Last Friday I participated in a day-long conference at Fordham Law School on "Professional
Challenges in Large Firm Practices" and was invited by Professor Bruce Green,
creator of the conference, to be a speaker on one of four panels, on "The Billable Hour."
The quality of erudition across the panels and throughout the audience
was impressive, and I once again am grateful that I live in the city
I do for the overwhelming wealth of resources and events
it provides and makes available.. But,
chauvinism aside (because many of the panelists came from out of town),
a fascinating discussion arose—not one remotely on the formal agenda—about
the nefarious impact of US News & World Report’s law school
ranking survey.
Coincidentally, now we have The National Law Journal reporting on
the lengths law schools will go to in order to juice their rankings. Law
schools have (reportedly) gone so far as to create computer models mimic-ing
the US News ranking protocol in order to see how they could best improve
their rankings, and the consequences of the name-brand competition, whether
intended by US News or unintended, border on the vicious. For example,
because of nearly-exclusive emphasis of LSAT scores and undergraduate
GPA’s:
“There goes the Peace Corps, there goes a Ph.D., there goes work experience,”
says Jeffrey Stake, a law professor at Indiana University
School of Law-Bloomington.
To me, the real question boils down to whether the US News scorecard
doesn’t drive law schools away from their fundamental mission of educating
professionally impeccable and ethically rigorous future members
of a noble profession. The problem is that schools are distracted
into gaming the system (can you say, "the AmLaw 100 and profits per
partner?"):
“There are a lot of schools that spend huge amounts of time
on this. We don’t have any interest in gaming the system, but we certainly
want to put ourselves in the best light that we can,” said [Susanah
Mead, the interim dean at Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis].
And the defense for US News? "U.S.
News & World Report is aware that “some
of the schools have a numbers game,” said Robert Morse, director of
data research for the publication."
I’m sorry, but that’s not good enough. The sad, but utterly
predictable, unintended consequence of the US News ranking is law schools’
toeing the line on metrics they did not invent, should not subscribe
to, and which debase and trivialize the educational experience
of law students nationwide.
US News knows better than to pretend it could not have foreseen
this, and the sensationalism it enjoys from it (knowing it’s the
only game in town) magnifies rather than excuses their ethical lapse. They
should suspend the rankings forthwith.
