Muller: How Law Faculty Succeeded In Diminishing Their Importance In The U.S. News Rankings

Derek Muller (Iowa; Google Scholar), Law School Faculty Have Aggressively and Successfully Lobbied to Diminish the Importance of Law School Faculty in the USNWR Rankings:

In many contexts, there is a concern of “regulatory capture,” the notion that the regulated industry will lobby the regulator and ensure that the regulator sets forth rules most beneficial to the interests of the regulated industry.

In the context of the USNWR law rankings, the exact opposite has happened when it comes to the interests of law school faculty. Whether it has been intentional or inadvertent it hard to say.

It is in the self-interest of law school faculty to ensure that the USNWR law school rankings maximize the importance and influence of law school faculty. The more that faculty matter in the rankings, the better life is for law faculty—higher compensation, more competition for faculty, more hiring, more recognition for work, more earmarking for fundraising, the list goes on.

But in the last few years, law school faculty (sometimes administrators, sometimes not) have pressed for three specific rules that affirmatively diminish the importance of law faculty in the rankings.

First, citation metrics. ...

Second, expenditures per student. ...

Third, peer score. ...

[I]n three separate cases, law faculty aggressive lobbied against their own self interest. Maybe that’s because they viewed it as the right thing to do in a truly altruistic sense. Maybe because they wanted to break any reliance on USNWR or make it easier to delegitimize them. Maybe it was a failure to consider the consequences of their actions. Maybe my projections about the effect that these criteria have on faculty are simply not significant. I’m not sure.

In the end, however, we have a very different world from where we might have been five years ago. Five years ago, we might have been in a place where faculty publications and citations were directly rewarded in influential law school rankings; where expenditures on faculty compensation remained rewarded in those rankings; and where how other faculty viewed you was highly regarded in those rankings. None of that is true today. And it’s a big change in a short time.

Prior TaxProf Blog coverage:

Citation Metrics and the U.S. News Rankings

• 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)
• U.S. News Denies Report That It Will Replace The 40% Reputation Component With HeinOnline Citations In Next Year's Law School Rankings (Mar. 22, 2021)
• How To Juice Your Citations In The HeinOnline/U.S. News Rankings (Mar. 29, 2021)
• U.S. News Abandons Plan To Issue Citations Ranking Of Law Faculty  (Aug. 23, 2021)
• Assessing Heinonline As A Source Of Scholarly Impact Metrics (Jan. 6, 2022)

Expenditures in the U.S. News Rankings

• U.S. News Law School Rankings, ABA Optional LSAT, And Harvard Affirmative Action Supreme Court Case (Nov. 21, 2022)
• In Response To Boycott, U.S. News Dramatically Changes Law School Rankings Methodology. Who Are The Winners And Losers? Will Harvard Be #1? (Jan. 2, 2023)
• U.S. News Drops Student Loans And Employment-At-Graduation (In Addition To Expenditures-Per-Student) From Forthcoming Law School Rankings (Jan. 3, 2023)
• Did Schools Boycotting The U.S. News Rankings Kill Law Faculty's Golden Goose? (Jan. 4, 2023)

Peer Score in the U.S. News Rankings

• Significant One-Year Drops In U.S. News Law School Peer Reputation (June 6, 2019)
• Did Schools Boycotting The U.S. News Rankings Kill Law Faculty's Golden Goose? (Jan. 4, 2023)
• Justice Kavanaugh Says U.S. News Law School Rankings Are 'Very Problematic'; Peer Reputation Is 'Kind Of A Joke' (Jan. 28, 2023)
• Will U.S. News Refuse To Count Votes From Deans, Faculty, Lawyers, And Judges From Boycotting Law Schools In Reputation Metric In 2024 Rankings? (Apr. 12, 2023)
• The U.S. News Law School Academic Reputation Scores, 1998-2022 (May 8, 2023)
• Tobin: A Preliminary Analysis Of The New U.S. News Law School Rankings (May 10, 2023)
• 2024 U.S. News Law School Peer Reputation Rankings (And Overall Rankings) (May 11, 2023)
• The Law Schools Most Impacted By The Methodology Changes In The 2024 U.S. News Rankings (May 11, 2023)
• A Law-School Rankings Formula After Ron DeSantis’s Own Heart (May 11, 2023)
• The Impact Of The U.S. News Law School Rankings Boycott On Peer Reputation (May 12, 2023)