Chicago is not 6th

Berkeley is not 13th

Illinois is not 27th

Wisconsin is not 31st

Tulane is not 56th

San Diego is not 67th

The list could go on.

Some malevolent typesetter must have fooled with the law school rankings at the last moment in order to make U.S. News look ridiculous. A major news magazine wouldn’t publish disinformation like this.

UPDATE: A reader asks whether I think Texas belongs on this list of “ridiculous” rankings by US News. The simple answer is “no.” The complex answer is: it depends what question the rankings are answering. If the question is median student credentials, Texas is about 16th or 17th. If the question is number of students with LSATs in the 95th percentile or above, then Texas is somewhere between 7th and 10th. If the question is placement at leading law firms in New York City, then Texas is somewhere between 16th and 20th; if Washington, DC, then Texas is in the top ten. If the question is scholarly quality of the faculty, then Texas is somewhere between 7th and 12th. If the question is faculty strength in law and economics, then maybe Texas squeaks in to the top 20. If the question is faculty strength in constitutional law or law-and-philosophy, then Texas is easily in the top five. If the question is median starting salaries, then Texas is in the top 20. If the question is median starting salaries adjusted for differences in cost-of-living in different regions of the country, then Texas is easily in the top 10. If the question is proximity to good TexMex, Texas is #1. If the question is proximity to good Italian food, Texas might be in the top 80.

The question US News asks–if it’s even a coherent question–is some aggregation of most of the above. So who knows what the answer should be? It’s one reason I decided to stop aggregating factors in my own law school rankings: there really is no principled aggregation formula to be applied. That being said, a good law school has good faculty, good students, and good job placement (from law firms to clerkships to law teaching jobs). I’m hard-pressed to think of any sensible formula on which the schools noted above are ranked as US News ranks them.