Law in Nebraska Crowded; Creighton Downsizing Law Class

Remember when Prof. Sara Stadler pompously suggested that Emory law students pack the wagon and head for Nebraska?

Well, as it turns out, ain't no jobs there! From the Omaha-World Herald:

Current students say the competition is fierce even for summer clerkships, internships and other steppingstones to post-graduation employment.
...
[S]ome students who graduated at the top of the [U. of Nebraska] class of 2011 are still hunting.
...
Area lawyers said Omaha's legal job market hasn't been as hard hit as in other areas. Although they still make most of their hires from area law schools, law firms are getting more applications from across the country as new lawyers scramble to find jobs.
...
Omaha lawyer Hal Daub...said he would not discourage students from seeking law degrees, which he described as a versatile education that prepares students for a variety of careers.

Nonetheless, Creighton's strategy has merit, Daub said.

“For a small state, we are graduating way too many attorneys. There just haven't been the opportunities that students thought they would have four or five years ago.”

Emphasis mine. Obviously, Daub is a mouthpiece/idiot for suggesting that someone go to law school for the "versatility" of the degree, but I take him at his word that there is overproduction with a whopping two law schools in the state.

The article's main point is that amidst this atmosphere, Creigton is lowering their class size by 13-15%. As I gave hesitant applause to the New York schools who did the same thing, I salute Creigton for acting somewhat responsibly and forgoing almost $600k in revenue even as they could fill every seat.

The article goes on to state that the Universities of Iowa and Nebraska have responded to the lack of jobs by beefing up their career services staffs. I have no idea what the bleep that's going to accomplish in actually creating jobs, but I suppose it's something. Maybe they can improve contacts with non-legal employers, but frankly I'd rather see them slice down their class sizes as well.

Nebraska is a fairly insular place, as far as U.S. states go. People live by UN-L football in the fall, and I imagine the the state school's network mops the floor with anything else. Omaha has a respectable business climate, but it's big enough for the top national schools to have a serious influence.

The fact that there are top graduates from Nebraska who can't find full-time work is scary. Of all the "guaranteed" resumes, I would think finishing near the top of a state flagship where there are no other big-name options would be just below doing well at a T-14. If I were from the state, I'd rather be at the top of the class at Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Tennessee, etc. than be at the top of similarly-ranked private schools.

I'm also curious how this will affect Creighton's USNWR rank. In theory, it shouldn't. I mean, if you went to Creigton and ranked 60th/155 or 60th/135, what the hell is the difference to employers, or your employment prospects? You'll sit through the same class, same teachers, etc. But the LSAT and GPA medians may rise a tick or two, and the student-teacher ratio may drop. And the after-graduate employment percentages may rise. They're currently ranked 127th. Let's see what happens when a flawed ranking system encounters shaving from the bottom.

Bob Morse, Champion for Change

The most passive journalist on the planet is at it again today, where he discusses the latest ABA jobs data changes.

U.S. News had been among those urging the ABA to take action to improve the credibility of the important consumer information.

Yes, "urging." See, kids, this is how reform works. Figureheads like Bob Morse are a position to change the system immediately, and yet they do nothing. Then, when the people who actually care about reform show up and make a self-evident point, the coat-riders like Morse join the chorus. Then, when they write the history, they were a full-fledged member of the justified opposition, even though they refused to enact any reform steps for years.

But that's not all the magic from Bob's hand.

If the new ABA rules are implemented, U.S. News will use our own law school statistical surveys in fall 2011 to collect and eventually publish the entire new richer and more detailed set of employment and jobs data from each law school for 2010 J.D. graduates. When we gather this richer data set, we will be able to make a more exact determination of how our ranking methodology will change.

Think about this for a moment. The new ABA guidelines already make clear what information will be collected. Granted, Morse and Co. don't know what the response rates will be or how reliable the state-wide surveys will be, but you'd think they could be working with the methodology prior to getting the data itself. After all, statistical methodology should be theoretically-sound independent of the data.

Is Morse being ambiguous and as commitment-free as possible so he can make methadological adjustments to keep the T-14 the T-14, or the T-6 the T-6? I'll leave you to speculate, but it's hard for a cynic like me to not make that assumption given the nature of the propaganda business.

Viva Reform! ABA Adpots Some Changes to Reporting, Industry Shill Objects

The ABA Council on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has adopted more enhanced reporting standards. Law school transparency has a good write-up of the changes, and I encourage readers to just go there, but the basics, and my minor criticisms, are as follows:

1. Job placement: Will be divided into (1) employed in position w/ JD; (2) employed w/ JD preferred; (3) another professional job; (4) non-professional job; (5) student; (6) unemployed, seeking; (7) unemployed, not seeking; (8) unknown.

I really dislike keeping the "unknown" category, and believe those students should be presumed unemployed, seeking. I also dislike the "professional/non-professional" dichotomy and feel a generic "non-law" category with salary data would suffice. My fear is that schools are going to count legal and administrative assistants and anything "sales" as "professional" jobs.

A very welcome change is that schools will now apparently be required to disclose if they are funding any of the positions. The type of job (firm size, government, etc.) information looks the same, but they've added an "employment location" section, so prospective law students can know where they'll likely wind up, how they have no prayer at practicing internationally, etc.

2. Salaries: As far as I can tell, this is the biggest change. Salaries are now going to be divorced from the institution. They seem to be doing away with school-specific salary information, citing the unreliability of the surveys, the lack of available data, the granularity of the data, etc. Instead, they're going to look at it by state.

I think this is still subject to being confusing (e.g. Syracuse and SUNY-Bufallo are going to be advantaged by higher New York City salaries, right?), but it's a step in the right direction, because it at least seeks to address the "skewing" that takes place that allows schools to report median private practice salaries in the six figures.

LST has a summary of the other minor concerns. Also on their entry is a comment by Linda A. Spagnola-Wendling, assistant dean at N.C. Central, who whines for far too many paragraphs about the "statistics beast."

Law School Career Services Offices (CSO’s) cannot mandate, coerce, bribe, or otherwise direct their new graduates to answer the annual questionnaire. It is a completely voluntary exercise which only goodwill and nagging manages to elicit responses.
....
Compounding this stress now is US News & World Report’s new method of calculating the overall employment rate used in their ranking system. Instead of using the number of graduates whose status is known as the denominator, they are using the number of total graduates. What this does in practical, mathematical terms is calculate all unknown graduates as unemployed. Regardless of the reason that the graduates failed to respond, to presume that they are unemployed is inaccurate, misleading and extremely detrimental to all the constituencies that rely on this information.
...
Calculating the employment rate based upon the known statuses of graduates who have responded supplies us with a representative sample – a well-known and widely accepted statistical practice. To deviate from this simply counters good reporting practices.
...
The statistical beast does not serve any master, either; merely its own greediness. Prospective law students will not get any more accurate information from this process, in fact it may be worse than before. The new ranking system races full steam ahead without notice to the law schools and without a plan of guidance or tools to help them reach the same point.

