Do the U.S. News Rankings Matter?

By Kristopher Nelson in the Spring of 2008

Law Blog – WSJ.com: Do the U.S. News Rankings Matter?:

Cameron Stracher’s essays on the legal profession, which often appear in the WSJ, have been the subject of some of our more provocative posts. Today Stracher, a professor at New York Law, continues his run with a WSJ op-ed picking apart the U.S. News & World Report’s rankings.

Stracher pegs his column to the news that U.S. News is ranking high schools for the first time. But he turns his attention to law-school rankings and asks the question: Do rankings matter at all and, more importantly, should they?

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Law school is harder than grad school: I've been debating this since I started a PhD program this fall. (I'm talking about the humanities and social sciences -- I don't know if this applies in other fields!) Granted, grad school is a huge amount of difficult and complex reading. Since it's essentially professional training for academics, it also means learning a new working environment, a new kind of jargon, and a new bureaucracy. What it isn't -- and what law school is -- is a whole new way of thinking about and approaching the world.
Law school vs. graduate school: Last May I finished my 3L year, and am now the proud possessor of a JD. On Thursday I began my first year program as a graduate student in the history of science. The experiences, perhaps unsurprisingly, have been strikingly different: law school is, ultimately, preparatory to practicing law as an attorney, and much of its emphasis is on tracking students in that direction. Graduate school in the humanities and social sciences, meanwhile, is about training future academics.
Can a teaching-focused law school fit into a public research university?: UCSD is considering merging or partnering with California Western School of Law, but some are concerned that Cal Western is too focused on teaching to fit into a research university.

About Kristopher Nelson

I'm currently a graduate student of the history of law and technology at the University of California, San Diego. I also provide law and technology consulting services. Additionally, I'm a non-practicing lawyer and former developer/sysadmin at a biotech non-profit. For more about me and my work, see krisnelson.org or my Google Profile.

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Post title: Do the U.S. News Rankings Matter?

Authored by: Kristopher Nelson

Date posted: Jan 2, 2008

Categorized as: education • law

Tagged with: law • law school

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