't know if there are any shreds of servility to be strewn before those of us in the 30s. But the whole idea amuses me.

And, really, this is one of the great benefits to being a law professor. No, not that I get respect — to the extent that I do. (I mostly get haters who use the phrase "you, a law professor" somewhere in the middle of an attempted push-back.) What I like is that, as a law professor, I'm free of the awe of law professors. And yet, if any of them dropped by for a visit and sat down on my couch for a conversation, I'd be nice to them. But if that couch were really part of a TV set, and I owed my first duty to the people who were bothering to watch, I might go all Hasselbeck on them.

But the President... well, why is the President doing a show like this? Probably because everybody on that couch except Hasselbeck wanted to boost his reelection campaign — slathering the home viewers with amorphous feelings of love for the man who is so wonderful for women. He was there for a super-cushy time on the cushions. Hasselbeck was the only potential edge. Obama supporters would love to dull that edge. Show respect. They're kind of right, of course, as noted above. It's a problem built into the show, "The View." It's a view, all right, but from where? From deep in the cleavage of the mommy party.

"Harvard Law School lists one lone Native American faculty member on its latest diversity census report" but won't say if it's Elizabeth Warren.

LOL. If it's someone else, why wouldn't they say?

Last night, we were talking about that column in the NYT where lawprof Kevin Noble Maillard — who identifies himself as an enrolled member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma — informed us that for "the Cherokee Nation, Warren is 'Indian enough;' she has the same blood quantum as Cherokee Nation Chief Bill John Baker." He said:

For non-Natives, this may be surprising. They expect to see 'high cheekbones,' as Warren described her grandfather as having, or tan skin. They want to know of pow wows, dusty reservations, sweat lodges, peyote and cheap cigarettes. When outsiders look at these ostensibly white people as members of Native America, they don’t see minorities. As a result, Warren feels she must satisfy these new birthers and justify her existence.

He also portrayed Native American lawprofs as such a small group  — 0.5% of all lawprofs — that they'd all know about it — and enthuse about it — if one of them had gotten appointed at Harvard, and that didn't happen.

There are so many issues here. Instapundit brings up 2:

1. "The whole blood-quantum thing is a white man's criterion." (More on that here.)

2.  "[T]he interesting part isn’t that she checked the Native American box; it’s that she unchecked it once it wouldn’t do her any more good. And that’s not a fake controversy"

Let me add some more issues:

3. These days tribes control the standards of who gets in, but what are their purposes? There are ideas about sovereignty, connected to political power and autonomy, but how can this definition carry over to other contexts and support affirmative action? A technical, genetic standard isn't narrowly tailored to notions about the benefits of "diversity," especially if no one can see or is even informed about who's supposed to be bringing the diversity.

4. Having a Native American faculty member is a point of pride for Harvard. It claims credit. But maybe it doesn't really have anyone behind that claim. Note the potential for collusion between a law school and faculty members who can plausibly be claimed to beef up the diversity statistic. The school may not really know or want to know the truth. It just hopes to get away with reporting a number that works to its credit. It's like the way law schools want to hear from their graduates that they have law jobs with good pay. They want to report that information to U.S. News to get better rank on the "Best Law Schools" list. If it's good for them, they'd rather not have to look into whether it's true. It's good. Who cares if it's true?

5. Elizabeth Warren claimed that she had herself listed in the AALS directory as a minority lawprof because she was hoping to get included in group of people like her. Professor Maillard assures NYT readers that Native American lawprofs are a close-knit group who know each other and support and take pride in each other. With such warm and welcoming arms outstretched, how is it that Warren never found her way into that group? One cynical theory is that Warren didn't really want to have to face them, because they might have questioned her authenticity. But that would mean she really did go on the list to make contact with appointments committees who would pull her up to a higher ranked school. And of course, that theory connects neatly with the point made at #2, supra: She unchecked the box once she got to Harvard.

6. Why did Maillard gratuitously insult those of us who are trying to figure this out by bringing up "high cheekbones, "tan skin," "pow wows, dusty reservations, sweat lodges, peyote and cheap cigarettes"? The abuse of affirmative action is a serious issue, and people who worry about it are not trading in old-fashioned stereotypes. It's more like Maillard is stereotyping us as backward and dumb. If that's intentional pushback, it ought to motivate us to look more deeply into the problem at hand. I'm not pushed back. That would be dumb.

"The U.S. News Law School Rankings Are Out!"

"There’s a surprising amount of movement among the top law schools. And there are some interesting tidbits from elsewhere within the rankings," says David Lat.

Here's a list showing the various gains and losses in rank. (My school, Wisconsin, stays at the same place, #35, but we suffered a loss last year.) The University of Washington went up 10 spots to #20, Arizona [State] soared 14 places to 26. Meanwhile, Illinois plummeted to 35 (to join UW). There is pain in Austin, Texas (falling 3), and cheer in Georgetown, which climbed over Cornell.

Biggest loss in the top 10 is Michigan, falling 3 places to #10. Biggest top 10 gain is Berkeley, up 2 spots to 7. The coveted 2d and 3d places switch hands with Stanford popping up over Harvard.

At Wisconsin, we like to single out the "peer reputation ranking," and Paul Caron has broken out that list. We're #24 on that scale, which, we like to think, extracts the wealth factor.  If only we had more money to bulk up our other numbers, that's where we'd be overall. And: If only we'd go all hardcore on LSAT and GPA admissions instead of the soft factors, we'd be — who knows where? — up there with Texas. But why should we change? Let those other schools stop taking advantage of those factors!

Blah blah blah. If you're not a law school person, you're going to tell me how meaningless this all is. Why am I bothering you with this. If you are a law school person, you know this is our lifeblood. Our hated lifeblood. But our lifeblood nonetheless. It's a marketplace, and the currency is U.S. News ranking.

"Law Deans May Go to Jail for Submitting False Data to U.S. News."

Why not?