Randall later told the Washington Post that he has no plans to withhold data from U.S. News. But he told the Post that he’s sharply critical of their methodology, especially the reputational survey, which he compared to an Olympic diver climbing out of the pool, giving herself a “10” and then sitting down at the judging table to rate her competitors.
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Dean Randall Interviewed on U.S. News Rankings
The recent decision by seven of the nation's top-15 law schools to withdraw from the U.S. News annual rankings signals the need for long-overdue reforms of the system, Scalia Law Dean Ken Randall told major news outlets.
“The rankings system is fraught with challenges,” Randall said in a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal. “The fact remains, however, that prospective law students need a way to evaluate an investment in their lifetime profession. . . . While rankings shouldn’t be the only factor, they play an important role in a student's decision. I hope that the Yale and Harvard announcements will lead to a thoughtful discussion between U.S. News editors and the nation's law-school deans about a reformed ranking system.”
In a subsequent New York Times interview, Randall said that he “agreed that the rankings were flawed and had some negative consequences. Nonetheless,” he added “it gives students guidance. Most students don’t go to the top 10, and there are about 200 law schools.”
Randall said the rankings exert a powerful influence in the legal field. “The big bulk of schools,” everyone from about 15 to 100 or so, “really do think about rankings a lot,” he told the Post. Applicants scrutinize them when deciding where to enroll. Employers bear them in mind when hiring.
A big law firm, he said, might look at hiring graduates in the top 30 percent of their class at a top-10 law school. But they might not dip so far down into the class to hire graduates from a lower-ranked school. “It’s a lot of weight,” Randall said.
Scalia Law is currently ranked 30th among all U.S. law schools, #12 among public schools, and #1 among public part?time law school programs.