I've read a lot of dumb comments in my time blogging on this field, but this woman might take the cake in terms of unabashed, lazy inanity, and it appears that her poorly-written whine-fest was copied-and-pasted from elsewhere to boot.

First, she is statistically retarded. Voluntary "opt-in" responses from a diverse population never provide a valid sample when the variable affects the likelihood of response! To even use the term "representative sample" when the survey participants have the option to respond or not borders on statistical blasphemy. This is taught during the first week of any self-respecting college statistics course. But apparently this nimrod didn't learn basic statistics on her way through Rutgers (Bachelors) and Seton Hall (J.D.).

As I've explained previously, there was no basis for the previous U&S News assumption that 25% of the unknown graduates were employed. What that baseless assumption did was promote the unscrupulous to ignore graduates that they might have otherwise known to be unemployed, or to be more aggressive in contacting those who graduated at the top of the class.

No one is "presuming" that anyone is unemployed. But what I and the new U.S. News ranking will not do is presume someone is employed without proof. That's what the old system did. That's why it's changed, and why career service shills are the only people who favored it.

Second, Linda, no one is asking you and your crappy little office to be perfect and collect a response from every single graduate. But what I expect, and prospective law students need, is an accurate portrayal of that data. Notice in the standards that no one is really asking your office to work harder; I'm sure you work hard already. The crux of the changes is on the presentation side.

Her stringent efforts to oppose it with distortions of basic statistics and clumsy, heavy-handed metaphors suggest that she prefers the old, demonstrably-flawed system to the changes being made, which are being unanimously met with approval from groups like LST (although they say they don't always go far enough; I obviously concur). Gee, I wonder why that is?

Is this not a blatant admission that the old system distorted reality in favor of the law schools and the people who benefit from them? Is this not a strong sign that the changes are closing some oft-used loopholes to make the sky appear more blue?

Third, did y'all notice her use of words? "The statistical beast does not serve any master, either; merely its own greediness." This brazen piece of human waste is a law school administrator accusing industry reform advocates of greed, truly a ballsy approach. Linda Spagnola-Wending makes $75,000 a year working a relatively cushy administrative job (stable work week, light summers, etc.) in a low-rate state school whose tuition has increased 90+% for in-state residents since 2005 (hint: that's far more than the flagship university...), all in a state that has seven law schools and no major metro areas (unless you count Charlotte or Raleigh, which you shouldn't).

And yet we - those who want to better illuminate the collected data so that the numbers reflect reality instead a marketing narrative - are the greedy ones. I would have thought her Seton Hall legal education would have given her a better term, but I suppose not. In any event, this is truly Orwellian: those who want to enhance consumer protection and prevent consumer regret are greedy.

The real tell that this woman is an insufferable education-sector bureaucrat comes in the last paragraph of what I've quoted: "The new ranking system races full steam ahead without notice to the law schools ...."

Because, you see, to a career services person, the endgame isn't actually employing students or even getting accurate data, it's gaming the rankings. Don't take my word for it. Take hers. Why else do you think she feels the law schools need "notice" of how a 3rd-party "journalism" outlet ranks their institutions? Why should they be entitled to notice, and what self-respecting journalist outlet would actually give it to them? And if all the law schools are on an even playing field with respect to presentation, is it really a problem? And why, regardless of what the journalist outlet decides to do with the data, does that have anything to do with how the ABA collects data, which, one would assume, would have more to do with accreditation concerns?

In this ridiculous and ill-conceived letter, Spagnola-Wending wants us to believe that transparency is important, but not worth the extra effort for her office; that data collection issues are the same as data presentation issues; that the ABA somehow has authority over third-party ranking systems that should give schools notice so they can be more quickly manipulated; that we can assume many students not responding may "be indeed employed but merely too busy working in fulfilling and demanding legal jobs to respond" (yes, she actually wrote that); and that the ABA/state bars need to put another mandatory hammer on recent law graduates, as if non-dischargable debt isn't enough ('cause, you know, everything should be blamed on students and graduates; note how in this industry the previous customers are the bad guy...think about it).

Again, no one is asking career services offices to track down every last graduate. But if they do present the information, it needs to be an accurate portrayal of the class rather than a misleading presentation where half the class is in private practice making six figures when, in reality, 50+% are working jobs no one would ever go to law school to take. That's what these reforms get at, and that's why I think they're a positive step.

In fact, almost anything is a positive step when the previous methods of data collection have led to complete retards like Arthur Snyder ignoring the brutal job market while he builds a useless law school. The time for the ABA to stop being complicit in the misrepresentation of the legal reality has long passed. It's nice to finally see an attempt to correct some of the loopholes.

MBA USNEWS Flawed Numbers, Kansas Applications Down Big, and Duke Finds New Way to Grab Tuition Money

1. Grad School U.S. News Fraud:

From BusinessWeek:

The Gainesville Sun last night reported that the University of Florida Warrington College of Business supplied the magazine with inaccurate job-placement data, resulting in a higher ranking.

An anonymous complaint made through the university’s ethics hotline in August alleged that 37 percent of UF’s 2009 MBA graduating class had jobs at graduation, while 53 percent had jobs three months later. The figures supplied to USNWR indicated 53 percent placement at graduation and 79 percent three months later. UF was ranked 39th in 2009, falling two spots from the year before; in 2010 it fell to 47th.

An investigation found no evidence of willfulness, but you can't help but wonder at the similarities. Does any school ever drop as a result of submitting false numbers? Gee, I wonder why that never happens. In any event, the article gives us another look into the askew, dullard mind of Bob Morse, the laziest journalist/statistician on planet Earth:

[Morse] said he thought data accuracy was not a widespread problem, but it's one that should be addressed by organizations such as the American Bar Association and the MBA-CSC in their capacity as standard-setting bodies, not by the media outlets that conduct rankings.

"It's not my problem" is just about the shittiest possible answer a bona fide journalist or statistician can come up with. People who are actually interested in finding the truth - rather than serving as a press agent for the official organizations that supply them - actually get off their asses and find the truth, ensure accurate data, stop official manipulation where it's suspected, etc. I think at this point any illusion of U.S. News being anything more than a puppet with no journalistic or mathematical intentions is shattered by Morse's own admissions.

2. Kansas Applications Down

From the K.C. Star:

The University of Kansas Law School says its applications declined 23 percent for this year compared with last year.
...
About 850 students applied to the law school this year, down from about 1,100 last year.

They're still far from being underwater (they only admit about 350-400 each year), but this is a state flagship university. If you want to ultimately practice is Kansas or the Kansas City metro area, you can't find a better school to attend. I wonder how the quality of their applicant pool is, and I wonder what this kind of drop signifies for places like Washburn and UMKC that are 2nd-choices for KU applicants. I imagine we start seeing sub-150 LSATs more prevalently and schools have to reach further than they normally would.

