Curators discuss Law school rankings drop

The school has made changes to career services for students.

By Michelle Gao

Published Oct. 1, 2010

The School of Law's drop in U.S. News & World Report rankings in the spring sparked discussion at last week's UM system Board of Curators meeting.

On Thursday, Chancellor Brady Deaton presented the ranking changes from U.S. News & World Report. Law School Dean R. Lawrence Dessem prepared the information for the presentation.

The school's ranking declined in several categories, such as undergraduate GPA and assessment scores among judges and lawyers. The most noticeable drop was in graduates employed nine months after graduation, with a decline from last year’s ranking of 57th to 150th.

Deputy Provost Kenneth Dean said it is more important to view the school as a whole than focus on a few particular numbers.

“When you look at everything, you’ll see that our reputation among judges, practitioners and other academics has always been good,” Dean said. “There’s going to be minor little shifts, like a few percentage points drop in the graduates employed nine months after graduation. (The scores of dropped categories) are still good percentages. You’ve been compared with everyone else at that point.”

Dean said another important thing to notice is the ranking is resources-driven, which can only be changed by adding more resources.

Dessem said the ranking is an interesting exercise but has limits in many ways.

“I think the rankings are problematic because certain parts cannot be quantified,” Dessem said. “For example, the quality of teaching is very important, yet there’s no numbers they can count. They look at numbers they can count, like the number of books in the library. These factors may have nothing directly to do with the experience of the students.”

Dessem said the quality of education and students’ experiences are what the School of Law has been focusing on and it is not necessary to focus on the issue of dropping ranks.

“We look at other things,” Dessem said. “We always do quite well in the reputational portion of the ranking. Our alumni have done exceedingly well. We have a lot of governors of the state (of Missouri). We have a graduate at the United States Senate and a couple of House representatives, judges and mayors.”

Dessem said the school's reputation and alumni resources would lead to faculty recommendations and ongoing relationships for law students, two things that benefit students more than numerical rankings.

Recent career services enhancement programs were also presented. New career service coordinators will focus on each individual student to help them with career developments.

Paul Ladehoff, interim assistant dean for Admissions, Career Development and Student Services, said the new enhancements are not in response to the ranking drop. Rather, they are designed to help law graduations in the today’s economic environment.

“If we are a good law school, we are,” Ladehoff said. “We acknowledge those rankings and we pay attention to them, but we don’t game the system as other law schools. A few number drops do not change anything. We pay attention to the best of our students.”

The presentation also mentioned a September 2010 national study that ranked school faculty 55th in the nation with respect to the impact of their legal scholarship.

Rachel Heald, professor of legal writing and the newest faculty member, is a summa cum laude graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism and obtained her law degree at Georgetown University. Heald said she didn’t think the dropping ranking will affect the benefits offered by the School of Law.

“I’m uniformly impressed by the amazing faculty members and the excellent research, and I’ve met a group of law students who are very engaged, curious and professional,” Heald said. “As a teacher, you really want to work with such students.”