Saying the system incentivizes the wrong things in legal education, two of the nation’s most respected law schools are withdrawing from the rankings process by US News & World Report, a popular though highly-criticized benchmark, the Washington Post reports.
“The U.S. News rankings are profoundly flawed — they disincentivize programs that support public interest careers, champion need-based aid, and welcome working-class students into the profession,” Yale Law School Dean Heather Gerken wrote in a blog post Wednesday. “We have reached a point where the rankings process is undermining the core commitments of the legal profession.”
Yale will retire from the rankings as the reigning champion, sitting at the top of this year’s edition. Harvard slums it in fourth, likely drawn down by the behavior of alumni like Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis and Tom Cotton.