3. Duke Innovates in Ways to Leach

From the Nat'l Law Journal:

The school announced this week that it will launch a master of laws program in judicial studies geared specifically to judges....

The LL.M. program will open during the summer of 2012 to 10 to 15 sitting judges. They will take intensive four- to six-week sessions over the course of two summers. The curriculum will include classes and seminars in which both judges and scholars look at the history of the judiciary and judicial decision-making. Participants will examine topics including judicial independence, bias, the selection process and use of specialized courts.

Tuition for this four- to six-week program? $17k. For roughly 1/6 of the normal school year, with a guaranteed small class size and what surely will be the lightest teaching, lowest resource demand in academic history, the school is charging over 40% of its full-year tuition price.

Ca-ching! I'm sure Duke justifies this by some inflated beliefs that the judiciary could use the advanced training, but let's be real: most courts are overworked and, frankly, the judges have better things to do than take classes at Duke for $17k and a worthless L.L.M. If a judge in my district went to this thing and was subject to election, I'd vote against him/her on principle.

But hey, you have to hand it to Duke. If kids are going to start turning down law school to find better uses of their money and time, the law schools are naturally going to move to pushing education for existing practitioners, more than they have already.

Delaware "Delaying" Law School; Hofstra Professor Rips on Merit Scholarship System

In case you haven't heard yet, the University of Delaware is delaying its plans for a new law school. At some point, cooler heads have to start prevailing. Let's hope we continue to see more articles like this and less articles like the ones where cray Alaskan representatives/candidates who spam my email think a law school in Fairbanks is a good idea.

In a mostly unrelated story, Hofstra Law professor Daniel Greenwood has written an article worth reading for the HuffPost on why merit scholarships are a market irrationally that should be regulated as price fixing.

"Merit" scholarships should more properly be called "US News & World Report Ranking Rebate Fees": schools give them because they need to maintain entering class GPA and LSATs in order avoid sinking in the rankings -- not because they believe recipients are likely to be better law students or happier, competent, just or successful lawyers.

This is a new angle, but one I like given my affinity for the "law schools act like for-profit businesses" viewpoint. I'm not sure it would fly legally (honestly, I don't know; my guess would be that non-profit businesses and those heavily backed by state policy are exempt from anticompetition statutes, but I'm not going to research anything), but I give him major props for creativity nonetheless.

Additionally, he has some dead-on-point remarks about the USNWR rankings scheme.

USNWR's rankings quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Schools that learn how to play the rankings game attract the students, faculty and money necessary to make real improvements, while schools that don't -- don't. Any school that dares to ignore the USNWR rankings risks a death spiral of rapidly departing employers, students and faculty, leading to lower ranking and even more problems.

Unfortunately, rankings are a zero sum game: if everyone learns to game them, no one can get a competitive advantage.

He goes on to articulate fully how everyone loses under the current system.

Throughout the article, he makes it crystal clear that what exists in legal education is not the result of a pure free market, but rather a distorted market, of capitalism gone wrong, in stark contrast to the stances taken by many industry apologists. However, the solution he believes would fix the problems would violate current antitrust laws, he claims.

Overall, I'm not entirely sure I agree with Professor Greenwood's solution of more stringent regulation, but the article's analysis of the problems is spot-on and a welcomed look from the inside of the legal academy.

If Ranking Rebates were illegal, many schools could immediately cut their tuition by a quarter or a third. Admissions officers could focus on the qualities that actually predict success in the law, instead of the ones that are easily measured in numerical rankings. Law students would be better able to focus on education, group learning and building relationships with their peers and professors, instead of competitive grade grubbing to keep their grant or transfer to a higher ranked school. And scholarship money could go to those who would best make use of it, instead of those who make schools look better on USNWR's arbitrary rankings.

It's hard to disagree with that, unless you've drunk from the bin of kool-aid that actually makes you believe LSAT scores are the end-all-be-all of a student and school's worth.

I encourage others to read the article, as there's more good in it than what I could reasonably exploit here.

Bob Morse Responds, Tries to Push Blame on Law Schools

Well, after last week's New York Times story on how law schools use merit scholarships to boost their USNWR ranking, which get pulled away after the first year. As I noted, this is the expected response to such a system where schools are incentivized to act in a way that doesn't always neatly conform to standards of ethics or what an objectively-good law school would do. All of this is the natural consequence of the USNWR rankings having almost no merit in actually evaluating law schools.

Naturally, Bob Morse has decided to respond to USNWR role in the scholarship game and, as seemingly usual, wants to pretend it's someone else's issue. After a "no duh" paragraph about students understanding risks and the need for disclosure, Bob lays out this gem of a passage (numbers mine for purposes of commentary below):

It's clear that the U.S. News law school rankings have a (1) large impact on law schools and prospective law school students. (2) However, the U.S. News Best Law School rankings are not why students lose their scholarships. In addition, the article (3) implies that the U.S. News rankings are the key factor behind why law schools are offering more merit-based aid and less need-based aid in order to enroll students with higher LSATs and GPAs and, as a result, improve in the rankings. (4) Law schools need to take far more direct responsibility for their policies instead of citing the oft-repeated claims that they are forced into these actions solely because U.S. News exerts so much power over law school behavior.

(1) With the power of national journalism (or are we going to admit that USNWR is no longer "journalism?") comes a grave responsibility in understanding the effects of one's words. That's why it's essential for the journalist to report accurately what happens, not base his conclusions on small sample sizes or unexamined self-reporting. And the journalist has a responsibility not to have a conflict of interest in the resolution of what happens. Bob's admission that his rankings have great effect is an admission that he either has a great amount of responsibility to get it right or that he's not a journalist at all.

(2) Technically, no, Bob, but your rankings are essential in establishing a system where parties act on reliance on insincere (as in, they're getting pulled after one year) scholarship offers - often advertised as three-year deals - that only exist because your magazine irrationally believes the LSAT to be relevant to how good a law school is; and many of those students actually do lose their scholarships. It also causes the rankings to favor richer schools, possibly at the expense of more efficient ones, and it causes schools to shift more money to their merit scholarship balances. Your magazine is a but-for cause of this mess, and disclaiming responsibility because you had nothing to do with Johnny taking the bait and getting a C+ in torts is absurd.

(3) "Implies?" No, Bob. The article "implied" nothing, and to say otherwise is disingenuous weasel-wording.

(4) Why don't you take responsibility as a "journalist" for the power your words have over people's actions, especially those who need metrics to boast of their accomplishments? There are countless steps you could take to prevent potentially-deceptive and abusive behavior from occurring. You could factor scholarship retention rates into your rankings. You could factor need-based scholarships into your rankings. You could collect and disclose scholarship offering and retention rates. You could do surveys comparing students' expected debt totals to their actual debt totals and penalize schools for the difference.

