Law Schools, US News’ Law School Rankings, and a New Study Discussing Them Both

Katherine Mangan of the Chronicle of Higher Education discusses Michael Sauder and Wendy Nelson Espeland’s The Discipline of Rankings: Tight Coupling and Organizational Change, a study of US News’ rankings of law schools, and the law schools’ reactions to them, published in the February issue of the American Sociological Review. Say Sauder and Espeland, “

Rankings change perceptions of legal education through incentives that are simultaneously seductive and coercive,” the article states. Despite having been widely denounced by law schools, “rankings have prompted broad changes in legal education, affecting how resources are distributed, decisions are made, and status is defined.

Robert Morse, of U.S. News, responds, both in a interview with the Chronicle, and here on his blog.