GW Law Ranking Trends Explained

Over the past several decades, George Washington University Law School (GW Law) has consistently ranked among the top law schools in the nation. This ranking earned the school a tier 1 status year after year, and a degree of prestige associated with its name that GW Law students have sway with employers even if they don’t have the best grades. But this year, the law school dropped sharply in the controversial "U.S. News & World Report" rankings, falling from a tie for 28th to 53rd. This drop shocked many throughout the industry, particularly since GW Law did everything the publication looks for to improve its performance.
In fact, only four categories could have caused the decision. "U.S. News" notes that peer assessment scores can account for a quarter of a school’s overall score, and this point value fluctuates the most each year. The problem with peer assessments isn’t just their weight in the rankings; it’s that they are almost entirely subjective. Because of this, grades from law school employees have tremendous value in the rankings. If professors or school leaders ranked GW law lower than 5 spots (assessments of 2.4 and below) instead of ranking them higher as they did in the past, that could have caused a precipitous ranking drop .
The second possible ranking impact was their acceptance rate. Apparently, "U.S. News" took into account that GW Law admitted a higher percentage of applicants than in the past, which could have caused this drop. The more students law schools take, the less competitive they are said to be.
Graduation and employment rates have also come under scrutiny. "U.S. News" says those are among the "indicators that best correlate with lawyers’ success in the first year of practice," so if these rates have increased, GW’s drop might not have been so severe. But this could still cause a drop if the percentage of applications actually decreased.
The last option is also possible but doesn’t seem likely. "U.S. News" has a quality index that ranks the overall quality of the entire student body and faculty. If GW dropped off the list of the highest ranked colleges and universities, it might have been weighed less favorably. The more likely option, however, is for GW Law to dive further into the rankings as a result of a misunderstanding of their data. If GW Law appeals the rankings through the proper channels, the acceptance rate might just be the reason behind this surprise drop.

What Causes the Drop in Ranking

The sharp decline of nearly 10 spots in the latest annual U.S. News and World Report ranking of law schools has resulted in a range of speculation about the cause of GW Law’s precipitous drop from 36th to 43rd place among national law schools. Anything short of this being a statistical fluke must include factors related to faculty, students, employment rates and other revealing metrics that can make or break a school. As such, a review of GW Law’s prior and current law school data (courtesy of U.S. News and the Consumer Information Section of the American Bar Association) reveals some potentially telling clues that might account for these latest rankings. In addition to seeing a substantial drop in enrollment from between 2008 and 2018, this law school’s considerable drop in faculty to student ratio tracks rather neatly correspond to the years under scrutiny by the U.S. News Rankings. These ratios began declining from 14:1 in 2014 down to their current 8:1. This is a critically important ratio to law schools that evidences its source for counting students against the same faculty number for determining bar passage benchmarks. Only slightly less telltale is the drop in acceptance rate down to 29% from a steep climb starting at 35% from 2008 until 2014. Among the other metrics falling off, perhaps the one most clearly responsible for the falloff is the change in full time employment rates in which graduates are obtaining a full-time position where bar passage is required. In 2008, this percentage was just over 90% but steadily dropped to a floor of 83.8% for 2015. It was also revealing to see these same employment data details, including information on acceptance rate, at another school at which I work. When its employment rate also showed a decrease, the faculty remained assuredly confident that the school’s upward trajectory would soon recover. And then came the next year’s U.S. News drop.

Current and Future Students: What to Know

For the current student at GW Law, it is easy to see why a dip in ranking might cause concern. After all, a law school designation is perhaps the most significant credential a young attorney can receive—one that will be presented to every potential employer looking for the finest attorneys. How then will the perception of GW Law be impacted by dropping from a high-20s ranking to the end of the 50s?
While the J.D. itself should not lose value and the same quality attorneys will graduate, the perception of GW Law does not exist in a vacuum. An employer seldom only considers academic credentials: they want to know the school and its reputation, the professors and the employment of alumni. Though slightly flawed metrics, many employers will consider a mediocre law school education a sign of a less-competitive student body. Of course, these rankings are essentially meaningless due to their objectivity, and are often formulated by companies trying to get clicks, and yet they still influence thinking and are used to represent the worth of an attorney to potential clients. This perception will likely become a serious problem, now that GW has lost a prestigious journal and law review and taken on yet another unflattering ranking.
So what does this mean for new students, and how can it be corrected? It may be a few years before we determine how much the drop in ranking actually affects prospects, but there is little doubt that undergraduate performance will be affected. Going into their final year of undergraduate study, students make a school selection—generally within a year of leaving the classroom and entering the real world. The value of a GW Law degree has decreased substantially, meaning GW Law will not be as enticing to students. The perception of a prestigious school is not as appealing when the academic rigors are no longer necessarily met.
And what effects will this decrease in prestige have on the employability of their graduates after the students have finished their studies? As mentioned above, the GW Law designation will eventually become a disadvantage for the class of 2020, at least for those that entered in 2016. While the class of 2020 may always have the option of awaiting graduation, experiences and practical knowledge are invaluable for an attorney. The perception that even with stellar grades and academic credentials, they may be leaving the school with a black mark in their diploma will undoubtedly harm the experience and prospects of GW Law graduates.