There are all sorts of steps to take to aid USNWR be a detached voice that helps the consumers understand the truth and have the facts necessary to make a decision about what law schools are good. To date, USNWR has done none of them and has persisted in using a formula that has nothing to do with actual law school merit. And yet, when they're called on it, they throw up their hands and say "that's the law schools' fault!"

Well, no, it's not. As a news institution, USNWR has a responsibility not to be a party in things like this. As long as they have the word "news" in the masthead, people like Bob Morse can't abnegate that responsibility by some twisted logic. So Bob, don't throw up your hands. Do your damned job.

Either that, or change the name and admit you're just a puppet for the elite educational lobby.

On The Scholarship Game

Many of you have probably already seen the New York Times article where David Segal discussed the law school scholarship game. I think others covered it fairly well, I just wanted to add a few points of my own.

My over-arching reaction to this piece is simple: What the **** did you expect?

Here's the thing about humans. If you set up a system where parties are perversely incentivized. They're going to act perversely. It doesn't matter if its Catholic pardoners or law school deans. Law schools aren't necessarily more immoral than the next exploitable institution, but the law school system is so warped, it's practically a given that this would happen.

What you have in law is a situation where the US News and World Report rankings became such an obsession in a field where many students fight for a small number of cushy positions. Schools, naturally, want to move up in the rankings. The rankings, it turns out, are so flawed that they look only at incoming classes (and not who's still there at the end of 3L year) and disproportionately weigh the LSAT and undergraduate GPA even though they have very little relevance on how good the actual school is, unless, of course, you make some ridiculous assumptions (e.g., that if a good student goes there, it's automatically a better school regardless of what happens to him while he's there).

The natural response for schools is not to increase the quality of their curriculum, but rather to increase the quality of their matriculant pool and then forget them after the first year. And so it was and is.

Of course, there are two obvious ways to stop this. The ABA could have stepped in and regulated the offering and retention of scholarships as an accreditation metric. After all, if a law school has to have a tenured faculty and a full-blown library, I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest they only offer scholarships under reasonable conditions, such that everyone has a chance to retain their scholarship if they do well with the first-year material (which is not currently the case). At the very least, they could protect students by preventing schools from stacking all the full-ride kids in the same section and by taking other tactics designed to increase the first-year scholarship pool.

The second filter could have been (or be) Bob Morse at US News and World Reports. On one hand, I feel sorry for Mr. Morse in that it's not his fault his magazine's ridiculous and stupid rankings gained such regard among administrators desperate for something good to tell their bosses/student bodies. On the other, however, every time Bob Morse opens his mouth, he sounds dumber and dumber.

Why is merit scholarship retention not part of the U.S. News data haul? “The main reason is that we haven’t thought about it,” said Robert Morse, who oversees the rankings. “It’s not a great answer, but it’s an honest answer.”

Then Mr. Morse thought about it.

“This isn’t meant to be sarcastic,” he said, “but these students are going to law school and they need to learn to read the fine print.”

Except, as the article points out, often there is not any fine print!

And how do you not think about it? The whole point of these rankings is to find the best law school, at least ostensibly. You should be trying to prevent schools from gaming the system through shifty means. You haven't even thought about it? That's the kiss of death for when an American system is in disarray. Some jackass didn't even bother thinking about the fact that his decisions and actions actually have consequences for those working in the system. That's why our primary schools are so decayed. Bob Morse's blindness to how schools act in reliance on his publication's rankings is impressive, the type of journalistic insight one surely develops while staring at a wall and banging bricks against his head for dozens of years.

How can you possibly have any integrity in ranking these places when you have no idea what actually goes on at them? Could you imagine the health bureau saying "we haven't really thought about it" when asked why they didn't check a restaurant's air ducts for mold? Evaluating law schools is this man's business and he admits he hasn't even thought about how they act and how it may jeopardize the authenticity of his rankings. What a clown!

Another major problem I have with the situation is that the law school deans are trying to push theory and technicality over practicality. For example, check out this excerpt about Golden Gate:

[I]n recent years, only the top third of students at Golden Gate wound up with a 3.0 or better, according to Ms. Ramey, the dean....

Ms. Ramey says it is statistically possible for 70 percent of first-year students to maintain a 3.0. She also maintains that Golden Gate 1L’s are well informed about the odds they face in keeping scholarships.

“Students who have done well in college assume they will do well in law school,” she said. They would know better “if they read our materials, if they listen to anything we told them in our admission process, or read our course catalog."

There are two major problems here.

First, the dean knows very well that 70% of the 1L class cannot wind up with a 3.0 or higher. If I'm not mistaken, for that number to happen, the same students who get As would have to get a few B-s. In other words, you can't have the same people set the curve in every class (otherwise, they push more people below the median, which makes it impossible for the below-the-line people to have a 3.0 or higher). Never, in the history of law schools, has there been an entirely different set of people set the curve in each 1L class. Given that reality, focusing on what is technically possible is grossly misleading and makes it sound much easier than it actually is to get a 3.0. It's technically possible I'll wake up in the Playboy mansion with a girl in each arm or that an asteroid will crash into Earth tomorrow at 6:17 am. In most areas of the law, including, so far as I know, consumer law, we focus on what is reasonable rather than on what is possible. It just isn't reasonable to tell kids that up to 70% of them can retain their scholarships knowing full well it'll never happen in a million years.

Second, how in the **** can Dean Ramey claim their materials would apprise someone of the risks of law school?!?! The admissions process is a sales pitch, not a risk factors section of a 10-K filing. In fact, let's check out Golden Gate's JD Prospectus on page 22:

Golden Gate Law awards both
full-tuition Dean’s Scholarships and
partial-tuition Faculty Scholarships
to qualified entering students. All
entering scholarships are awarded
on a three-year basis for full-time
students and four-year basis for parttime
students. There is no separate
application for entering student
scholarships as all students are
considered for scholarships at the
time they are admitted to the JD
program. Entering scholarships are
typically awarded to students whose
application materials demonstrate
outstanding achievement in one or
more of the following areas: academic
record, LSAT scores, writing ability,
professional experience, volunteer
service, or community leadership.
...

Is this a change, or are they being dishonest? The date on the PDF is 2010. According to the New York Times, these scholarships are contingent on a GPA requirement, but, as Dean Raney says, their admissions department makes the odds of retaining clear. You think if they had changed their policy, she would have let David Segal know.

Going to the Student Handbook helps answer these questions, on page 123:

The Law School Admissions Office awards merit scholarships to eligible entering students during the admissions process. Scholarships awarded prior to matriculation are awarded on a three (3) year basis for full-time or on a four (4) year basis for part-time students. The scholarship amount is stated in the student’s admission letter. To maintain eligibility for a scholarship as a continuing student, a student must earn a minimum 3.0 cumulative required course GPA at the end of each evaluation period. [emphasis mine]

Okay - so they consider them 3-year scholarships with a continuing maintenance requirement. Here's my question for Dean Raney: Why is that not in your JD Prospectus? (second question: what 1L actually looks at a course catalog, when a 1Ls classes are predetermined?).

