Scholarship@WashULaw

Document Type

Article

Language

English (en)

Publication Date

2019

Publication Title

Clinical Legal Education Association Newsletter

Abstract

In addition to its annual ranking of law schools, U.S. News ranks nine law school specialty programs. This year, U.S. News asked survey participants to rate specialty programs on a new 5-point scale mirroring the method used to assess the academic reputation of schools among peers and lawyers/judges. The program rankings show a noticeable bunching of law schools ranked highest by U.S. News also at the top of most specialty programs and an overpopulation of lowest ranked schools at the bottom.

To examine the strength of the relationship between a school’s peer assessment and specialty program reputation, scores for each school in every specialty were collected and analyzed using Pearson's correlation. The ratings of some specialty programs (e.g., International (r=.91) and Tax Law (r=.89)) stand out as very strongly correlated with the school’s academic reputation, while two programs were negligible and lacked statistical significance (Dispute Resolution and Legal Writing). A closer look at the distribution of Clinical Training scores showed that program reputations were strongly correlated with a school’s academic reputation (r=.66). Other variables potentially associated with Clinical Training rankings such as school size and the number of slots available in law clinics were less strongly associated.

The large correlations for some specialty programs suggest that many U.S. News raters may be cuing off a school’s overall academic reputation and not independently assessing the quality of the school’s particular program.

Keywords

Legal Education, Law School, Clinical Legal Education

Publication Citation

Robert R. Kuehn, Law School Specialty Program Rankings: Is the Tail Wagging the Dog?, 27 Clinical Legal Educ. Ass’n Newsl. 7 (2019)

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