Legal Commentary

Law Firm Managing Partner Bemoans US News Rankings

By Professor University of Miami School of Law

The article by Peter Kalis on Lawjobs.com, Career Center - Gripes About Law School Rankings From a Law School ‘Customer’ is an interesting but I fear minority view from the chairman and global managing partner of K&L Gates:

If you are a beleaguered law school dean, know that this customer pays not a damn bit of attention to the U.S. News ranking — nor should your applicant pool.

He’s got reasons, and they’re decent ones, but I can’t quite get my mind around to thinking that this is the majority view. Might be good if it were, though.

My view, which I’ve stated here before, is the US News rankings are based on a pretty silly (and increasingly self-referential) formula. Small gaps tell you nothing. Large gaps do tell you something, although you could probably get almost as good info by looking at the relative size of law school endowments….

Full post as published by Discourse.net on January 02, 2009 (boomark / email).