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11 Calif. L. Rev. Online 1 (2020-2021)

handle is hein.journals/callro11 and id is 1 raw text is: Finally, a Use for the U.S. News Law
School Rankings
Noah C. Chauvin*
The U.S. News & World Report law school rankings are highly
influential among people applying to law school. Nonetheless, they are
widely panned among the legal community for the often-arbitrary
criteria they use to distinguish between law schools. In this essay, I
seek to rescue the rankings from this derision by proposing a novel use
for them: picking the winner of college football games against the
spread. I report the results of an experiment in which I applied this
method, and briefly discuss what these exciting new findings will mean
for the future of the U.S. News rankings and their reputation in the
legal community.
I. Introduction .............................................................................................1
II.  T h e  M eth od ..................................................................................... . . 2
III. Results and Conclusions .......................................................................5
I.
INTRODUCTION
The US. News & World Report law school rankings are among the most
panned means for determining the relative quality of the United States'
institutions of legal education. So controversial are the U.S. News rankings that
there is a veritable cottage industry of law review articles debating their value.'
It is not that the legal world is opposed to ranking law schools per se. There are
a host of rankings available, and one law review even held an entire symposium
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15779/Z38SQ8QJ2D
Copyright © 2020 Author holds copyrights.
*  Matt Strauser and Kyle Wood share the blame for the fact that this piece exists. Sammy
Block and Natasha Geiling deserve credit for the fact that it contains stronger arguments and far fewer
typos, confusing sentences, and citation mistakes than it used to. All remaining errors and all views
are strictly my own.
1. See Theodore P. Seto, Understanding the U.S. News Law School Rankings, 60 SMU L.
REV. 493, 493-94 & n.1 (2007).

1

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