Law school sheep and the US News rankings

Countless news stories now litter the web proclaiming that Yale and Harvard, followed by a slew of copycat schools, “withdrew from,” “pulled out of,” or “abandoned” the US News law school rankings.  But as I explained in a previous post, these schools are not withdrawing from, pulling out of, or abandoning the US News rankings at all.  They are just not submitting data.  They are still going to be ranked.  In fact, the new top 14—which consists almost entirely of “protester” schools—has already been released and, putting aside the narcissism of small differences, appears virtually unchanged from last year!  (As explained below, we’re still waiting on rankings for schools #15 on down.)

Withholding data is nothing new or newsworthy; my alma mater Marquette Law did it back in the 90s (see p. 310) long before Yale and Harvard decided the rankings were, for nonsensical reasons, bad.  This entire thing is just a redo, a non-event.  It’s no more newsworthy than Kim Kardashian having a bad morning because she got too much foam on her designer coffee.  It just doesn’t matter.

Instead, law schools are doing this for virtue-signaling purposes—although it’s hard to see how that ploy could be successful with any thinking person, a category of persons that hopefully includes a decent percentage of law school applicants.  For example:

1.   The Dean at UC Irvine’s law school refuses to submit data as he now says the US News “is not consistent with our founding ideals.”  But UC-I was launched with the “express purpose” of being a USN top 20 school.  (Many were disappointed when it debuted at #30.)  In other words, US News is its founding ideal. 

2.   The Dean at UC–Berkeley’s law school refuses to submit data as he now says the US News is “profoundly inconsistent with our values.”  But the Dean was hired at UC-B specifically to bring it back after slipping from #8 to #12!  What changed in those few years to make US News “profoundly inconsistent with [y]our values”?  Or are you just spewing nonsense again, Dean?

Word vomit aside, the only newsworthy thing is that US News hasn’t yet released the full rankings.  Why not?  Hilariously, because many of the schools that allegedly “withdrew from,” “pulled out of,” or “abandoned” the rankings can’t stop pestering the US News!  As US News explained, they are getting a high volume of inquires and a high volume of late data updates, “including from schools that are ostensibly boycotting the rankings”!

These law schools make me sick.  They still want to be ranked, and ranked high.  They just want everyone to think they are too virtuous for the rankings.  I hope never to read again that any school is “boycotting” the rankings.  I hope some mainstream journalists that are covering this will instead ask some tough questions—particularly of the Deans at UC-I and UC-B (see above).

If the US News rankings are really inconsistent with a school’s “founding ideals” or “values,” why don’t these schools, and the numerous others that have been spouting off about their virtue, simply ask to be “unranked”?  The actual numerical rankings only go through about #150, with the remaining schools being unranked, lumped together, and listed in alphabetical order.

If Yale, for example, would ask to be unranked, it would fall from first overall to last on the list—unless Yeshiva Law School also took the high road and asked to be unranked, in which case Yale would be second to last.

Now that would be true virtue.  No “signaling” needed.