Stanford Law School will not participate in US News law school ranking | Hacker News Reader

Stanford Law School will not participate in US News law school ranking

law.stanford.edu

31 pointshhs35 comments

I was at first quite happy when I heard top schools were pulling out of rankings - we go way too far with what are often vanity metrics that miss the big picture.

But, I was told (unconfirmed) that this is cover to make it easier to pursue backdoor affirmative action as allowing diversity candidates in with lower LSAT scores was hurting their standings in the rankings, and this is a cynical tactic to get around that.

Is this a case where we are ending one wrong and replacing it with another?

I'm not sure how US News is wrong. They have a methodology. People can put whatever stock they want into it. Sounds like something is working if schools can't lower their test scores and avoid falling in the ranks

> They have a methodology. People can put whatever stock they want into it.

The problem is that there isn’t really another ranking and their methodology isn’t something most people can reason able (even if it’s public). Also the universities do lie and make up stats apparently (Columbia had this issue this year).

Sounds like a clear signal to take it with a grain of salt.

> I'm not sure how US News is wrong. They have a methodology. People can put whatever stock they want into it.

The point would be that ranking produced by the methodology is rarely interpreted in light of the methodology. Method follows aim and purpose, and so aim and purpose are that by which we measure the quality of a methodology. If the methodology doesn't produce a ranking of the expected value, then that's a problem, especially when it is passed off as having that value.

This decision occurs at the same time as they stop requiring LSAT because it "hurts diversity", so ... yes, it's an attempt to mask the institutional decline caused by using diversity score instead of merit for admissions.

Assuming that is true, why would affirmative action be viewed as so important that schools abandon participation in the premier ranking system in order to pursue it through a backdoor? I am genuinely curious why affirmative action is considered so sacred that elite schools suddenly reject the ranking system they have spent decades trying to climb. Rankings are really a pretty critical part of US education.

Without rankings you don't attract the prestige seeking students willing to pay. In turn you don't earn the money you need to pay your professors and administrators. You probably don't attract the star professors you wanted with higher salaries. These things are all linked.

Maybe their solution is to have a giant endowment or maybe they just establish a different ranking system that suits them better. But I still think it seems like a surprising outcome if affirmative action is more important than rankings.

A good reason to think it might not be true.

Assuming that is true, why would affirmative action be viewed as so important that schools abandon participation in the premier ranking system in order to pursue it through a backdoor?

Advocating for diversity admittance makes the individual advocates look good and it quiets the rabble. Stanford has a 36 billion dollar endowment so money is basically irrelevant to them. What they care about is prestige. Having a high rank gives you more prestige. Seeming to not care about social justice gives you less prestige. They're trying to ladder-jump from a reality where prestige is based on accomplishment to one where prestige is based on PR. It might work or it might not.

> why would affirmative action be viewed as so important that schools abandon participation in the premier ranking system in order to pursue it through a backdoor? I am genuinely curious why affirmative action is considered so sacred that elite schools suddenly reject the ranking system they have spent decades trying to climb.

Yale, Harvard, and Stanford have established their place at the top of the law school rankings. They have been at the top for decades (I applied to law school in 2004 and they were well-established as the top-3 even back then), so it is unlikely that they will be considered to have fallen in anyone's esteem anytime soon.

My guess is that this move, and the move by the ABA to no longer require law schools to have applicants take the LSAT, [1] are both moves being taken in advance of the affirmative action cases currently at the Supreme Court. The schools know that if SCOTUS gets rid of affirmative action, it will be very difficult for them to maintain diversity if they continue asking students for LSAT scores, and have to report them to US News. These moves make their admissions processes more opaque.

I thought it was interesting that in the WSJ's piece about the ABA decision on the LSAT, the only school quoted on how the move might not actually help diversity was UC Berkeley. They are already not allowed to consider race outright (due to CA law), so they would have to fall back on metrics like GPA — which they indicate may have even more correlations with race.

1: https://www.wsj.com/articles/law-school-accrediting-panel-to...

