New York Law Journal: Law Schools, April 27 2009

The Rankings

law school and, by definition, who becomes the legal profession of the future. The question is how this influence plays out, and the implications it has for the legal profession.

From the standpoint of student selectivity, the U.S. News ranking criteria are very simple:

• What percentage of applicants was admitted? (Lower is better.)

• What is the entering class median LSAT score?

• What is the entering class median undergraduate GPA?

Together, these factors make up 25 percent of a school’s overall ranking. In contrast to the vague reputational factors also used in the ranking,

there is a certain pristine quality to these criteria: They’re numbers, they’re verifiable, and within limits, they’re relevant. But, do they adequately measure the criteria that the practicing bar values? And what sort of incentives do they create for law school admissions behavior?

These are important questions, and they warrant some special attention to how these ranking criteria affect the “gate-keeping” function of American law schools.

Looking at these criteria from the standpoint of student selectivity, the rankings reward a school for four things: maximizing application volume, minimizing offers of admission, maximizing the median entering class LSAT score, and maximizing the median entering class undergraduate

grade point average. The LSAT and GPA measures count the most.

The rankings take no account of other admission factors. There is nothing about where degrees were earned; nothing about grading standards of schools or programs; nothing about whether applicants ever spent time outside the library as a student. There is also nothing about graduate work or community service or work experience; nothing about communication skills; nothing about leadership, resilience or passion.

So, if you’re a law school in an academic ecosystem that has completely assimilated the rankings, how might you structure your admissions process and decisions to take advantage of the system?

To increase your application volume, you might spend more on recruitment and outreach efforts. You might increase your travel budget or encourage reluctant applicants to apply by waiving your application fees.