{"id":4778,"date":"2004-04-04T22:59:57","date_gmt":"2004-04-05T02:59:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/formerlyknownas\/2004\/04\/04\/getting-rankled-over-rankings"},"modified":"2011-08-05T14:58:54","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T18:58:54","slug":"getting-rankled-over-rankings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2004\/04\/04\/getting-rankled-over-rankings\/","title":{"rendered":"getting rankled over rankings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"a1152\" name=\"a1152\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/ethicalesq\/profyabutsmall.jpg\" alt=\"prof yabut small\" \/>  I&#8217;m tired just reading the <em>headlines<\/em> from weblawgs complaining about the <\/font><a href=\"http:\/\/www.usnews.com\/usnews\/edu\/grad\/rankings\/law\/brief\/lawrank_brief.php\"><font face=\"Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif\"><em>U.S.News<\/em> law school rankings<\/font><\/a><font face=\"Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif\">.  I sure hope <\/font><a href=\"http:\/\/volokh.com\/2004_03_28_volokh_archive.html#108078597397172024\"><font face=\"Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif\">everybody<\/font><\/a><font face=\"Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif\"> gets over it soon (<a href=\"http:\/\/webapp.utexas.edu\/blogs\/archives\/bleiter\/001053.html\">him<\/a>, too).  The professors &#8212; whose egos appear to be quite threatened  &#8212; seem more frenzied than the prospective law students.   (see Law.com Daily  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.law.com\/jsp\/article.jsp?id=1080858017800&amp;specArtType=newsInBrief\">NewsWire<\/a>, 04-05-04)<br \/>\n<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif\">Of course, something as complicated and as highly-subjective as choosing the<em> best<\/em> law school will never be handled in a manner that pleases all affected persons and institutions &#8212; if only because lawyers are argumentative and <em>homo sapiens<\/em> are sore losers.   It seems awfully foolish for anyone to give significance to a school&#8217;s moving a few notches up or down on any one list in any one year.  <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/ethicalesq\/dice.jpg\" alt=\"dice\" \/>  Stewing over school stats seems like the rankest sort of <\/font><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2003\/09\/19#a291\"><font face=\"Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif\">snobbery<\/font><\/a><font face=\"Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif\">  &#8212; or insecurity.    Alternative approaches and ideas for improving the process can be useful and thought-provoking, but a little less whining would be nice.<\/font><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><font face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><font color=\"red\"><strong><em>Afterthought<\/em><\/strong> (04-05-04)<\/font>:  Serendipity is the salvation of the lazy editor.  So, having no new posting today, I couldn&#8217;t resist sharing with you the thoughts of <strong>Kurt L. Schmoke<\/strong>, dean of the Howard University School of Law, on law school rankings.  They appear in an article from this month&#8217;s  <em>Washington Lawyer<\/em>, which serendipitously showed up in my mail box this afternoon.  <\/font>( <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dcbar.org\/for_lawyers\/resources\/publications\/washington_lawyer\/april_2004\/schmoke.cfm\">A Conversation With Kurt L. Schmoke<\/a>, April 2004).\u00a0 Here&#8217;s what <strong>Dean Schmoke<\/strong> has to say (emphases added):<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote><p><strong><font face=\"Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif\">\u00a0<\/font><\/strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/files\/2008\/04\/schmoke3.jpg\" height=\"111\" width=\"76\" \/><strong><font face=\"Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif\"> What effect do <em>U.S. News &amp; World Report<\/em>\u2013type rankings have on legal education in general?<\/font><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p> I come out of a competitive environment in politics where you get judged daily, and every four years people get their opportunity to pass judgment in the election. Being judged, or ranked, is not a bad thing for a school, but personally I question the methodology in the <em>U.S. News<\/em> system where 40 percent of the grade for a law school is based on reputation among your peers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>That has led to an incredible flood of material from law schools: each dean floods deans at other schools with literature about everything they are doing, and we have web sites highlighting our programs. <u>This ranking system has generated a new paper chase, with deans trying to affect the perception of other deans<\/u>. It is driven by the need to put yourself on the radar screen of your colleagues, so that when they get a survey they will say, \u201cOh yes, I remember Tulane has a Caribbean law program.\u201d You don\u2019t know anything about the program, but you remember getting the brochure.<font face=\"Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif\"><u><\/u><\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p><font face=\"Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif\"><u>The good aspect<\/u> of the rankings is that it is helpful to some students trying to decide where they want to go to law school, because <u>it raises questions that they can look into<\/u>.<\/font><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" align=\"left\"> <font face=\"Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif\"><strong>Does that rating system affect Howard at all?  <\/strong><\/font><font face=\"Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/ethicalesq\/graphup.jpg\" alt=\"graph up\" \/><\/font><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" align=\"left\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" align=\"left\"><font face=\"Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif\">It does to some extent. Potential applicants ask me about our rating because they want to make sure that they go to a place that is going to give them a competitive edge when they enter the marketplace. That said, <u>most of our students recognize that the ranking methods say very little about schools below the elite, well-endowed top 10.<\/u><br \/>\nHow do you judge the University of Washington next to the University of Indiana on a national ranking? To put 187 law schools into a national ranking system and judge schools that are state oriented against schools that are nationally oriented is really difficult. <\/font><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" align=\"left\"><font face=\"Geneva,Arial,Sans-Serif\">I have found that our students understand that. The rankings have not hurt us in terms of the number of applications we receive, but I know that applicants read the reports and consider it. However, I think they come to Howard for reasons other than our rank in the <em>U.S. News<\/em> survey.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><font face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">Personal note:  Kurt Schmoke was a classmate of mine in law school.. He was one of the few students whose comments in class I consistently valued.  And, thanks to a winning personality, he was one of an even smaller group of classmates who I actually hoped to see again after graduation.  Unfortunately, our paths have not crossed.  I&#8217;m just a little envious of how little he&#8217;s aged, from his photos, since 1976.<\/font><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><font face=\"Arial\"><font color=\"red\"><em><strong>Update<\/strong><\/em> (04-05-04)<\/font>: <a href=\"http:\/\/civpro.blogs.com\/civil_procedure\/\">Scheherazade<\/a> has a very good post today, <a href=\"http:\/\/civpro.blogs.com\/civil_procedure\/2004\/04\/you_cant_know.html\"><font size=\"2\">You Can&#8217;t Know<\/font><\/a>, for those trying to decide which law school to choose.<\/font><\/li>\n<li><font face=\"Arial\">The JURIST <strong><em>Paper Chase<\/em><\/strong> has <a href=\"http:\/\/jurist.law.pitt.edu\/paperchase\/2004_04_05_indexarch.htm#108119933996663911\">compiled<\/a> links (04-05-04) showing that &#8220;Major movers in the 2005 <em>US News and World Report<\/em> rankings are responding in very different ways to their upward moves.&#8221;<\/font><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m tired just reading the headlines from weblawgs complaining about the U.S.News law school rankings. I sure hope everybody gets over it soon (him, too). The professors &#8212; whose egos appear to be quite threatened &#8212; seem more frenzied than the prospective law students. (see Law.com Daily NewsWire, 04-05-04) Of course, something as complicated and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2926],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pre-06-2006"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kP1R-1f4","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4778"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13904,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4778\/revisions\/13904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}