Last month, the world was graced with a new set of law school rankings. Researchers at the University of Michigan ranked American law schools based on the number of their graduates holding tenure-track teaching positions at other law schools. As it turned out, these “outdegree” rankings were remarkably similar to the U.S. News rankings, except that three law schools – Howard, Syracuse, and our very own Wayne State – performed substantially better than their U.S. News rankings might suggest.

I am gratified that twenty-four Wayne Law grads contribute to the work of other law faculties around the nation. But this ranking, like many other rankings efforts, is of dubious merit. Indeed, it would appear to be based on criteria about which only self-absorbed legal academicians would care. This month, as thousands of law school applicants mull over which law schools are deserving of their tuition deposits, they confront rankings that sometimes shed more heat than light. But the reasoning goes that bad information is better than no information, and information cloaked as statistics (however unreliable the survey data or dubious the criteria) bears special weight.

Sometimes the data included in the rankings may be informative, even if the rankings themselves manipulate the data in such as way as to defy logic. It might be helpful, for example, for an aspiring law student to know what percentage of a law school’s recent graduates pass the bar exam. While law school should not be regarded as a three-year bar review course, there is a reasonable expectation that after the investment of three or more years and tens of thousands of dollars, a law school graduate ought to be able to pass the examination that will determine whether or not he/she will get to ply his/her trade.  U.S. News obligingly provides the percentage of first-time takers from each law school who pass the bar of the state where the largest number of its graduates took the bar exam. But this figure is weighted only 2% toward a school’s overall ranking. Compare that with the 40% weight accorded to “quality assessment” by academicians, lawyers and judges. Only about 26 percent of the lawyers and judges surveyed (out of what size sample, U.S. News does not tell) responded to the 2007 survey; how many of them had the information or temerity to rank more than a handful of law schools we don’t know. A few years ago, a student of mine described efforts to quantify this type of data as “subjectivity masquerading as objectivity.” In this instance, I have a hard time disagreeing.

U.S. News reports a 70% response rate from its 2007 survey of academicians. I am told, however, that some people arrive at their “assessments” by referring to the previous year’s U.S. News rankings. The rankings thereby take on a self-sustaining quality. Of such stuff are academic reputations made and lost.

Still, a student might glean worthwhile information from the data. Median LSAT and undergraduate GPAs might be helpful, but for the fact that some schools channel their lower-scoring applicants into part-time programs or accept them only belatedly as transfer students; neither part-time data nor data on transfer students has traditionally been included in the U.S. News calculations. More valuable to the individual applicant may be the grids provided in the ABA/LSAC Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools. These grids indicate the number of applicants and admittees for students within any range of LSAT scores and GPAs; e.g., last year 18 of 47 applicants with LSATs between 150 and 154 and GPAs between 3.00 and 3.24 were admitted to Wayne, whereas the odds improved to 63 out of 70 for applicants with LSATs between 155 and 159 and GPAs between 3.25 and 3.49. The ABA/LSAC Guide provides all sorts of useful information, such as class sizes, tuition, living expenses, scholarship opportunities, attrition rates, transfers, enrollment, and ethnicity breakdowns, along with narrative entries for each law school.

The expanded, on-line version of U.S. News provides interesting information such as the average indebtedness and average starting salary of each law school’s graduates, figures which ought to bear some proportion to each other. But averages are, well, only averages.  Justice Louis Brandeis once remarked, “I abhor averages. I like the individual case. A man may have six meals one day and none the next, making an average of three meals per day, but that is not a good way to live.” Better for the prospective law student to look at the financial package she is being offered by each law school (taking into account tuition, financial aid, and the cost of living in the locality in which the school is located) and the typical salary provided by the type of legal employment to which the applicant aspires. Six-figure starting salaries at Wall Street law firms may sound nice, but they have little meaning to a law student who aspires to work in a Legal Services office in Appalachia or in a small law firm in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

If you are a prospective law student, ultimately you must make a decision that suits your needs and expectations.  Numbers may provide some guidance, but few numbers can replace a visit to a law school, where you can check out the classes, talk to students and professors, and get a sense of whether it feels right for you. Robert Morse, the U.S. News rankings maven, may be good with a calculator, but ultimately you, and not he, will be attending law school.  You might read Consumer Reports before purchasing a car, but you wouldn’t buy a set of wheels without taking it out for a test drive.  Don’t you owe yourself at least as much before investing three or more years and tens of thousands of dollars on this venture?