The University of Maine School of Law, located on USM’s Portland campus, slipped from the third to the fourth tier in US News and World Report’s “best graduate schools” report this April. The report, which is released each April, is widely regarded by applicants to the school and by those who employ lawyers. Students at the school responded with leaden disappointment, while the administration said that the report’s statistical approach is misleading in the first place.
The report lists UMaine in the fourth and lowest group in this year’s April 12 issue of U.S. News & World Report. The 186 bar-certified law schools in the nation. schools are listed by rank in the top 100, which comprise the first two “tiers,” or groups of schools. The rest are divided into the third and fourth tier and listed alphabetically within those groups. The schools are listed along with the statistics used to classify them: these are assembled from a combination of surveys, and statistics.
“We use an algorithm to rank all the schools. The top school is given a 100 and the rest are ranked against that score,” said Rich Folkers, director of media relations for U.S. News & World Report. He said the top school doesn’t neccissarily have the best score in all categories, and that some categories carry more weight than others. Complete details of the magazine’s rating system, are available online at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/about/05law_meth_brief.php.
“We’re pretty bummed about it,” said a second-year Law student who did not wish to be identified. “Apparently the 2002 class’s poor employment record was the reason we slipped. I guess they had some personal problems finding jobs.”
The law school’s dean, Colleen Khoury, blames the 2002 placement record for the drop as well. The score in question refers to the number of graduates employed nine months after graduating. The data is two years old, meaning this year’s rating refers to the 2002 class. The rating has slipped from 85% in 2000 to 68.7% in 2004 (The scores reflect the years 1998 and 2002, respectively). The score dropped almost ten points from 78.3% in 2003, an especially drastic drop.
“We take it very seriously,” she said. Even so, she said, the vagaries of the rating system can place a school lower on the list than it deserves to be. “With respect to everything except the placement rank, our quality indicators are very good,” she pointed out. The school’s two reputation scores, at 2.3 and 2.5 out of 5 are, comparable with many schools in the top 100, though Khoury criticized the way those scores are gathered as well. Three faculty members at each school, including the dean, receive a survey each year with all the schools in the list, and asked to fill in one of five bubbles, representing the range from “excellent” to “poor” and another for “don’t know.”
“With that many schools, your hand kind of drifts across the paper. Not everyone really fills in ‘don’t know’ if they aren’t familiar with a school,” she said. “Every Monday, my mailbox is full of glossy magazines from all these law schools who want a good rating.”
The school’s bar passage rate has also declined by just under 5 percentage points from 69% in 2000 to 64.1% in 2004. Meanwhile, the overall rate in Maine has climbed five points, from 69% to 74%. The bar is a test lawyers must take in a given state before they can work there.
Khoury said that with a graduating class of just under 90 students each year, the bar passage figure can be misleading.
“Say we have 85 people graduate and 50 take the bar,” she says. “Each one of those students represents a lot of percentage points.”
Despite her problems with the survey, Khoury says she takes the school’s low rating seriously. The school has hired a director of admissions and is taking steps to make sure the school’s rating will climb again.
“No one wants to be in the fourth tier,” she said.