U.S. News & World Report is updating parts of its rankings for law schools after criticism from deans at dozens of top-rated institutions, The Wall Street Journal reported.
U.S. News & World Report wrote, in a letter sent to the deans of all 188 law schools currently in its rankings, that it will rely less upon reputational surveys that are completed by the deans, members of the faculty, attorneys, and judges.
In addition, per-student expenditures, which favor the richest schools, will not be taken into account in future rankings. U.S. News will also begin counting graduates who obtain public-interest legal fellowships or graduate programs equally to graduates who gain employment.
U.S. News & World Report came under fire recently after Yale Law School, which has topped the law school rankings for decades, and Harvard Law School said they will no longer provide the information used to compile its list.
"The U.S. News rankings are profoundly flawed," Yale Law Dean Heather Gerken said in a statement in November. "Its approach not only fails to advance the legal profession, but stands squarely in the way of progress."
Harvard Law Dean John Manning said at the time: "It has become impossible to reconcile our principles and commitments with the methodology and incentives the U.S. News rankings reflect."
By the end of that week, 12 of the top 14 law schools, including Columbia University, Georgetown University, Stanford University, and the University of California, Berkeley, released similar statements.
These statements led U.S. News & World Report chief data strategist Robert Morse and Stephanie Salmon, senior vice president for data and information strategy, to hold numerous Zoom meetings with law school deans in December.
"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," they wrote in the letter, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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