The Race to the Top Project is an independent project founded by law professors Jason Solomon (University of Georgia School of Law) and David Fagundes (Southwestern Law School) that questions the current dominant method of evaluating law schools—that is, the reputation-driven U.S. News & World Report rankings. We address the growing concerns about the indeterminacy of these rankings in a few ways.
First, we seek to start a dialogue regarding what role the quality of legal education should play in evaluating the J.D. programs that deliver them. This inquiry begins by examining the U.S. News survey itself, which—while commonly understood to ask survey respondents to evaluate the reputation of law schools—is actually phrased in an open-ended manner that appears to focus on evaluation of the quality of the education delivered (specifically, it seeks evaluation of “the academic quality of the J.D. program”). More broadly, our position is that the quality of education delivered must occupy a central place in any evaluation of law schools. While reputation may be relevant for many reasons, a ranking system that fails to inform students about the value and type of actual law training that they will receive fails to leave applicants—and the public at large—fully informed.
Second, we seek to aggregate and to generate information that provides an alternative source for law school evaluation apart from the current reputation-driven regime. Part of this effort will include collecting and centralizing any information from other sources that seek to evaluate law schools. We are particularly interested in helping to develop further comparative data to assess the quality of the education law schools deliver to their students. This aspect of the project can be seen as a companion to the ABA’s attempt to turn more to outcome measures to regulate law schools.
Finally, this is a collaborative and constructive project in which we invite all members of the legal education world to participate. This includes commenting on our blog posts at racetothetoplaw.com, providing data sets that shed light on the educational value law schools add to their students, responding to occasional surveys that seek to provide additional metrics for such evaluations, and any other comments or criticisms. We look forward to starting a useful and interesting conversation that will lead to a richer means for evaluating and understanding the various institutions that comprise the American legal academy.
Jason Solomon & Dave Fagundes