Do you see, Bob Morse, that there WAS NO FINE PRINT on the JD Prospectus? That's how they roll. Golden Gate is effectively selling their entrance scholarships as a 3-year deal when it's actually a 1-year deal with a reevaluation period.

In the ordinary state consumer protection law context, that's fraud with very few questions asked. (I actually think it's borderline fraud to even sell them as opportunities for a 2L scholarship when there's more chances offered than spots available).

Overall, this is a situation that developed from a flawed system where - again - transparency and regulation would help, or at least we could hope.

Consider what happens at Chicago-Kent, the school that offers students less scholarship money ($9,000) if they want it guaranteed, and more ($15,000) if they can clear the 3.25 G.P.A. hurdle. Ninety percent opt for the larger and riskier sum, according to school officials. A “significant” number later lose their scholarships, says the school’s dean, Harold J. Krent.

“The real issue is that students don’t think about this decision in the sophisticated way that you’d like them to,” he added.

Well, Dean Krent, that's nice in theory, but it's hard for them to think about it in a "sophisticated" way with (a) limited information and (b) an assumption, which the law schools prey on, that getting a 3.0/3.2/whatever is easy in law school, since it was easy in undergrad for 90% of law school applicants and its easy in other graduate settings.

What really galls me is that the administrations, ABA, and Morse all seem to have a "the consumer should do his homework/caveat emptor" attitude.

Historically, when we have a system where unsophisticated players get screwed by repeat players who know the rules in and out, we put a filter on the system to ensure a fairer process. We've done it countless times in the business/financial sector, and individual states have all sorts of laws governing industries like used cars, pawn shops, antiques, etc.

What's truly sad is that in an industry designed to teach rational argumentation, fair process, and, hopefully, justice, it took so long for people to wake up to the reality of the system and that those in power still have the attitude that nothing really needs to be changed. People are getting screwed by these type of deals and for the Dean Raneys and Bob Morses of the world to just throw up their hands is unfortunate, at best.

Rutgers-Camden Draws Faulty Conclusions, Case Western Students Show Some Fight, and Reminder Re: Program on April 7

For all those of you who may think rankings and lists are benign tools, I give you this nauseating press release from Rutgers-Camden:

In the midst of a challenging economic climate, the Rutgers School of Law–Camden is emerging as a smart investment for strong career preparation.

What is their proof for this high-flown, completely contrary statement that spending $200k in real cost on a legal education is a "smart investment" when it may yield only a negligible increase in earning power for the majority of graduates?

Oh yes - surveys! First, they cite the flawed US News and World survey I've already discussed (even if the survey were accurate, it wouldn't necessary mean that Rutgers-Camden is a "smart investment" given that there's no discussion of alternatives). Second, they cite some meaningless Forbes survey ("The Best Law Schools for Getting Rich;" no, I did not make that up) that tracked mid-career earnings of people a generation or two above the current class of applicants as proof that Rutgers-Camden will bring the current class the same piles of lucre.

Folks, if that logic worked, people should forget law school and invest every dime in IBM, GE, and Microsoft. After all, if it worked for people in 1980, surely it'll work for today's kids.

Given how ridiculous such a proposition is for ordinary investing, it's preposterous that (a) anyone serious argues that because going to law school [x] made some 45-year-old rich, it'll do the same for today's 22-year-olds; and (b) anyone actually believes it.

But don't worry, Rutgers-Camden is obviously a very special institution that is clearly different than its peers on multiple levels:

“The true measure of the Rutgers School of Law–Camden is in the success of our students and graduates, the excellent scholarship of our faculty, the friendly service delivered by our staff, and our ability to help the citizens of New Jersey through our highly effective pro bono and clinical programs. Rutgers–Camden excels in each of these important areas.”

Additionally, the Rutgers–Camden law school is included in the 2011 Princeton Review Best 172 Law Schools.

Whoa, can I still transfer to this magical, unique place? I'm convinced I'll be rich in 10 years.

In other news, Case-Western has been without a real dean for a while, and now one of the finalists, former FEC Chairman Bradley Smith, is coming under fire as some of the Case-Western community has launched a website opposing him:

"CaseAgainstSmith.com seeks to inform members of the Case Western Reserve University community about Smith's radical views and history," says an unsigned press release on the web site. "Smith has been described as the intellectual powerhouse behind efforts to roll back Watergate-era campaign finance reforms. . . . We are concerned that the appointment of a radical such as Smith to Dean of the Law School could distract from the many strengths of Case Western Reserve University."

You can view the actual website here. Basically, Smith was amicus curae for the very unpopular side of Citizens United, has connections to the Koch Brothers, and has a murky ethical history when it comes to corporate-political-judicial entanglements. Frankly, I understand the concerns. It's simply impossible to separate some people from their politics when their views are so radical and antithetical that it detracts from their ability to lead a large organization, especially one like a law school that is (supposedly) committed to educating students in ethics, fairness, collegiality, and all the traits that should make the profession and its social function worth a damn; they may fail much of the time, but that's the ideal. And if students have no respect for the people running the system, the school's mission is undermined (which is another reason why schools' misleading of students is so nefarious, but I digress).

In addition to claiming the Supreme Court's adoption of his views relieves him of being a radical (need I remind him that the S.C. once adopted pro-slavery views?), Smith has responded that "One doesn't seek a deanship to advance a political agenda, and the school isn't choosing a political leader." I find that highly disingenuous and an absurdly narrow view of what "political" means, or what a deanship symbolizes to a school.

In a final piece of news, I'd like to promote the upcoming panel "JDs in the New Economy." It's going to be this Thursday April 7, 2011, at 12 eastern/11 central. Third Tier Reality's Nando will be participating along with a number of esteemed people (including Dean Closius of Baltimore, whose contradictory statements in the NYT article I discussed back in January). The group will specifically discuss the value of a law degree and law school curriculum. Unfortunately, I won't be able to listen in but it looks to be fun, it's free and I encourage my readers to do so if they're available.

How Not to Do a Value Survey

This U.S.N.W.R. article seeks to find which schools are the best values by looking at the median salary to average debt ratio. Right away we have a methodology problem by comparing an average to a median. Another problem is that the survey includes only private sector salaries, ignoring the sizable amount of government workers who have salary/debt ratios well below one.

The worst problem, of course, is that they're using the schools' horribly flawed, self-reported numbers.

Here's the list for giggles:

1. Southern U.
2. Georgia State
3. Rutgers-Camden
4. Texas Southern
5. Brigham Young
6. North Carolina
7. Texas
8. Loyola-New Orleans
9. Georgia
10. California-Berkeley

There's like four or five of these that make sense. Anyone who thinks Southern U. Law Center grads are making five times their debt load after graduation is a fool, and if anyone can prove to me that Loyola-New Orleans median grads are actually making 84k a year with only 45k in debt (total cost full time is 45k a year and less than 20% get juicy scholarships on the tuition part), I'll eat my computer piece by piece and then move to Louisiana.

