I can see why professors don't care what judges and lawyers think, but as a student I do care. I don't care very much what the professors think of each other. They can have their own popularity polls, but it's the firms and judges who make the hiring decisions for which I'm going into debt. So I vote "nay."

http://www.elsblog.org/

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/property/2006/04/the_hylton_rank.html

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2006/04/us_news_ranking.html

http://www.elsblog.org/the_empirical_legal_studi/files/the_us_news_and_world_report_rankings_without_the_clutter__2_.pdf

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=398460&forum_id=2#5567158)

But I can see why you'd strip them out. Lawyers and judges base their opinions on the school's ranking. The rankings are based on the lawyers and judges opinion. Hence why the T14 is so static. It's a chicken and egg situation. If new rankings were adopted and popularized tomorrow because the USNEWS magazine went bust and stopped publishing, lawyers and judges would pretty soon change their hiring opinions to match whatever the new rankings told them. It's kind of a lame measurement.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=398460&forum_id=2#5567763)

But take a school like San Diego. Its Hylton is way above its USNWR. But the faculty aren't doing the hiring that matters. So shouldn't most students pick a school with better lawyer evals? True, is SD keeps going this way, eventually the lawyers will view it as higher ranked, but why go into debt on the assumption that your JD will appreciate over the next decade? Or on the assumption that the occasional professor you meet with think better of you?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=398460&forum_id=2#5568037)

There was a top 10 long before there was a USNews ranking (or any ranking) Law school reputation goes back long before USNews, and firms rely far more on long-term reputation than USNews when hiring.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=398460&forum_id=2#5579743)

And its reputation ratings usually remain in the top 5 or 6, regardless of overall rank.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=398460&forum_id=2#5579775)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=398460&forum_id=2#5567719)

any ranking that takes into account usnews' unreliable reputation rankings is utter bullshit. "reputation" would be better measured by clerkship placement and elite firm placement.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=398460&forum_id=2#5567841)

The delineations at the T6 and T14 marks seem to justify their existance - 2 and 3 point drop-offs, respectively. There's fairly tight clusterings within those tiers (T6 within a 6 point spread, T7-14 within a 6.5 point spread). Also a significant HY v. rest-of-T14 gap (3 points).

Lastly, the biggest gains among the T14 were H (3 -> 1) and G (14 -> 11), demonstrative of the bias against larger schools in USN methodology.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=398460&forum_id=2#5567889)

However, you are correct that there is little difference between all top schools.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=398460&forum_id=2#5581299)

"I have recalculated the US News and World Report Ratings using the “2007” data (actually compiled in 2005) for my two categories."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=398460&forum_id=2#5579678)

They key problem with the current USNews system is that peer ratings are weighted much more heavily than practitioner ratings, when the reverse should be the case.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=398460&forum_id=2#5579788)

If true, that argument works equally well to eliminate prof rankings and just use lawyer rankings. But, in fact, while lawyers agree with profs at the top, they disagree elsewhere and sometimes dramatically so. For me, I'd rather know what the lawyers think.

"Also, employer opinions are arguably outdated, as their interaction with graduates could be with those who graduates a decade or more ago... and most would agree that it's where a school is now, not ten years ago, that matters."

They are not "outdated" if that's what lawyers are using today to make the interviewing and hiring decisions that matter to me.

OTOH, if I were shooting for academia, I'd want to know the prof rankings.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=398460&forum_id=2#5582915)