The University of Miami Law School got pasted in the latest US News law school rankings: dropped 12 places. Our faculty reputation rank still puts UM in the top 50, but lots of the other metrics hurt.
Dean Lynch has sent out a note to the community about it. I'll post the text if and when I get one; in the mean time all I have is this .gif version, which is what they sent us.
Update: .pdf version of Dean Lynch's letter.
The ranking falls because you and your authoritarian left-wing cohorts (“ilk” as a word has become overused of late) continue to treat the law school as your own personal playground instead of giving a damn what students want. D. Marvin Jones is/was a shining example of a faculty that grinds out uber liberal “publications” that are barely coherent, biased, misstate the law and are otherwise useless. Leiter’s rankings are nothing more than a measure of the left wing citation orgy that dupes administrators into thinking the faculty is “renowned” when in fact they are utterly irrelevant to the actual scholarship and and practice. Yes, I said it, “practice” which is a dirty word at UM Law.
Within 5 years UM Law will be out of the top 100. Unless a Dean with some real balls comes along and cleans house, showing the door to all the buffoons who work 3 months a year and then spend their time writing “articles” for publication in (feminist/homosexual/anti-capitalist/anti-law enforcement) “law reviews”. How many law reviews are there at UM now, 6 or 7? Yeah, right.
Students generally want a piece of paper without having to do any work to earn the degree. Oh, they’re willing to pay some money, or use their parent’s money, but learning is something that today’s student would like to avoid. I think that the soon-to-arrive oil-based recession will motivate a lot of slackers.
Dean Lynch’s letter was relatively thoughtful, and he did a good job identifying certain areas in which UM Law needs to improve.
I just wish he wouldn’t cite to Law Dragon. If one regards the U.S. News rankings as arbitrary, then fine. But please don’t invoke our ranking on Law Dragon as if that’s some sort of consolation prize. That’s just embarrassing. No one takes Law Dragon seriously; everyone takes the U.S. News rankings seriously. Indeed, Dean Lynch would not have written today’s letter to the studentry if it were otherwise.
I hope that UM is poised and not posed to move up in the rankings. “Posed” would imply that the rankings were all form and no function.
It doesn’t help the school’s image when there are typoes in the Dean’s letter. “Each year we loose touch . . .”
American University law school’s ranking a few years ago was low in US News. It has since moved up. One reason may be because the school appears to be concerned with enriching the quality of the legal education by offering more opportunities for people to learn in a variety of manners. For example, on Washington College of law school’s website, anyone, for free, may download trainings on the new U visa regulations related to immigration law. I listened to this training in the UM gym the other day on my iphone. It was great. There are countless other free downloads the school offers that actually train you how to do things that will make you money after you graduate. If UM began to offer large numbers of quality seminars and trainings with well known speakers on a variety of topics, including especially controversial ones that get people worked up, and then recorded them for downloading, maybe there would be more energy on campus. I wonder why I have to go to American University’s website to download quality trainings on international law when UM is supposed to be a large, urban, diverse law school like American. Another reason American may have moved up in the rankings is because it has more clinics. UM desperately needs more clinical trainings. There are so many LL.M.s in the international realm at UM, but what kinds of international law clinics are there? There should at the bare minimum be a clinic where students can gain experience preparing cases in front of an international tribunal over the course of a semester. If UM provided cool stuff like this, and I know clinics and podcasts cost a lot more than just lecturing theory to a large audience, maybe the number of applications would rise and the stats of the entering students would rise because of the volume of new applications.
The Dean’s letter is not reassuring. It sounds like he is trying to make comforting excuses for the schools decline in the rankings rather than propose fresh ideas that would attract large numbers of new applicants. Many professors at UM don’t hesitate to hand out low grades to students. U of Miami probably deserves a D right now compared to an A for WA college of law. UM should look at what other schools are doing to move up in the rankings and follow their example.
Also interesting that he mentions how he ‘could’ point to other schools inflating the numbers they report. Last I saw Miami reported their average starting salary for grads at like $84,000 / yr.
Pot…kettle.
This is exactly like the pot calling the kettle black and then the pot saying “but I’m on sale and you can get me for less money than you would any other time of the year!” and then the kettle saying.. “Umm, happy Thanksgiving, but good luck finding me cheaper, even at Walmart or Target!”. It’s just crazy but hopefully they will turn things around.