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April 15, 2009

Rankings and institutional identity

Brian Leiter has suggested, with good reason, that bloggers not post the US News law school rankings when they come out.  

That's not to say, though, that they should not be discussed, vigorously.  I doubt that Brian would disagree, since he often does exactly that.  We can and should critique the rankings, because (among other harms) they are a force against diversity of purpose within legal education.

The rankings have come to shape the way we value ourselves, and that is something we should try to control more directly.  Self-definition by individual institutions is crucial to ideological diversity, and one weakness of the rankings is that a uniform, centralized set of defining criteria are put in a numerical order, taking that task of self-definition out of our hands.  Chicago is not Appalachian is not Notre Dame is not Northeastern, and that is as it should be.  When they become more alike, something important to students and society is lost.

-- Mark Osler

April 15, 2009 | Permalink

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Comments

I'm very interested in seeing how law schools, especially the Top 25 big firm feeder schools handle the law firm deferrals and other economic woes which should hurt their numbers a bit this year, and definitely next year.

We know a few things:

1) The employed at graduation number should go down as compared to a school's prior year number.

2) The starting salary should go down, because even those who are deferred for a year (e.g. at least have a job) are not being paid their big salary. Honest reporting would reflect that fact. Granted, the law schools only report what their alums tell them, and their alums may want to pretend that $150k is their salary (even though it's just what they hope to earn at the end of their deferral...if they have a job).

3) Even in this year's numbers we should see some decline in employed at graduation numbers. My understanding is that law schools which don't rely solely on big law for their "placement" may have been insulated from much of the economic woes.

Posted by: BarristersHandshake | Apr 15, 2009 12:05:09 PM

The rankings are subjective. They reflect the number of books, articles, and TV appearances of the faculty. Recognize a name, vote for it.

Here is an objective ranking. What is the average salary of the grads, controlling for years out of school? If in government, what is the budget for which the grad is responsible, controlling for years since graduation?

Money if the sincerest valuation between strangers.

Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Apr 15, 2009 3:21:29 PM

So we now have some more data courtesy of Prof. Leiter (http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2009/04/the-upheaval-in-the-market-for-new-lawyers-at-the-big-law-firms-temporary-or-permanent.html)

It looks like law firm starting salaries as reported next year should be very, very, low. (http://abovethelaw.com/2009/04/nationwide_start_date_round-up.php#more)

For example, school's who feed their students to Akin Gump should be reporting $10,000 for those alums, unless they find other employment. Arent Fox, $5k. You get the point, or am I misreading this?

Posted by: BarristersHandshake | Apr 15, 2009 9:51:46 PM

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