How Does It Compare to Comparable Schools

In further analyzing the 2018-19 Law School Rankings, we can compare rival institutions that usually rank closely to GW Law in an effort to gain insight into how the 12-position drop came about. While the methodology has undoubtedly changed over the past few years, there are some general similarities. And while it is random where we fall on the list, there are clearly some underlying performance metrics that have remained consistent over the past few years. That being said, a comparative analysis may help point us to areas of improvement.
For a number of years, GW Law was closely ranked with George Mason, University of San Diego, and Boston College. Interestingly enough, the schools all had remarkably similar profiles by ranking, enrolled J.D. and LL.M. students, and tuition. Moreover, their bar passage rate was not far off from GW Law’s, as was the percentage of students employed nine months after graduation.
In looking at how these schools fared in the 2018 rankings, we see some interesting things. With George Mason, the biggest difference is clearly in tuition rates (which we would note is also covered by bar passage rates and debt), as our $66,225 is a full $8,855 less than these schools at $75,080. However, George Mason’s J.D. enrollment number of 550 is significantly smaller than the 650 at GW Law. In other words, it may be more difficult to have studiously selective admission to George Mason. In addition, it should be noted that, as with GW Law, George Mason ranked very low in peer assessment, which has such a large impact on overall ranking. GW Law’s peer assessment score in 2018 fell to 2.55 from the highest score of 3.09 in 2016. George Mason in 2018 had a score of 2.95. Conversely, Boston College and USD saw their scores improve from 2016 and outpace us in this metric.
So what’s to learn from comparing GW Law’s peer institutions? Overall, this could point to a lack of solid employed-after-graduation rates in the class of 2016. Moreover, this could signal to us that our peer assessment score is in need of examination and evaluation. The recent hiring of Sandra Cleary and addition of her Assessment and Research team is a solid foundation upon which that can be built.

How the University Responded, and Future Plans

In response to the ranking drop, the GW Law administration publicly acknowledged the decline, attributing it partly to the increase in law school applicants who benefitted George Washington Law School’s engineering and science programs. The university expressed its commitment to improving the national rank and ensuring its law programs’ strengths are recognized by the American Bar Association, the public, and the federal government for their role in sparking innovation, solving problems, and providing critical services.
Following its response to the ranking decline, the university has begun to market the benefits of its law school programs through a "By Design" campaign that showcases its strategic plan to expand on its existing engineering program strengths and establish new multidisciplinary STEM-centric programs in cloud computing, nanotechnology, and more . As George Washington University’s President Thomas LeBlanc said in a recent statement: ""GW is now home to many of our nation’s top legal minds who are focused on ensuring technology serves the public good, recognizing which issues can be addressed through innovation and which cannot and protecting society’s most vulnerable. It is exactly what GW was designed to do."
The school’s updated strategy will focus on emphasizing the impact of its legal services on students, ensuring its skills align with the needs of today’s employers, partnering with industry leaders, and expanding its offerings in the healthcare, cybersecurity, and biomedical spaces.

