The US News and World Report law school rankings can be criticized for a lot of things, justly or unjustly. One of the just criticisms is that the rankings favor a certain type of law school. Unorthodox and new ideas about how to run a law school tend not to mesh very well with a desire to climb the charts.
Dean John M. DiPippa from the law school at Univ. of Arkansas-Little Rock thinks that may be changing. Without the money from ever-rising tuition, it might become impossible for some schools to keep up in the arms race of law school rankings. And if they can’t compete on ranking, law schools will have to look for other ways to get students in the door:
The current economic challenges may be the very thing that forces law schools to re-evaluate their willingness to buy into the rankings-at-all-cost mindset. In the next few years, students are going to shop for better law school bargains closer to home. And the schools that offer reasonably priced educations with graduates ready to practice law will thrive, whether or not they rise in the rankings.
This all of course assumes that students stop going to law school because the cost and poor job prospects. So far this is not happening. If the tide shifts, then Dean DiPippa’s view of the future is likely.
Obviously the USNWR rankings will continue. But they’ll mean a lot less to students. Law schools are going to have to abandon a one-size-fits-all model and start innovating. That means innovations that attract students and allow for the delivery of legal education at a lower cost.
But as long as law school is seen as a three-year long vacation from the real world where someone else foots the bill at first, don’t expect the economic pressures to force law schools to change a thing.
