From Race to the Top in Legal Education (David Fagundes (Southwestern) & Jerry Solomon (Georgia)): A Voter's Guide to the U.S. News Law School Rankings:

Each year, hundreds of law professors, lawyers and judges complete the survey that makes up 40% of the total score – no other category comes close — of the U.S. News rankings that dominate the institutional incentives for most law schools.

U.S. News used to call this a "reputation" survey but it does not anymore; it asks respondents to assess the quality of each J.D. program. But with no information on educational quality, research shows that respondents simply replicate the previous year's U.S. News rankings, and the scores remain fairly static over time.

Given the question U.S. News asks, we need to think more about evaluating schools based on the quality of education that they provide for students, or the "value added" by the institution, in filling out the survey.

If schools can rise and fall based on the education they provide, they will have the incentive to improve, and less of an incentive to “game” the system. We might just get a race to the top in legal education. This project aims to provide some information to help make this possible. …

Attached is some information on schools that have (1) high bar passage rates relative to entering credentials; (2) curricula that use “best practices” in legal education; and (3) strength in programs that are highly relevant to developing skills for practice, such as legal writing, clinical programs, trial advocacy, and dispute resolution. In future years, we hope to produce a shorter list of top "value added" schools that get high marks in all or most of these categories.

For more, see Law Schools Competing on Quality, by Jerry Solomon.