If they feel like they can just ignore the US News rankings because their brand name is enough, that's a power move but this is all being triggered by the potential ban on race based discrimination for admissions. They didn't decide this X years ago, it's probably not a coincidence.

It coincides with the Bar decision. I guess I am still wondering why affirmative action is a societal good more important than the previous standards we had for lawyers. Lawyers can do a lot of harm or good. If you are accused of a crime, you hire a lawyer. You are tried before a judge, who is a lawyer. We have to trust these people for it to work. Maybe it's to deflect against bad press and not a societal benefit. Maybe they don't care what happens. Maybe I am overestimating the impact of lowering standards. idk.

It's actually a little more complicated because there's also the bar exam as a gatekeeper. It doesn't test the same things, but you definitely do need to have a pretty good grasp of logic to do well.

The upshot is that the de-emphasis of the LSAT on the admissions side may result in (1) some additional new lawyers who are not as analytically capable, (2) some additional new lawyers who are just as capable, but are bad test-takers, and (3) some additional new law students who are unable to pass the bar.

Without knowing the proportion of these three groups, it's hard to say if the net effect will be positive or negative. But I would venture to guess that if schools dramatically relax their LSAT standards, the "beneficiaries" will have much lower bar pass rates than their classmates. They will be saddled with the same $200-250k of debt, though.

This trend is apparent at UC Hastings, whose admissions selectivity dropped significantly in the years following in the last decade, and whose bar pass rate plummeted. [1] (Many schools became less selective around 2010, when potential applicants heard about how the graduates of 2009 and 2010 had a very hard time finding jobs, let alone jobs that can service $200k debt loads.)

If these new policies/procedures do result in students being admitted to law school who can't pass the bar (or have to take it multiple times), these students could reasonably be upset for having been misled about their prospects. Of course, the schools are already lobbying for the Bar exams to be made easier, so perhaps the end result would just be that marginally-prepared students would be lifted up over another hurdle, and plopped down in the laps of unsuspecting clients.

Not surprisingly, one of the law schools pushing hardest for lowering Bar standards is UC Hastings. [2]

1: https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/12/who-is-to-b...

2: https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/more_law_school_dean...

that's really interesting, thanks. I guess it remains to be seen how this situation evolves.

If we still gave the LSAT to everyone we could take students who almost passed it and give them a scholarship to a year of legal-prep.

Then there wouldn't be lawyers and affirmative-lawyers. By the time they hit law school everyone would be in the same open system.

>why would affirmative action be viewed as so important that schools abandon participation in the premier ranking system in order to pursue it through a backdoor? I am genuinely curious why affirmative action is considered so sacred that elite schools suddenly reject the ranking system they have spent decades trying to climb. Rankings are really a pretty critical part of US education.

One hypothesis is that they feel the reputational damage from getting dragged through the mud for lack of diversity would be more damaging to the school than loss of the US news rank.

Another is that they truly feel that furthering racial equality is a higher priority for the school than reputation.

The way to end discrimination based on race is to stop discriminating based on race.

I said furthering racial equality, not ending discrimination.

To clarify, you can have a completely race- blind Merit system but still have inequality of outcome due to differences in the applicant pool. The whole point of affirmative actions is to make a race conscious selection system to achieve equality of outcome, not a quality of selection

You must work to resolve the prerequisites to the outcomes. Academic success comes from exposing children to a consistent viewpoint (from role-models, usually parents) that values knowledge and education, and insists that those children spend their time on such pursuits.

Attempting to correct for those missing prerequisites at the point of college admissions presupposes that getting in is the only thing needed for success. It isn't.

This is racist.

That might be so but like I was saying it could lead to having more unqualified lawyers if they can't get past the bar or hired. Then the bar exam will be the target of needing more diversity and then we have more unqualified licensed lawyers and then maybe they need to win a certain percentage of trials in order for there to be equality of outcome for them. to hell with their clients. I am being sort of sarcastic, sort of.

