2023-24 USNWR MESSAGE
Dear AUWCL Community:
The 2023-2024 U.S. News & World Report (USNWR) law school overall rankings just released have American University Washington College of Law (AUWCL) tied with six other schools at #89. Three of AUWCL’s specialty programs (Clinical Law #1, International Law #5, and Intellectual Property Law #7) are ranked in the top ten, and three others (Trial Advocacy #15, Part-Time Law #16, and Health Care Law #20) are ranked in the top twenty.
Although our outstanding specialty programs continue to be recognized by the vote of their peers, the downward move in AUWCL’s overall USNWR ranking – despite our tremendous institutional progress over the past year, including enrollment of a 1L class with the strongest combined admissions metrics in the history of the school – is the direct result of abrupt methodological changes implemented by the magazine this year in their overall ranking of 196 U.S. law schools.
Over the past year, AUWCL has improved on key discernible core metrics under the pre-existing USNWR overall rankings formula. Indeed, our current first year J.D. class has the strongest combined median LSAT (162) and median undergraduate GPA (3.61) admissions index in our school’s recorded history. In addition, AUWCL significantly improved in job placement success and maintained our recent gains in bar passage. Not surprisingly, many reasonably were expecting AUWCL’s progress to be reflected in an upward move in the USNWR rankings this year.
Nevertheless, despite AUWCL’s performance on these core metrics and a peer assessment score in the top 50 of all law schools, our most recent USNWR overall ranking has fallen from last year’s seven-year high of #73. This counterintuitive drop in AUWCL’s overall USNWR ranking is due, in large part, to the magazine’s decision to make sweeping changes to its methodology for this year’s overall ranking. For example, the magazine drastically reduced – by half – the weight of the peer reputational assessment, a metric on which AUWCL has outperformed its overall ranking more than almost every law school in the country. AUWCL’s drop in the overall USNWR rankings due to this sudden, post hoc methodological shift fundamentally underscores why these rankings are not a reliable barometer of institutional quality over time.
By any reasonable measure, AUWCL is a better law school than it was a year ago, and we expect to be even stronger next year. We have extraordinary, diverse, and passionate students who are in demand with employers in all sectors of the legal profession and beyond, we have a world-class staff and faculty – including seven new tenure-line faculty hired over the past two years – who model scholarly achievement and prepare our students for the modern practice of law and leadership in the profession, and we have an outstanding cohort of over 20,000 accomplished alumni who continue to represent the excellence AUWCL has produced for generations.
Our world-renowned clinics serve countless clients in need in the District of Columbia and around the country and the world. Our students’ public service and pro bono efforts have been celebrated by the White House and the Justice Department. Leaders of the legal profession, private sector, and policy realm regularly convene at AUWCL to engage on pressing issues of the day. Our programs, including those in Clinical Law, International Law, Health Law and Policy, Intellectual Property, Advocacy, Criminal Law, Business Law, and Environmental and Energy Law, have long been among the nation’s most well-regarded. Every year, our students enter the legal profession through positions in large, medium, and small private law firms, prosecutor and public defender offices, public interest law firms, government agencies, NGOs, and clerkships with federal and state judges.
While AUWCL has seen recent significant improvements in bar passage and job placement, we recognize that they are critical drivers of how a law school is perceived and assessed, and we will continue to ensure that we are doing everything possible to maximize our graduates’ success on the bar exam and in the employment market. Our leadership team and faculty have been exploring new and innovative ways to further enhance our curricular and programmatic strategies around bar passage and employment, including greater integration of bar preparation into our core curriculum, intensive career support for students and recent graduates, and sponsorship of career launch fellowships. We are constantly attracting even more employers to campus to recruit our students, and our wonderful alumni are stepping up in new ways to advise and hire AUWCL students.
There is a diversity of opinion on the future of the USNWR rankings, which many claim, inter alia, burden diversity, use arbitrary formulas and measures, increase the cost of legal education and student indebtedness, and penalize schools – like AUWCL – with significant numbers of students pursuing public service, public interest, and international law careers. Over the past six months, more than sixty law schools – including AUWCL – sent a message to the magazine by declining to submit a statistical survey this year. However, the reality is that, unless and until alternative rankings systems curated by entities with expertise in legal education are established, the USNWR rankings, despite increasing scrutiny of their legitimacy, will continue to be a factor with which most law schools will have to grapple – and AUWCL is no exception.
That said, a I wrote in my Spring 2022 message to the AUWCL community shortly after the announcement of our improved overall USNWR ranking last year, “while rankings may fluctuate with changes in methodologies and market conditions beyond our control, one thing will remain constant – WCL will be committed to excellence and leadership in legal education, with a student-centered focus on teaching, scholarship, diversity, service, and the preparation of the next generation of well-trained, ethical lawyer-leaders who Champion What Matters.”
Despite the volatility of this year’s USNWR magazine rankings, our committed staff and faculty will remain committed to doing what is best for our students and graduates, and will work tirelessly to continue our law school’s positive momentum, educate tomorrow’s leaders of the legal profession, amplify our institutional impact on society, and communicate to all our stakeholders the inclusive excellence being produced daily at AUWCL.
In short, we will continue to Champion What Matters.
With gratitude,
Roger A. Fairfax, Jr.
Dean and Professor of Law