Via the National Law Journal, Brooklyn Law Schools needs a good criminal defense lawyer, because they got nabbed.  While this is no doubt a very serious matter within the Academy, it strikes me as picture perfect.  Law schools have given the high ground to the annual rankings of U.S. News and World Reports.  Their vitality depends on where they fall on the list.  How could seemingly intelligent people willingly give away their souls to a magazine?

U.S. News & World Report said that it is “investigating” Brooklyn Law School’s responses to the magazine’s annual survey used to rank the country’s top law schools, specifically with respect to part-time students.

The magazine said it would look into the matter after some rival law schools noted that Brooklyn Law wasn’t listed in the part-time ranking and questioned whether the school also excluded part-time students in its responses for the overall ranking in an effort to boost its ranking.

Looking beyond the fact that this is Brooklyn, a borough not known for playing by someone else’s set of rules (or phonics), does it come as a shock that a school(s), which claim to hate the rankings yet comply like Pavlovian dogs, isn’t going to put its reputation in the hands of Mort Zuckerman’s minions to decide whether it’s sufficiently worthy of respect?  Think about it.  I still can’t imagine that any law school dean was foolish enough to send back the first questionaire.  Now they live and die on the rankings.

Bear in mind, law schools are reporting to a magazine, not the court, or the church or their mother.  This isn’t perjury; there isn’t a duty to tell USN&WR anything simply because they ask.  No one can force law schools to participate in this goofy charade.  No one can tell students to apply or alumni to contribute or to hire new grads, because a magazine said so.  Yet the law schools dutifully fill out the forms, send them in and eagerly await the results. 

Brooklyn Law School dismisses their “error”.

“For many years, we have engaged U.S. News editors in debate over what we regard as flaws in its rankings methodology,” the school said in a statement. “An important aspect of this debate has been our position that it is inappropriate to consider the numerical credentials (LSAT and GPA) of part-time students on the same basis as full-time students.”

After the school received no response from the magazine to a letter it sent to editors arguing against including part-time students and having heard no announcement that the change was going forward, the school kept up its past practice of excluding part-time students in it responses, the school said. In answering some questions that asked for information based on combined full- and part-time students, the school said its erroneous response providing information for full-time students was “completely inadvertent.”

Wrong answer.  To suggest that it was an “inadvertent” mistake is laughable.  They pore over these forms, crunch the numbers, then crunch them again.  At least within the very small pond of law schools, these numbers are god.  They don’t make “inadvertent” mistakes when it comes to their rankings.  To the extent that Brooklyn had any credibility following its response to the rankings questionaire, it lost it when it proffered this explanation.  Now we know that it cheated.  It would be a “so what” proposition, but for the fact that these rankings were so important, so critical, that it was something worthy of cheating on.

The right answer is so much simpler, so much more honest.  The rankings are crap and we’ve not playing the game anymore. 

What would happen to any law school that chose not to play?  Would it explode?  Disappear off the face of the earth?  Never receive another penny in donations, another application, another job offer to its students?  Come on.  It would, of course, be easiest for all if it started at the top, the law schools who don’t need the USN&WR seal of approval to prove their worth, but I suspect that these are the schools that secretly love the ratings, since they do well and it inures to their benefit.

It’s the law schools down the line, the ones that will never make it into the top 20, who want to pull the plug.  But then, if they creep up a few notches, they send out a press release about how they’re now the ginchiest law school around, hoping to attract another hundred applicants (and their application fees).  You see, as much as they hate the rankings, it’s a self-serving hatred.  They are equally shameless about using them to their own advantage whenever possible.

It’s a testament to the integrity of law schools that they made it this far without a scandal.  If these rankings were about lawyers, people would be gaming the system from day 1.  There isn’t a chance in the world that lawyers would play fair, or even care if they were playing fair.  Getting an advantage wherever possible is sport for lawyers, and there is no shame in trying.  Law schools prefer to believe they are on a higher ethical plane.  For academia, it’s about honor.  At least until the cash flow starts to dry up, at which point it’s about survival on a playing field designed by some magazine editors.

So Brooklyn Law School tried to play the system.  It’s still there, teaching students how to succeed in the game of law.  What is most curious about this scandal isn’t that it happened, but that it was instigated by other law schools jealous of Brooklyn’s position in the rankings.  If Brooklyn Law School is pathetic for having tried to game this silly system, how sad are the ones who ratted Brooklyn out.

Update: In a related matter, Syracuse will only let law students go to the bathroom once during exams to stop cheating.  When asked why, the dean responded, “because we’re not Brooklyn, dammit!”  Only kidding.  From Turley :

The law school told students that “During this exam period, we have received a significant number of reports from (first-year) students alleging academic dishonesty.” Limiting bathroom runs was better and more efficient than cavity searches or catheters.

And besides, cavity searches and catheters are exclusively reserved for the post exam parties.  So where exactly on the USN&WR’s questionaire is the space for “number of times cheating law students are allowed to go to the bathroom?”