U.S. News Denies Report That It Will Replace The 40% Reputation Component With HeinOnline Citations In Next Year's Law School Rankings

Following up on this morning's post, The New U.S. News Law School Rankings Methodology: Implications And Predictions:  Seth Barrett Tillman (National University of Ireland, Maynooth - Faculty of Law), The Future of U.S. News and World Report’s Law School Rankings: A Letter from A Friend:

[T]he HeinOnline] ScholarRank score is about to become the single most important metric in American legal academia. Starting next year, 40% of each American law school’s U.S. News [and World Report] ranking will be based on HeinOnline’s cumulative ScholarRank of the school’s faculty (which apparently will consist of the combined faculty score divided by the number of tenured and tenure-track faculty). It’s going to have a huge impact on our field. Interestingly, however, most law school faculty (at least in my neck of the woods) seem unaware of ScholarRank.

I checked with Robert Morse (Chief Data Strategist, U.S. News & World Report) and he provided this response:

U.S. News will not replace the peer assessment score and assessment score by lawyers and judges with HeinOnline citation metrics in the 2023 law school rankings. We don’t have any announcements for future editions of the rankings.

 

Prior TaxProf Blog coverage:

• U.S. News To Publish Law Faculty Scholarly Impact Ranking Based On 2014-2018 Citations (Feb. 13, 2019)
• U.S. News FAQ: Law School Scholarly Impact Rankings (Feb. 14, 2019)
• More Coverage Of The U.S. News Law Faculty Scholarly Impact Rankings (Feb. 15, 2019)
• Robert Anderson (Pepperdine), Some Contrarian Thoughts On The U.S. News Faculty Scholarly Impact Rankings (Feb. 18, 2019)
• Law Prof Commentary On The U.S. News Faculty Scholarly Impact Rankings (Feb. 19, 2019)
• U.S. News Updates FAQ On Law School Scholarly Impact Rankings To Address Inclusion Of Non-Doctrinal Faculty (Feb. 21, 2019)
• Joe Lawprofblawg (Anonymous Professor, Top 100 Law School) & Darren Bush (Houston), A Hilarious (In The Footnotes) Yet Serious (In The Text) Discussion Of Law Reviews And Law Professors (Feb. 26, 2019)
• U.S. News Updates FAQ On Law School Scholarly Impact Rankings To Address Inclusion Of Non-Doctrinal Faculty (Feb. 27, 2019)
• Derek Muller (Pepperdine), Gaming The New U.S. News Citation Rankings (Mar. 6, 2019)
• Jeff Sovern (St. John's), How The U.S. News Scholarly Impact Rankings Could Hurt Niche Subjects (March 11, 2019)
• Ted Sichelman (San Diego), A Defense And Explanation Of The U.S. News 'Citation' Ranking (March 20, 2019)
• U.S. News Offers More Guidance, Meeting With Law School Deans On New Scholarly Impact Rankings (May 2, 2019)
• The U.S. News Citation Ranking Is A 'Rigged Metrics Game' That 'Imperils Legal Academia' (Oct. 10, 2019)
• Heald & Sichelman: The Top 100 Law School Faculties In Citations (Hein) And Impact (SSRN Downloads) (Nov. 11, 2019)
• Sisk: Citations — 'A Valid, If Imperfect, Proxy For Faculty Scholarly Impact On A National Scale' (Nov. 11, 2019)
• Bob Morse Discusses The U.S. News Law School Rankings Today At Texas A&M Virtual Conference (June 5, 2020)
• U.S. News To Publish Law Faculty Scholarly Impact Ranking In 2021 (Nov. 9, 2020)
• 2022 U.S. News Law School Rankings (Mar. 9, 2021)
• The New U.S. News Law School Rankings Methodology: Implications And Predictions (Mar. 22, 2021)