U.S. News tweaks law school formula in bid to quell ranking revolt

U.S. News & World Report tweaked its law school ranking formula this week in response to intense criticism from law deans that led more than a dozen prominent schools to halt their cooperation with an annual listing that holds profound sway within the legal profession.

The revisions, published Monday in a letter from U.S. News, include giving more weight to certain steps schools take to promote public-service careers and less weight to how judges, academics and lawyers perceive the reputation of the schools.

“In recent weeks, we have had conversations with more than 100 deans and representatives of law schools – well more than half of this academic leadership group,” Robert Morse and Stephanie Salmon, two U.S. News leaders, wrote in an open letter to law deans. “Based on those discussions, our own research and our iterative rankings review process, we are making a series of modifications in this year’s rankings that reflect those inputs and allow us to publish the best available data.”

Whether the revisions would mollify enough critics to quell, or at ease, the revolt remains to be seen.

Heather K. Gerken, leader of Yale University’s top-ranked law school, did not back off from her criticism of U.S. News. Yale’s break with the ranking process in November had touched off the revolt.

“Having a window into the operations and decision-making process at U.S. News in recent weeks has only cemented our decision to stop participating in the rankings,” Gerken said in a statement.

Russell Korobkin, interim law dean at the University of California at Los Angeles, another school that had joined the revolt, said Tuesday he had no immediate plans to change the school’s position. Asked about the U.S. News statement, he said: “This is a positive step, but the devil is in the details.” U.S. News ranks the UCLA law school 15th on its list.

Every year, U.S. News collects data from law schools that it uses for the rankings. Most of the top 15 law schools on the U.S. News list, as well as a number of others, have said they would decline to supply that data for the next edition of the rankings, to be published in the spring.

But other information is publicly available through the American Bar Association. U.S. News said it would use information from the bar association as it continues to rank all accredited law schools, whether or not they respond to the ranking publication’s own survey.

Law school leaders are gathering this week in San Diego for a meeting of the Association of American Law Schools. Morse and Salmon said they would be there and would “welcome additional discussions.”