Garbage in, garbage out. If anyone actually did this survey honestly, perhaps only 15-20 schools would have salary/debt ratios over 1.0.

US News and World Report Torn Between Shilling and Journalism

I get that US News and World Report has little actual news or commentary to offer aside from being known as the publication that helps market colleges by ranking them, but at least they could have a consistent editorial view.

For example, this article describes how law schools are adjusting to a "suddenly dog-eat-dog job market" (Really, David van Zandt? "Suddenly?") and a changing BigLaw model.

Starting salaries are flat or down, too, according to NALP—the Association for Legal Career Professionals in Washington, D.C. The median starting pay at firms with more than 700 lawyers in New York and Los Angeles was still $160,000 in 2010, but markets like Boston and San Francisco dropped from that level back to $145,000. Overall, the median starting salary at private firms dropped to $115,000 last year from $130,000 in 2009.

Belt-tightening at larger firms has had a ripple effect, pushing grads to pursue government and nonprofit jobs they previously wouldn't have considered. "I feel that I'm competing with everybody, for every job I've applied for," says Jeremy Wolff, 31, a 2010 graduate of Northeastern University School of Law in Boston who left a technology career to focus on civil rights or social justice work. He currently is working as a research consultant with a team of professors from his law school, covering his living expenses but not providing enough to begin paying down his six-figure debt. "If I knew then what I know now, I would emphatically not go to law school," he says. "I think the legal job market has fundamentally changed."

Okay, so overall, nationwide, starting salaries at private firms have dropped 11.5% in two years. That's big, as is the fact that the graduates now denied BigLaw compete with other graduates for all those other jobs, like whatever work there is at the DA's office, MidLaw, or legal aid foundations. That trajectory should be a priority concern for anyone contemplating applying for law school now.

Now let's head to US News and World Report's Law Schools: Tips and Stats:

First year associates at large private law firms can expect to make $160,000 in metropolitan markets including New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., according to the Association for Legal Career Professionals, known as NALP, in its 2010 Associate Salary Survey. In other markets, such as Boston and San Francisco, salaries can range from $110,000 to $160,000, with a median of $145,000.

First of all what a "large private law firm" is to a prospective law student is probably different than what a "large private law firm" is to the NALP. And wouldn't it be responsible to mention that the $145,000 is a falling median? And isn't it irresponsible to suggest applicants now - i.e., job seekers in 2014 - "can expect" to make $160,000 when salaries have fallen in other markets?

And overall, the "article" seems to be a blatant advertisement for going to law schools, e.g.:

If you are set on a career in public interest law, don't let finances stop you.

You mean like the "finances" that there's very little actual work in public interest law?

Intellectual property and energy law continue to be lucrative—and competitive—specialities [sic].

If it's competitive, it's likely not going to be lucrative in the future. See the other article your same news organization put out the exact same day.

My big question to US News is this: Why did the first article I cite espouse a view that there has been a fundamental change in the job market, while the second article sold law school on the premise that the job market is pretty much moving right along, i.e., getting back to the pre-recession normal? ("many partners at large law firms agree that the market has nearly stabilized.")

All these articles seem to show is US News' apparent hypocrisy. On one hand, it feels beholden to its journalistic routes, finding it necessary to report truth and - gee whiz - cite its sources. On the other, it realizes its existence is dependent on the college industry continuing to sell the idea of education as the path to a dream job. To hell with journalistic integrity (Who at the "large law firms" are agreeing with this? Who knows! Just say "Many").

I appreciate their attempt at journalism. The first piece is insightful and should be required reading for those contemplating attendance. But it's hard to take that piece seriously when the same organization trumpets law school as the land of public interest saviors and $160,000 salaries as if it were reading from a admission's department brochure.

On Malcom Gladwell's Law School Rankings

Smug intellectual Malcom Gladwell has come with his own law school rankings:

Gladwell, relying partly on a ranking tool devised by Indiana Law professor Jeffrey Stake, takes a stab at ranking law schools based on 3 factors: the value for the dollar (40%); LSAT scores (40%); and faculty publishing (20%).

As I've previously pointed out, such an approach is 60% hopelessly dim-witted. But he gets kudos for at least attempted to factor in investment principles, although I have no idea how he computed "value" and he's hardly the first person to suggest we should be looking at tuition amounts.

He's still wrong (Faculty publishing? Really?), he's just not as wrong as the US News and World Report.

About Columbia Law School and Employment

In case you've missed it, Columbia Law School has been rather vigorous in their attempts to correct the impression made by the recent New York Times article that an indebted student featured in the Times' expose graduated from Columbia Law. A good summation of the situation can be garnered by checking out the recent posts at First Tier Toilet, whom the Law School has repeatedly contacted regarding the error and on which the former student has allegedly posted in an attempt to clear the matter up.

Columbia is, of course, correct, and they're entitled to their correction. The student, it appears, was never an enrolled student in Columbia Law, and he did not graduate from there as the article implied.

But by no means does clean Columbia from the article's scope. Consider the following:

• Columbia claims on their website that "98% of the Class of 2009 was employed by graduation in a variety of legal fields," although they provide no source for this claim. It seems high, considering only 90% of Columbia grads taking the NY Bar passed on the 1st try in 2005. Why would someone hire a 90th percentile Columbia grad knowing that? Is working at the law school a "legal field?"
  
• On the same webpage, Columbia claims that "82% of Columbia's Class of 2009 chose to join law firms of varying sizes and areas of practice immediately after earning their J.D. degree...6% immediately entered public interest, government, or academic positions; Eight percent of the Class of 2009 received federal clerkships throughout the country; and 2% entered the business sector." (emphasis mine).
  
• But, in May of 2009, Columbia "offered their unemployed graduates low-paying eight- or nine-month-long fellowships so as to be able to count those students as employed for the purposes of USNWR." According to Above the Law, there were five of these fellowships offered.

Now, I would hope readers of this blog are sharp enough to figure out that something here smells repulsively of bullshit. And no matter which part is bullshit, somehow it all comes back to Columbia School of Law.

The grand point here is that even if Columbia wants to cry foul over the bruising indignity of having a Columbia M.A. in International Law / Florida J.D. graduate confused with a Columbia J.D., Columbia is playing the numbers shell-game as much as anyone else.

No one has a 98-100% response rate on voluntary surveys sent to 300-400 people. Temporary fellowships are not employment, and they wouldn't be necessary if 98% could actually find "legal field" employment. "Within nine months" is not "immediately," and I imagine few of Columbia's lower-tier graduates had the pleasure of "choosing" the firm they practiced at.

