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Thursday, August 25, 2005

Ind. Law - More on Law School Rankings

Remember the flurry last spring when the U.S. News rankings came out, and IU Law-Indianapolis had tumbled precipitiously? (If not, type "law school rankings" into the search box in the right column.)

Well, I just ran across this article, from the Education Life Supplement to the NY Times that came out a few weeks back (thanks to Ernie the Attorney for spotting it). Some quotes from the lengthy report:

As part of its methodology, U.S. News factors in how much a law school spends per student. But just how those costs are calculated has become a matter of considerable discussion, both in legal education circles and at the American Bar Association.

Consider library costs at the University of Illinois College of Law in Urbana-Champaign. Like all law schools, Illinois pays a flat rate for unlimited access to LexisNexis and Westlaw's comprehensive online legal databases. Law students troll them for hours, downloading and printing reams of case law. To build user loyalty, the two suppliers charge institutions a total of $75,000 to $100,000 a year, far below per-use rates.

But in what it calls a longstanding practice, Illinois has calculated a fair market value for these online legal resources and submitted that number to U.S. News. For this year's rankings, the school put that figure at $8.78 million, more than 80 times what LexisNexis and Westlaw actually charge. This inflated expense accounted for 28 percent of the law school's total expenditures on students, according to confidential data filed with U.S. News and the bar association and provided to The New York Times by legal educators who are critical of rankings and concerned about the accurate reporting of data. * * *

"Insofar as these polls affect student choices, the notion that I'm losing students because of this is insane," says Larry Kramer, dean of Stanford Law. He is considering whether he might include water, garbage removal, electricity, plumbing and property taxes as part of the university's spending per student. Stanford (U.S. News No. 3) is feeling the heat from Yale (No. 1), Harvard (No. 2) and Columbia (No. 4) - schools that report 120, 64 and 83 percent, respectively, more than Stanford in indirect expenditures and overhead for each full-time student, according to the confidential American Bar Association data.

Mr. Kramer chalks up the difference to accounting practices: unlike many schools, Stanford Law does not write the check for its utilities. Instead, the central university receives the law school's tuition, deducts an amount for utilities and hands a portion of the remainder to the school. "Now I have to think about going to the university and saying that I need you to disaggregate the law school from this administrative process to get that money counted for U.S. News," Mr. Kramer says.

Playing with the numbers is part of academia: with a higher ranking, a college stands to gain more prestige, competitive students, gifted faculty and alumni donations. But the problem is magnified in legal education, partly because U.S. News faces no significant competition. Unlike M.B.A. applicants, who can choose from a range of commercial ranking systems with varying emphases and methodologies, U.S. News has maintained a virtual monopoly in the law school realm since it started its annual ranking 16 years ago. In the prelaw community, U.S. News rankings are gospel, so law school deans find themselves under tremendous pressure to adopt polices to improve their standing.

The U.S. News & World Report survey truly dominates our lives in ways you couldn't imagine," Paul L. Caron, a law professor at the University of Cincinnati, said in opening remarks at the "Next Generation of Law School Rankings" symposium this spring in Bloomington, Ind. Attended by 60 professors, deans and students from around the country, the conference was largely devoted to how the survey affects legal education.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on August 25, 2005 12:24 PM
Posted to Indiana Law