Dean Paul Caron Quoted in Law.com Article on Last-Minute Changes to U.S. News Law School Rankings

Dean Paul L. Caron is quoted in the Law.com article, "US News' Rough Year Just Got Worse: Law School Rankings Changed a Third Time," which addresses last-minute changes to the U.S. News and World Report's law school rankings. 

Excerpts from "US News' Rough Year Just Got Worse: Law School Rankings Changed a Third Time"

U.S. News & World Report has modified its closely watched law school rankings yet again—marking the third time the rankings have changed in the two weeks prior to their official March 30 release.

On Sunday, U.S. News pulled down the embargoed version of the rankings that were provided to law schools March 16 and reposted them later in the day with a new version of the overall ranking which changed the positions of 35 schools. ...

In a March 28 message to law school administrators, U.S. News said it removed a controversial metric regarding the number of credit hours taught by law librarians, and shifted the 0.25% weight that metric was given over to the bar pass rate indicator. As a result, the total weight given to law library measures in the overall rankings dropped from 2% to 1.75%, while the weight given to the bar pass rate increased from 2% to 2.25%, the message said. U.S. News recalculated the overall rankings with the new weighting, which changed the overall ranking of 35 schools, according to Pepperdine University Law Dean Paul Caron, who wrote about the latest changes on his TaxProfBlog. Nine of the schools in the top 30 saw their rankings change, according to Caron, though several law faculty confirmed that there were no changes among the top 20 schools.

The complete article may be found here (subscription required)