Experts Speak: Predictions and Opinions

This week we have asked a number of experts for their opinions and predictions on the abrupt ranking drop for George Washington Law School. It hasn’t been easy, we are still waiting for many of them to reply, but in the meantime we have received some comments which we present below.
Dean Paul Caron, TaxProfBlog
The problem is as follows. ABA Standard 509(b)(1) requires law schools to post their first-year class profiles and require that "[t]he school’s official website must contain the information required by this standard." (emphasis added). The ABA did not publish admissions profiles from 2014 or 2016 so they are presumed valid. Under the law school aid eligibility standards, "Law school certification officials that have previously reported admissions data that law schools later have found not to be valid must make appropriate proper adjustments to correct data entries and notify the ABA."
I would issue a public statement: "While we have not yet been contacted by US News, we take seriously the validity of the profile we provided. We will promptly report any adjustments required by the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar [i.e., a correction to the invalid profile] and will continue to strive at all times to provide accurate profile data to USNews and the ABA."
Dean Jennifer Collins, SMU Law School
Frankly, I think it (the drop in ranking) is pretty darn close to being silly. We do not have any inside information about what might have happened but whatever it was, I think it is unfair if it was unintentional and should have been something that GW could easily remedy before the rankings are published. You need a finite challenge you can solve and fix. I think the U.S. News ranking has changed, there seems to be more emphasis on issues that are harder to measure including things like benefit of attendance, what job you get right after graduation, bar passage, and employer satisfaction — things that take years for law schools to have sufficient data to really understand.
Dean Bill Byrnes, Touro Law School
I think if GW "takes care of business" the drop is temporary.
A major factors are likely USNWR’s use of standard deviations in rankings. USNWR often says that if a school is two standard deviations away on a dimension its proximity to the ranked range will change. One can look at changes in faculty quality, rankings of faculty reputation, etc. to see how much noise is created by an individual faculty member. Sometimes it creates too much noise. A drop of 10 places does not seem to be caused by an individual that lost their job or took a leave of absence or a different method for counting faculty with JD’s or different credit hour rules.
I also think that sometimes a school is "rewarded" for changing its methods for counting different things. At one point one law school we are familiar with had its rank improve by ten spots just by changing its method of counting day v. night students and male v. female students.
If GW can return to its position in the 80’s, we would suggest that it press on quietly until things settle down. Then GWS could join with others to advocate a change in USNWR methodology. Changes can be made to any ranking system.
Based on our database review, GWS would need to achieve a genuine improvement of 20% in any single category to not decline at all, and to improve in each category by 20% to move up 10 positions.

Implications Over the Coming Years for GW Law

As a living testament to the cut-throat nature of elite law school admissions, George Washington University Law has fallen out of the T14 this year after being a fixture in that coterie for over a decade. T14 status has always been a slippery designation, given the mouths it must satisfy, so let’s take a look at the implications for GW Law and its students.
Short-term, the drop from 14th to 26th will change some of the acceptance criteria for applicants who are below whatever new 14th place standard is adopted next year, particularly those applying to multiple T14 schools. Since the US News acceptance criteria is mainly based on LSAT and GPA medians, we can intuit that a lesser acceptance rate and higher medians will be required year over year. As such, students with a median LSAT or GPA below those new standards will be less likely to apply to GW Law.
In terms of the long-term effects on GWLaw, however, the reality may be more of a perception than a true change. Most readers probably know someone with a J.D. from The George Washington University Law School (GW Law). The school has been an academic powerhouse (and top faculty producer) for decades, producing multiple Supreme Court Justices, including Neil Gorsuch, and a high number of prosecutors and judges. Like many T14s, there are also a number of alumni who do not practice law per se but serve in congress and other government roles.
That said, although GW Law graduates are often numerous in high level positions, they rarely make the list of Most Disruptive Lawyers published by the National Law Journal. Part of this issue has to do with their size: students at more temperate sized law schools usually enjoy more prestige. Many students who attend smaller schools like Berkeley or NYU do so because they want to be the best of the best, while students who go to larger schools like Yale are alumni of better colleges than their peers but cannot afford the higher tuition.
While one might question the rationale of such a reason, this perspective likely changes along with the law school from which they graduate . Unlike a more regional school, the name alone of GW Law will get them into the door with some law firms or judges. GW law must use this to its advantage to valorize the valuables it has already harvested. It must find a way of exiting out from the shadows of its rich brother (Georgetown). Then, its students will carry the reputation afield to work. The reputation of the school, then, is a boon to its alumni, as students will surely follow personal brands as well as any brand of any school. If the more refined GW Law offers itself as a brand apart from its more prestigious brother, its drift from the same group may reverse, and it may recruit not based on value of the school, but of its own merit.
Alumni relations is another front on which the sudden fall in USNWR rank threatens GWU Law. There are certain precautionary measures that law schools must take when their alumni turn to other successful fields than law. For instance, regardless of whatever stage of their careers, efforts must be made to ensure alumni remain engaged. Engaging these alumni requires a sort of rehabilitation from the school, outreach and education. The students who choose to enroll in GW Law likely had other options, and some went with the school despite knowing full-well that their rankings were falling. There must be a hand-extended to these individuals so that the return back into GW Law is of utmost involvement. Closing the gap with alumni between student and employer is essential not only for future financials, but to protect against further devaluation of the name, if law alumni begin to pursue opportunities in other industries. This is, indeed, a long (long) term strategy but one that must be factored into any damage control equation.
While the GW Law ranking drop has real implications for the school’s admissions standards, the long-term fallout is more likely to be felt on the school’s alumni than the students who have just enrolled. By using its underappreciated status to recruit the best faculty, GW Law might be able to save itself from irrelevance. GW Law is a strong institution, but it needs to make sure its public face is as credible as what is going on behind the scenes.