U.S. News to Change Placement Component in 2014 Law School Rankings Methodology

Robert Morse (Director of Data Research, U.S. News & World Report), Recent Law School News Focuses On Rankings:

Class of 2011 legal employment and underemployment numbers are in, and far worse than expected:  The ABA released Class of 2011 job outcome data in June 2012 that was far more granular than ever before because it used the ABA's new employment reported standards. ...

Our take: U.S. News plans to collect this new, more granular employment data and use it in our upcoming law school rankings. After studying the data, our goal is to revise the part of our Best Law Schools rankings methodology that has to do with employment rates. We hope this new data will enable the rankings to more accurately reflect the employment success—or lack thereof—of each law school's new graduates.

The current U.S. News law school rankings methodology counts employed (in any job, legal or non-legal, full-time or part-time) at graduation (4%) and nine months after graduation (14%) (2013 rankings here).