The 2008 U.S. News and World Report rankings placed the LSU Law Center at number 91 and within the top 100 American Bar Association (ABA) law schools. The Law Center dropped slightly in the 2008 rankings released in March, but retained its top 100 classification. The 2007 rankings placed the Law Center at number 87.
The Law Center’s rankings have improved dramatically under the leadership of Chancellor John Costonis, moving from fourth to the second tier over the past nine years. The magazine ranks all 180 ABA schools. The rankings are derived from various subcategories related to institutional resources, student success in employment and bar passage, and selectivity in the admission process. Among the subcategories are: the past year’s entering class statistics and acceptance rate; law school expenditures on students and library resources; faculty/student ratio; and peer assessment scores provided through surveys of selected lawyers, judges, law school deans, administrators and tenured faculty. Rankings in the various subcategories are combined to derive an overall score.
“The latest rankings, while four points lower than the previous year, still reflect positively on the internal matters that are within our control,” according to Chancellor Costonis. “For us, it’s the internal quality of our Law Center program that is important. If that translates into higher rankings, that’s great.”
Many law school deans, with Costonis among them, have expressed concern that the criteria used by U.S. News are biased toward private national law schools or large state schools. “LSU Law, like many state schools, draws its students and their employers largely from within the states, and we tend to stress training in the so-called ‘local law,’” according to Costonis. “This could easily result in a yearly move up or down in the rankings.”