I'm not going to sit here and say that Columbia is not a good school. On the contrary, it has an excellent placement record and is probably worth the expenditure for a student going in to law school fully-informed; for a student whose goal is to work in the Manhattan skyscrapers, there might not be a better option than going to Columbia provided he or she can gain admission and put up with the people there. It's one of maybe 20 or so schools I'd actually consider paying full tuition at.

But let's not pretend schools like Columbia are exempt from the "creative accounting" explained in the New York Times article. Whether a fourth tier for-profit counts Arby's employees as "employed" or a certain school concocts some fellowship to boost employment and stay ahead of a NYU and Penn in the rankings, it's manipulation, it's unfair to consumers, and it's ethically abhorrent, no matter what the ABA finds permissible.

Administrative Hypocrisy Rampant in NYT Article

Wow. For those who haven't seen it, the NY Times (David Segal) has done a seven-page article on the problems with law school (the law school "scam"). Special recognition to Kimber at SMS is owed for her presence and role in the piece. BIDER and JJD have already commented on the article, and there's little I can add to either their commentary or the article itself on its basic idea.

But I do want to call some of the administrative hypocrites in the article out for what they are, as it seems that part of the article may get lost in taking in the whole seven pages while people digest the enormity of having the problem showcased in the NYT. Considering the administrators in isolation shows why change to the current system must come from the outside, as the law school administrators become too biased in maintaining the status quo that benefits them. I think this is a point that needs to be made explicitly.

I greatly respect the work of Mr. Segal, so I'm going to borrow as minimally as possible to make my point, and I encourage all my readers to go to the Times and read the entire article; it's absolutely worth it.

First up is Beth Kransberger, associate dean at Thomas Jefferson School of Law (one of the law schools who occasionally advertise on this site via cheap google ads), who offered this:

[She] stands by [their 92% employment] figure, noting that it includes 25 percent of those graduates who could not be located, as well as anyone who went on to other graduate studies — all perfectly kosher under the guidelines....

“You need to take the high road,” she said. “Schools that are behaving the most ethically want students who come to law school with their eyes open."

Ms. Kransberger, you know very well that less than 25% of the non-respondents are employed, don't you? And you realize that graduate school is not the same thing as a remunerative job, right? So if you really want to "take the high road" and give students enough information to keep "their eyes open" as they enter law school, why are you adding them in?

No one cares about the "guidelines" except the USNWR people and the ABA. Students need to know how many of your respondents are actually employed as lawyers or at work similar in prestige and pay. "Schools . . . behaving . . . ethically" do not include an arbitrary figure of non-respondents as "employed" merely to boost their numbers, regardless of what the guidelines say what you can and can't do. You also should not be including baristas at Starbucks to behave "ethically." As a lawyer (I presume), you should know that law and ethics do not always align. As a legal educator, you should not be mistaking compliance with the law with moral behavior.

Next up is Phillip Closius, now dean at the University of Baltimore School of Law, who manipulated where low-LSAT students were placed to cause his former employer, Toledo, to shoot up in the rankings. He gets on the list with one paraphrased, self-explanatory sentiment:

In his estimation, a dean who pays attention to the U.S. News rankings isn’t gaming the system; he’s making the school better.

...as if the average student could tell one lick of difference in the education he or she received because the school's USNWR rating shot up 50 spots. On the previous page of the article, Dean Closius had said there were fallacies in the USNWR rankings; now he says following them makes the school better, which is an admission that they have value, which would suggest they are not based on fallacies. Make up your mind.

Next is Dean Yellen at Loyola, who gave this revelation:

...I do know that a lot of schools are hyping a lot of misleading statistics.

Yes, Dean Yellen . . . LIKE YOUR OWN!

Finally we have Yellen's cross-town rival David Greenberger, associate dean at DePaul, who added this:

I think [prospective students] should have all the info, and the info should be accurate, but saying once they know that they shouldn’t be allowed to come, that’s predicated on the idea that students are really ignorant and don’t know what is best for them.

Dean Greenberger, if this is what you believe, why does your school not give "all the info" and why is it not accurate?

Take a look at the following, directly from DePaul's prospective student profile in its admissions department:

Employment & Career Services Information

In 2009, 92.8% of the graduating class reported employment within nine months of graduation. While most DePaul graduates choose to stay in Illinois, specifically in Chicago, many choose to practice in other states. Popular employment locations for 2009 DePaul graduates include California, Indiana, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Washington, DC, and Wisconsin..

Employment Categories

Private Practice	50%
Business	26.1%
Government	12.1%
Public Interest	4.4%
Judicial Clerkships	1.5%
Academia	4.4%
Unknown	1.5%

Salary Statistics

Average Starting Salary in Private Practice	$97,056
Average Starting Salary in Business	$74,267
Total Starting Salary Range	$25,000-190,000

That's it for the website. What in the hell does any of this tell the average prospective student?

Anyone who's taken even an elementary course in statistics knows that an average is not a good measurement for data like this, as they are more susceptible to being skewed by outliers (like the $190,000 graduates) than a median.

What does "business" mean? Is stocking shelves at Costco "business?" How does one know anything by knowing the "average starting salary in business?" Is that all non-J.D. positions, or is it consulting and sales gigs? Is it J.D.-required jobs serving as inside counsel for major corporations?

What does it mean to say "92.8% of the graduating class reported employment within nine months of graduation." Is that permanent employment or do temporary gigs count, i.e., if they were employed for a 2-week gig during the nine month period? Is it really ALL graduates, or just survey respondents (ABA guidelines would suggest it's just survey respondents). Is it legal employment or non-legal employment? How many people even responded to the survey about their salaries? Obviously, if you had at least 7.2% unemployed, your salary range should be 0-$190,000, right?

To Dean Greenberger, I have no problem with the attitude in the latter half of your quote, but the students must have sufficient information first. Unless people like you and Dean Yellen start at home and have your own schools providing accurate, helpful information, your words are meaningless. It's one thing to talk about full and accurate information; get off your butt and do it. Set an example for your peers and the rest of the legal community and push for change in the ABA.

Until then you are nothing but another hypocrite spitting out empty buzz-words and platitudes trying to thrust blame on someone else. You have the power to change the system.

But unfortunately, as the article suggests (notably by Prof. Henderson), change is not likely to come from that quarter. There are at least six law school administrations mentioned or quoted in the article (including Georgetown's) and not a damned one of them comes off as defending anything of virtue. The quoted non-administrator professors all know what they're talking about and as far as I recall, each one puts a hammer to a nail. Something must change when you become an administrator; either that or the wrong people get promoted to that type of work.

These are the people who are to lead the next generation of lawyers, a field where ethical considerations are paramount. If they cannot perform their jobs without blatant hypocrisy or a confusion of ethics with following some silly guidelines, it speaks volumes about the state of legal education, as well as the ability of the profession to self-regulate.

