The subculture of legal academia turns out to be a dirty little place, with goateed lawprofs skulking about the dark back hallways of the Ivory Tower trying to figure out ways to cheat their way to prominence.  Who knew?

According to this New York Lawyer report, it’s forcing the hand of U.S. News and World Reports, that paragon of public integrity, to change the way it does business.  You see, one of the factors that’s used to calculate how wonderful a law school is (and hence its ranking) is the LSAT scores of its admits.  But there’s a little secret.

U.S. News currently uses only the grades and test scores of full-time students. The magazine is considering pooling the scores of part-time students after hearing allegations that some schools move students with lower grades and test scores into part-time programs so they can report better data, said Robert Morse, director of data research for the magazine.

“One way to prevent gaming of the system is to count [grade and test data of] all students,” Morse said.

As I sat, quietly laughing to myself at the notion of law schools “gaming the system,” the question “why” kept running through my mind.  If the schools get a higher ranking, do the Deans get a performance bonus?  If the schools get a higher ranking, do their graduates get a favorable first jury verdict?  Maybe they get an affirmance/reversal (as the case may be) on their first appeal?  Why?

There is no doubt that this is very serious business for law schools.

The proposal is strongly opposed by deans at schools with part-time programs designed for students who are years past college graduation and often well into careers outside the law. They warn that a school’s place on the U.S. News list is so important that some schools would drop the part-time programs rather than slip lower in the national rankings.

They would rather shut out an entire class of students, those who are older, employed and minority, than drop a position in the rankings?  That sounds crazy.  Worse yet, it sounds vicious.  Would they really sacrifice their part-time program, and all the individuals who would otherwise be unable to attend law school, just for a rank?

While the article makes clear that this is very serious business, it fails to explain why this matters so much.  Would potential Biglaw employers confuse Harvard Law School with Ave Maria if they didn’t have rankings?  Would lawprofs be unable to get their law review articles published because they taught in a T-25 rather than a T-14 school?  Would alumni donations slow to a trickle?  I don’t know what ill would befall these schools, but it must be huge for them to be willing to sacrifice any sense of mission to hold onto their rank. 

I’m quite sure that I’m naive, but I suspect that this may be more an internally driven competition, where the impact is more psychological than anything else.  Potential law students may obsess over rankings, but I can’t recall any client caring what your law school rank was.  Yet very smart people have become slaves to Mort Zuckerman.  Think about how crazy that sounds.  Mort Zuckerman, for God’s sake!

What if a bunch of top law schools refused to provide data to U.S. News & World Reports next year?  What if they decided that their mission was to teach people to become lawyers, and they were going to do it the best they could?  What if they decided that putting a bunch of promising, but older, less LSAT-savvy, students in seats to fulfill the demand for public service lawyering was more important to society than putting a feather in their well-endowed cap?

The sky would fall, right?  So it’s worth it for law schools to cheat for a rank?  Not in my book.

Update:  It looks like I have company in my disgust at the fact that law schools would game the system, or do away with their part-time program to keep their death-grip on their rank.  See Jim Chen at MoneyLaw (check out his great Sir Thomas More quote and video from “A Man for All Seasons”) and Nancy Rappaport at MoneyLaw as well as her personal blawg.

It’s gratifying to know that I’m in such good company, and that there are some important people in the Academy who have survived with their integrity intact.