Update:
- U.S. News Delays Release Of Law School Rankings By One Week Due To 'Unprecedented Number Of Inquiries From Schools.' Is Bar Data To Blame? (Apr. 14, 2023)
- The U.S. News Law School Rankings: Say Hello To The New T14 (Apr. 15, 2023)
- What Is Behind The Delay In Releasing The U.S. News Law School Rankings? (Apr. 18, 2023)
- U.S. News Delays Release Of Law School Rankings Again Due To 'Unprecedented Number Of Inquiries,' Including From Schools That Are Ostensibly Boycotting The Rankings (Apr. 19, 2023)
- U.S. News Indefinitely Postpones Law And Medical School Rankings Amid Backlash (Apr. 21, 2023)
- NY Times: Rankings Schadenfreude — Elite Law Schools Boycotted U.S. News But Now May Be Paying A Price (Apr. 22, 2023)
Following up on yesterday's post, U.S. News Releases Preview Of 2024 Law School Rankings: Top 14 And New Methodology: Every year, U.S. News sends reputation ballots to three groups of recipients provided by law schools:
- Peer Assessment Score (25% of last year's overall ranking): Law schools provide names of deans, deans of academic affairs, chairs of faculty appointments, and the most recently tenured faculty member.
- Lawyers and Judges Assessment Score (15% of last year's overall ranking): Law schools provide names of ten law firm hiring partners, lawyers, and judges.
- 13 Legal Specialties (100% of each specialty ranking): Law schools provide names of faculty in each specialty area.
From my earlier post, U.S. News Provides Additional Information On Forthcoming Law School Rankings:
During the Jan. 4 meeting, law schools were told that U.S. News had not yet made a decision about whether to include peer evaluations, which might be submitted for schools who have pulled out of the rankings. Asked about that Friday, [the U.S. News spokesperson] declined to comment, adding that she doesn’t have the full information from the data team yet. …
In other words:
Yale's peer reputation score fell last year to 4.6 from 4.8 for many years, presumably because of the free speech incidents that have attracted national attention. It will be interesting to see if Yale's peer reputation score falls below 4.6 in this year's rankings.
In his projection of the 2024 U.S. News law school rankings to be released to law schools today and to the public next Tuesday (April 18), Derek Muller (Iowa; Google Scholar) assumed a 0.1 decline in the peer reputation of the 42 law schools that are boycotting the rankings in his five models:
I used last year’s peer and lawyer/judge scores, given how similar they tend to be over the years, but with one wrinkle. On the peer scores, I reduced any publicly “boycotting” schools’ peer score by 0.1. I assume that the refusal to submit peer reputational surveys from the home institution (or, perhaps, the refusal of USNWR to count those surveys) puts the school at a mild disadvantage on this metric. I do not know that it means 0.1 less for every school (and there are other variables every year, of course). I just made it an assumption for the models (which of course may well be wrong!). Last year, 69% of survey recipients responded, so among ~500 respondents, the loss of around 1% of respondents, even if quite favorable to the responding institution, would typically not alter the survey average. But as more respondents remove themselves (at least 14% have suggested publicly they will, with others perhaps privately doing so), each respondent’s importance increases. It’s not clear how USNWR will handle the reduced response rate. This adds just enough volatility, in my judgment, to justify the small downgrade.
In contrast, in his projected 2024 U.S. News rankings of all 191 law schools, Mike Spivey did not assume any decline in the reputation of the 42 law schools that are boycotting the U.S. News rankings in his fifteen models.
Here is a current list of law schools that have announced a boycott and schools that have announced they are not joining the boycott:
*Will answer some but not all questions