Propagandist of the Week: Bob Morse

This is from Bob Morse's latest defense of the USNWR rankings, titled "Law Schools Report Accurate Data to U.S. News":

Just how honest were law schools when they reported their data to U.S. News for our 2011 Best Law Schools rankings? Each year, we ask law schools to report the same statistical information to us that they report on the American Bar Association's (ABA) annual accreditation questionnaire. Despite some notable exceptions and data errors over the years, it turns out the schools are pretty reliable in their data reporting.

To support this absurd confusion of reliability with honesty (you can reliably lie, can't you?), he points to a correlative study done by Chapman's Tom Bell, which takes the data provided to the ABA and uses the USNWR's methodology to reach the same conclusions that USNWR did. Then Morse drops this absolute gem of propaganda bullshit:

The fact that Professor Bell was able to duplicate our methodology by using law school data he obtained directly from the ABA proves that the U.S. News rankings process is very transparent and can be duplicated using publicly available data. This exercise also establishes that U.S. News is calculating and weighting the ranking variables as stated in the posted methodology. Users of our law school rankings can be confident that the results are correct given the weights and rankings variables that U.S. News has chosen.

Finally, does Bell's study also prove that law schools are being accurate in how they report their statistical profile data to the ABA, the general public, and U.S. News? No [ed.: yet your opening speaks of "honest" schools because _______?], this only proves that law schools are being very careful to report the same data to U.S. News that they report to the ABA for accrediting purposes.

Has anyone, in the history of the USNWR rankings, doubted that USNWR was using data that wasn't identical to that given to the ABA, especially since the ABA information is public and USNWR, being excellent journalists, would surely cross-check their data? Has anyone ever suggested that law schools are not "being very careful to report the same data to U.S. News that they report to the ABA for accrediting purposes?"

As far as I know, they haven't. Instead, all Morse did here was publish a blog entry to say that some professor took the listed methodology applied it to the exact same data set, and came up with scientifically-similar results. What the hell is that supposed to show, again?

Ah, yes, that "the results are correct given the weights and rankings variables that U.S. News has chosen."

For most people, the word "correct" would imply that the substance of the rankings is correct, e.g., that Harvard is a better law school than Georgetown, rather than the process used to form the rankings was scientifically sound. Take a look at certain fragments of this piece in order:

• ...schools are pretty reliable in their data reporting.
• ...the U.S. News rankings process is very transparent...
• ...U.S. News is calculating and weighting the ranking variables as stated...
• ...the results are correct...

The way this was composed is deliberately designed to defend the whole system, including the substantive results. The fact that in the next paragraph he disclaims "but the data may not be good" doesn't change the fact that he spent the rest of the piece defending the results derived from that data.

The first issue is, and always has been, that their methodology is fatally flawed. The second issue is, and always has been, that the numbers presented to them are inaccurate.

The fact that Morse was able to take a complete non-story not even worthy of a blog entry and turn it into a rhetorically-sound defense of the rankings' value is admirable. I'm baffled that a professional writer and statistician can conflate the concepts of reliability, honesty, accuracy and precision all in one post. Of course, he did almost the exact same thing a year and a half ago.

The fact that Professor Bell was able to duplicate our methodology and outcomes using data collected from a different source proves that the U.S. News rankings process is very transparent and accurate.

Professor Bell concludes:

"For now, I'll just offer this happy observation: The close fit between USN&WR's scores and the model's scores suggests that law schools did not try game the rankings by telling USN&WR one thing and the ABA (the source of much of the data used in my model) another. Even a skeptic of law school rankings can find something to like in that."

Again, a complete non-story that does not justify the claim made ("the U.S. News rankings process is very . . . accurate") as read by lay people. It's not a "happy" observation and there is no hint that a "skeptic . . . can find something to like" since no ground of skepticism is weakened. The law schools' gaming of the rankings does not take place in presenting different data to the USNWR and the ABA. No one has ever thought that. What law school in its right mind would lie to a journalist when there's contradictory public information available? Do you think law school administrators are dopes?

On the bright side, at least this year's article had a one-line disclaimer that was somehow supposed to alleviate a plausible interpretation of the other four paragraphs. That still doesn't change the fact that it's shameless propaganda calculated to make the rankings seem "accurate," "honest," and "transparent," which seems odd given that just last week Bob was telling us not to take them so seriously.

On the USNWR Rankings

Kimber at Shilling Me Softly is reporting that the USNWR will adjust the information presented about its law school rankings to give a better portrait of the information colleges submit to them (i.e. by providing more information to put employment numbers in context, not any change to the methodology) based on articulated criticism from Law School Transparency.

Even though I don't like the concept of the rankings generally, I realize they do have an effect. I obviously think this is good news; isn't anything that presents a more honest picture of the legal profession?

But I wanted to talk more about USNRW in general. I found this article here, about a recent study of which USNWR was a partner that looked at the nature of college rankings (the article is part 2 of a 3-part series:

3. Do the U.S. News rankings "put pressure on institutions to invest in strategies and practices primarily for the purpose of maintaining or strengthening position in the rankings," either consistently or occasionally? An overwhelming majority (95.1 percent) of NACAC's members at both colleges and high schools believe that "Yes, colleges either occasionally or consistently invest in strategies and policies to improve in the rankings."
...
4. Does your school or institution make programmatic changes because of rankings? The report concluded that 54.1 percent of NACAC's members representing colleges reported that their particular institutions do not make any programmatic changes based on the ranking. However, it said that 7.6 percent say that their school consistently makes changes and 38.4 percent say that their schools make changes occasionally because of the rankings.

Although this is for the undergraduate sector, I strongly suspect that it applies equally (or greater) to law schools, and I find the timing of these revelations significant.

Notice anything curious about questions 3 and 4 when put together? Question 3 asked if schools in the generic sense put in policies to improve their USNWR rank. Question 4 asked members if their institution in particular did it (although I'm not sure what they mean by "programmatic" change and that seems like a question flaw; under a liberal definition of the word, it would mean anything, but people might interpret it narrowly).

In any event, I find the disparity between 3 and 4 interesting. 95% of respondents believe schools make changes, but only 46% of those reporting say their own school does it. Assuming no one thought they were the only school in the country that did it, that's a hypocrisy/sanctimonious rate of around 49%, i.e., those who thought other schools put in programs with the ratings in mind, but their school did not.

That's really high and USNWR isn't dumb. Although normally I'm cynical about such things, there's a part of me that honestly believes USNWR is getting the results back from this survey (and maybe others) and is realizing how widespread and destructive to academia their ratings have become. In the past few decades, USNWR has gone from being a news magazine to being a journalistic outpost whose sole practical purpose to most people anymore is to put out these silly rankings. And when someone's bread and butter may be tainted - and the above discrepancies show the college administrators have no qualms lying about their actions or their motives - it's usually wise to do something about it and find ways to correct the problem.

In the past few years, they've gone entirely online and faced major criticism from college presidents for their rankings. Given the results of both those developments, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they were actually trying to take care of their rankings and nip accurate criticism - such as LST's that the information presented was not giving a complete picture - in the bud to maintain relevant.