Consumer Law

Why Consumer Reports Should Rate Law Schools (and Probably Other Graduate Schools Too)

By Jeff Sovern

Consumer Reports should rate law schools, and perhaps other schools too, for the following four reasons:

First, the existing U.S. News rankings do not adequately measure law schools from the perspective of consumers, which in the case of law schools consists of law students and applicants to law schools.  The U.S. News rankings take into account information that has little bearing on the quality of education students receive.  For example, the criterion assigned the most weight in the rankings?the reputation schools have among law professors?undoubtedly has much more to do with the quality of scholarship than the quality of teaching.  This problem may have at its root the fact that the U.S. News ratings serve too many masters.  Applicants use them to decide what school to attend; employers use them to decide where to interview; faculty candidates use them to decide where to work; and authors use them to decide in which law review to publish.  The rankings are based on criteria which are relevant to all those purposes, and so do not serve any of them satisfactorily. 

Law school consumers would be better served by a system that employed only criteria relevant to students.  That would include some criteria U.S. News already takes into account.  Thus, a ranking system useful to applicants would continue to use measures of outputs, such as bar pass rates, and rates of employment; measures of the quality of students, such as the LSAT and GPA (because the quality of the students affects the quality of the classes); and measures of the resources devoted to educating students.  It might also take into account other measures of the quality of the education that U.S. News does not currently use, such as evaluations of curricula and availability of skills courses. 

Second, Consumer Reports has the credibility needed to challenge U.S. News?s hegemony in rating schools.  While other entities rate law schools, none commands the attention that U.S. News does.  But Consumer Reports has a long history of rating products impartially, as well as a large readership, and because of that it ratings would draw instant credibility.

Third, Consumer Reports could use the money.  U.S. News?s best-selling issue is reportedly its school ratings issue.  Presumably, if Consumer Reports started rating schools, copies of its school ratings issue would also sell well.  The non-profit Consumer Reports could expect to plow the receipts back into its other product rating activities, which would benefit consumers.  In addition, some students and applicants might purchase the school ratings issue and be drawn to subscribe to Consumer Reports thereafter, also expanding resources available to Consumer Reports.

Fourth, it would improve legal education.  Commentators have reported that some law schools devote resources to enhancing the schools? ratings rather than to provide a better education.  Indeed, I wrote a fifteen-minute play about just that (there?s still time to obtain a license for its first production).  If Consumer Reports? rankings were to use different criteria from U.S. News, and if they have the credibility I predict above, the incentive to engage in such behaviors would diminish, which would enhance legal education.

Many law professors oppose rating law schools: we tend to believe that the goal of applicants to law schools should be to find the school that is the best fit for the particular applicant, and that ratings replace the search for the best fit with a search for the highest-rated school that will admit the applicant.  But the fact is that U.S. News does rate law schools and that in our market economy students are free to choose a higher-rated school over one that might be a better fit.  Law schools and students would be better off, though, if U.S. News did not have a monopoly on ranking law schools, and Consumer Reports is one publication that could challenge that monopoly.

Full post as published by CL&P Blog on October 14, 2008 (boomark / email).