News Release

(Full text of study also available on website.)

Contact: Carl C. Monk, in Washington, DC (202) 296-8851
For release: Feb. 18, 1998

Association of American Law Schools Calls On U.S. News & World Report
To Stop Ranking Law Schools; Study Challenges Validity of Magazine’s System

New York -- The Association of American Law Schools (AALS) today called upon U.S. News & World Report to stop publishing its annual ranking of law schools, saying that the magazine’s survey and others like it can be harmful to law school applicants.

U.S. News is expected to release its 1998 law school rankings this week.

The AALS held a press conference at the Sheraton New York Hotel at which it released a study challenging the validity of the magazine’s system. (The study was done for the AALS by Stephen P. Klein, a senior research scientist and a senior partner with the consulting firm of Gansk and Associates.) The study found "many serious problems" with the way U.S. News evaluates law schools, the AALS said.

The AALS also handed out a letter sent to 93,000 law-school applicants called "Law School Rankings May be Hazardous To Your Health." [For the text of the letter, visit the LSAC website.]

The letter, distributed by the Law School Admission Council, has been endorsed by deans of 164 of the 180 law schools approved by the American Bar Association, including most of those highly ranked by U.S. News.

About 10 law school deans and educators were present at today’s press conference. John Sexton, dean of the New York University School of Law and immediate-past president of AALS, said, " I hope that U.S. News will think about whether the profits generated by its rankings are purchased at too great a cost to its own journalistic integrity."

Sexton called the rankings "misleading and dangerous."

"First, a ranking system inherently assumes that every applicant has identical needs and desires," Sexton said, "an assumption I am certain that the U.S. News editors would not make about magazines. The second problem with the rankings is that they are driven by a reputation-survey of persons who have little or no knowledge of what they are ranking."

The study of U.S. News’ law school rankings questions not only the validity of the magazine’s methodology, but also states that the magazine fails to assess many important aspects of law school quality. Among the findings of the study were the following:

• While U.S. News cites 12 different factors used in its rankings of law schools, "student selectivity" measured primarily by LSAT scores accounts for almost 90% of any differences. Comparing LSAT alone would result in remarkably similar rankings. "In short," the study says, "most of what U.S. News does to produce its overall ranks is unnecessary."

• Differences in grading standards at the undergraduate level are not taken into account, making the magazine’s use of undergraduate GPAs unreliable.

• The methodology used by U.S. News to evaluate responses to questionnaires given to law school deans and faculty produces artificially large differences between schools or creates differences where none exist, and can be easily manipulated by the respondents to make their own schools look better and other schools look worse. A single respondent, out of 200, can push a school into a higher or lower quartile. A similar problem exists with questionnaires filled out by lawyers and judges.

• U.S. News provides no information on how the respondents differed from those who did not bother to send back the questionnaire, an especially critical factor with the lawyers and judges, because only one-third replied.

• The rankings formula rewards schools that spend more money per student, without regard to whether schools that spend less money per student may be providing an equally good, or even better, education at lower cost.

• There is no direct assessment of the caliber of the school’s faculty or any student assessment of how good a school is.

• Many indicators of a school’s quality are not considered. These include the design of the curriculum, opportunities for students to participate in legal "clinics," summer employment opportunities, and such career benefits as would be indicated by the number of graduates who receive judicial clerkships or receive a good job offer relative to the general caliber of the students coming into the school.

The letter distributed to law school applicants warns students to be wary of all ranking systems, not just U.S. News’, and tells them not to "substitute someone else’s ranking system for your own best judgment. You are simply being misled if you treat some rankings, of which U.S. News is a prominent example, as even a competent and conscientious presentation of the limited information they purport to convey."

The letter also provides a list of more than two-dozen variables that applicants should consider in choosing a law school.

The AALS said that the serious problems revealed by its study provide strong support for the statement of Newsweek magazine in its "How to Get Into College" guide, that "rankings are inevitably arbitrary, emphasizing factors that can be readily quantified (such as average SAT scores) over others that cannot (teaching quality, campus atmosphere)."

"The Association of American Law Schools applauds Newsweek’s decision to stay out of the rankings business, and hopes that U.S. News will follow its example," Carl Monk, AALS Executive Director, said.

AALS Home Page

Study: The Validity of the U.S. News and World Report Ranking of ABA Law Schools