The new 2005/2006 BCG Attorney Search Guide to Class Ranking Distinctions and Law Review Admission at America’s Top 50 Law Schools (296-behemoth) has an extended discussion of law school rankings.  It argues that the U.S. News rankings are invalid

when you get beyond, say, the top fifteen. Outside of, the fifteen elite schools, the rankings become less and less definitive, changing due to miniscule changes in the scores achieved in the yearly ranking process. Finally, like the monetary value of the “goodwill” in the business world, law schools build up “goodwill” of their own over the centuries. They gain “mind share,” and once they do this, it is difficult to change the established perception. Thus, Harvard and Yale will always be rated highly, even if the most meaningful and defensible judgment criteria do not rate them as highly as public perception does.

The guide also draws on the article by Justin N. Bezis, An Inquiry into the Implications of Using Percentage Rankings of Heterogeneous Scholastic Populations, in arguing that:

What we learn from the Bezis study is that law firms’ conventional wisdom is both flawed and not flawed. It is flawed in its assumption that students in the top 10% at an elite school are superior to other students in that school. Statistically, Bezis says, the top 10% of any class will not be filled with only the students with the highest LSAT and college GPA scores. When recruiting at an elite school, if you recruit only from the top 10%, you may be missing superior law firm candidate who ranked lower in terms of pure academics.

However, buttressing conventional wisdom, Bezis also notes that a law firm is still statistically better off choosing a medium-performing student at an elite university than it is in selecting a highperforming student at a less prestigious regional school. Why? Because the same dynamics are operative in both elite and regional law schools; namely, the academically top performing students are not always those with the best natural ability and proven track record. But because the elite university will have many more students with high GPA and LSAT test scores who do not rank in the top 10% or 20% of their class.

(Hat tip:  JD2B.com.)