US News and Law School Rankings

Law schools live and die by rankings.  The mother of all rankings are those prepared and published by US News & World Report.    

The scourge of these rankings may, however, soon be over.  US News recently announced that it was shifting from publishing every other week (it had already ceased to be a weekly) to monthly.  Perhaps the next step will be a complete cessation of business.  As one columnist speculated:

• Just call it coincidence, but on Election Day, word spread that the once-weekly U.S. News was downsizing to a monthly — a step closer to the fate of Literary Digest, the weekly magazine that vanished two years after its straw poll predicated an Alf Landon landslide over Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1936.

We shall see about the continued viability of US News.  For any change to benefit law school, it will have to happen by April.  That's when the next round of rankings come out.