Law Schools Most Helped and Most Hurt by U.S. News Rankings Methodology

On Monday, we blogged J. Gordon Hylton's interesting law school rankings that isolate the faculty and student quality data from the U.S. News rankings.  As Gordon explains in The US News and World Report Rankings Without the Clutter:

The only categories that should matter in law school rankings are the quality of the students and the quality of the faculty....Peer assessment tells us what other law professors think about individual law schools; LSAT scores tell us what students think about the school. I have recalculated the US News and World Report Ratings using the “2007” data (actually compiled in 2005) for my two categories.

Gordon updated his rankings yesterday because he had inadvertently omitted one law school.  In addition, he published Law Schools Helped and Hurt by the US News Formula.

Here are the five law schools most helped by the U.S. News methodology:

Law School	US News Rank	Hylton Rank	+/-
Mercer	87	113	+30
New Mexico	77	102	+25
SMU	43	67	+24
Nebraska	70	91	+21
Cincinnati	53	71	+18
Penn State	87	105	+18

Here are the five law schools most hurt by the U.S. News methodology:

Law School	US News Rank	Hylton Rank	+/-
San Diego	65	47	-18
Northeastern	87	71	-16
Miami	65	51	-14
Georgia State	97	84	-13
Hastings	43	33	-10

For an extended discussion of the Hylton Rankings, see Al Brophy's post at our sister PropertyProf Blog.  (Hat Tip:  Jason Czarnezki.)