A new entrant has emerged in the law school rankings debate, as Christopher Ryan and Brian Frye recently posted their paper, A Revealed-Preferences Ranking of Law Schools (forthcoming in the Alabama Law Review). The paper presents a ranking of law schools based exclusively on LSAT and undergraduate GPA, on the theory that prospective law students’ actual choices about law school are a better way of ranking than the hodge-podge of factors included in the US News rankings.

The approach used by US News includes a variety of factors with varying weights but among the most important are factors based on surveys of academics and of lawyers and judges. Specifically, the US News ranking methodology is based 25% on “peer assessment score” (academics) and 15% on “assessment score by lawyers and judges.” The both categories are weighted heavier than LSAT scores (.125) and GPA (.10), which are the raw material for the Ryan and Frye ranking.

As might be expected, the Ryan and Frye rankings correlate strongly with US News rankings, but there are some significant outliers. What accounts for the differences? The Ryan and Frye paper suggests the divergence may be due to some schools being “better at gaming ranking systems than appealing to students, and vice versa.” (p. 4) I don’t doubt that is a potentially significant factor, but I would suggest that a significant part of this difference is due to timing. Students are a leading indicator, peer assessment scores a lagging indicator, and lawyer/judge rankings almost useless.

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