Model of 2009 USN&WR Law School Rankings

As I have every year since 2006, I this year again tried to duplicate the law school rankings published by the U.S. News & World Report ("USN&WR"). Although it took me longer than usual to model the most recent rankings—the "2009" rankings, as USN&WR styles them—I ended up getting the best fit, yet. Here's a snapshot view of the results:



For details about how and why I modeled USN&WR's law school rankings, as well as for similar snap-shots of the results, see these posts from 2005, 2006, and 2007.

I'll offer further reflections on this year's results in later posts. For now, I'll just observe that the close fit between USN&WR's scores and the model's scores should strike you as good news. Why? Because it suggests that law schools did not try game the rankings by telling USN&WR one thing and the ABA (the source of most of the data used in the model) another. Even if you don't care very much for USN&WR's law school rankings, you'll surely agree that they ought not rely on gross misrepresentations.

[Crossposted at Agoraphilia, MoneyLaw, and College Life O.C.]