This could also be a sign we are producing too many lawyers. I think elite overproduction is a real thing and it is damaging to society. There is even a study that shows GDP declines proportionally to the population of lawyers. I don't know if it's a good idea to have a lot of underemployed, racially aggrieved, lawyers. So if they basically don't care what the outcome is for society (and their students) so long as they are not accused of racism that really makes me view them differently.

I've observed this same tactic discussed at the High School level: some are proposing removing all AP classes because not enough diversity students take those classes. The classes and tests are deemed racist.

Would the same logic apply to FAA pilot testing?

Already applied to air traffic controllers… I’ve been told that industry is a mess now.

> it also treats students pursuing another advanced degree, such as an MBA or PhD, as unemployed.

Seems accurate. Seems like "students interests" is being used as a shield for protecting a racket.

Edit: reminds me of this article where a president of a 50k/year liberal arts college says all these student loans are necessary to keep high quality education. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/debt-gets-a-bad-rap-as-a-c...

"By joining with the other schools that have chosen to withdraw from participation in the US News rankings this year..."

What other schools are doing this?

Harvard, Georgetown, and Colombia.

And Yale, importantly: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/16/us/yale-law-school-us-new...

I think instead of overall rankings, it would be more informative for law schools to have rankings for the specific things people actually care about. So things like: prospects for getting a Big Law job, getting a federal law clerkship, doing public interest work, etc.

Sure, people will always care about overall ranking for the prestige (though I expect overall rankings to correlate highly with big law job odds/overall compensation) but at least if it's split up into these very specific sub-criteria, then people can't quite game the rankings in a dishonest way.

The problem with that is the rankings are used as an input for hiring decisions, so then it's just a self-reinforcing feedback loop.

That's a fair point but from the top 10 law schools POV, they have no incentive to care about this. On the flip side, this is the sort of self-reinforcing feedback loop that allows top ranked schools to collect the best talent (or at least the kind of specific students that have the capacity to grind in the way that is necessary to succeed at Big Law firms).

If the new hires arent up to par, then this is something the the law firms should be incentivized to address. Since hiring practices generally haven't changed over the last 20 years, I'd guess that hiring from top law schools is perfectly fine (and maybe that is an indictment on the nature of work that happens at law firms).

i've been seriously considering US LLM but 2 things are making me think still.

1. should i do online LLM from say arizona online LLM? that should give me a change to appear for arizona bar exam (theoretically i could move and get employment but i could also go other places internationally, just a tangent for now) 2. i hear i have to do tax llm to get some competent work as that is what most employers ask for, i saw 1-2 courses but doing them would not make me eligible for that state bar exam so there is that.

3. is here any law college that does online LLM but the degree is a regular LLM (does not mention online) and that doesn't cost an arm and a leg? arizona online is like $10k. 4. the prospects of a US LLM is nice, (prestige in india but again, i've heard tax LLM would be beneficial here also but again, any affordable online) 5. i dont want to "move" to the US unless i have a full scholarship ($100k can buy me a house for example and i don't have that kind of cash)

any suggestions?

Former tax lawyer here. Getting a general US LLM is very different from getting a tax LLM. Getting a tax LLM will not teach you about US law — it will presuppose that you know it already. I don't know what the prestige is in India for either of these degrees, but it wouldn't be rational that a tax LLM would be more prestigious than a regular LLM (which would be more useful for anything but tax). If you are looking at tax LLMs seriously, NYU and Georgetown are the most prestigious, but I have no idea if they offer online degrees. If you just want a US license to practice, I've heard that New Mexico has a very high (95%?) pass rate.

thank you for your inputs. "prestige" of degrees as in the being usable at a law firm if one goes for employment at a law firm.

if one is freelancing,or getting a in house council job, i suppose any US LLM would be good.

i've read about NYU and georgetown but NYU is VERY VERY expensive. literally out of my class

These rankings are all very silly. You should find the best program, faculty and institution that works for your needs.

Yale pulled out, likely because they weren't performing.

https://freebeacon.com/campus/before-pulling-out-of-rankings...

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