Practice Management

For categorical reasons I listed this post and the U.S. News Rankings under education, but it should not be.  The rankings really have nothing to do with education.

Predicting a law schools ranking is a bit like trying to determine what your FICO score is likely to be in advance.  The algorithm is too tough, and the competition is too mean to accurately predict.

But, the new score really calls into question the strategy of the University of Houston Law Center.  They bounced their old dean because of falling rankings.  The new dean promised to put UH in the top 10 in a short period of time.  Because it is a state school it solution was to tax the ever-lovin' begeebers out of their student, hoping they can play the game of rankings better than the other schools.  They are going to have another mega increase in tuition (and ... shhhh ... fees ... do not tell the public) this fall, and they have floated the idea of increasing tuition even further by $4,000 a semester to help offset a new building.

The result of all of this shenanigans is what?

The law school did not increase in the rankings.  It actually fell 4 positions to number 59.  And, their students are even further in debt because of the attempt.

The only good thing, if you call it that, is that Baylor fell a whopping 10 positions to number 65 on the list.  SMU fell three places to 49.  Only The University of Texas increased by 1 point to number 15 on the list.

Now, I do not care.  I think UH is one of the best schools, from a legal education basis, that there is.  I think there is no doubt that SMU is well overrated.  It matters only because UH seems to care about rankings, and that is a problem because in my view it is alienating all of the good students that attend the school.  Not to mention it is just embarrassing.  Law schools today spend countless amounts of money and staff time trying to game the ranking system.  All this says is that UH is not that good at gaming as the others.  Is that the lesson that law schools wish to impart to their students?

I think the problem is that UH feels embarrassed by its placement.  The question is why?  The schools calling should be to provide a very cost effective, but very good legal education to its students.  It is not to leave their students with a crushing amount of debt, hidden and bogus fees, and an example of gaming the system to succeed in life.  UH is alienating its future alumni and its future door base.  What result is that.