2024-25 USNWR MESSAGE
Dear AUWCL Community:
The 2024-2025 U.S. News & World Report (USNWR) law school overall rankings just released have American University Washington College of Law (AUWCL) tied with four other schools at #98. Three of AUWCL’s specialty programs (Clinical Law #2, Intellectual Property Law #8, and International Law #9) are ranked in the top ten, and three others (Health Care Law #15, Part-Time Law #16, and Criminal Law #24) are ranked in the top twenty-five.
Our outstanding specialty programs continue to be recognized by the vote of a subset of their peers. Furthermore, over the past two years, AUWCL has enrolled two consecutive 1L J.D. classes with the strongest (LSAT and undergraduate GPA) combined admissions metrics in the history of our school.
Our peer reputation and lawyer and judge reputation metrics remain in the top 60 of all law schools. In addition, AUWCL has improved significantly in bar passage and job placement success in recent years, with, for example, over 90% of the class of 2023 employed ten months after graduation.
However, as I described in a letter last year, AUWCL’s current overall USNWR ranking is burdened by the methodological changes recently implemented by the magazine. Together, the combined weight of the USNWR bar passage metric (based, in part, on the class of 2019) and job placement metric (based, in part, on the class of 2021) has more than tripled, now making up 58% of the magazine’s overall ranking score.
Thus, under the magazine’s most recent methodology, any current progress on those outcomes metrics would not fully show up in AUWCL’s overall USNWR rankings for several more years, assuming the magazine does not again make yet another abrupt methodological shift.
To be sure, although we cannot change historical numbers from several years ago, this is not to make excuses. We must – and will – continue to be laser-focused on maintaining and expanding our recent progress in bar passage and job placement – not for the sake of a magazine’s rankings, but because it is in the best interest of our talented students and graduates.
Many continue to debate the usefulness of the USNWR rankings, and whether they employ arbitrary and post-hoc formulas and measures, increase the cost of legal education and student indebtedness, burden diversity, and penalize schools – like AUWCL – with significant numbers of students pursuing public service, public interest, and international law careers. Indeed, roughly fifty of the nation’s 200 law schools – including AUWCL – declined to participate in the magazine’s statistical survey again this year.
However, given the realities that the magazine still will rank all law schools and some observers, unaware of the magazine’s shifting methodology, still will be tempted to rely upon as a shortcut for assessing law schools, AUWCL – and all law schools – must find alternative ways of conveying the quality of our program of legal education. (Please see this AUWCL fact sheet sharing information about our outstanding law school.)
As I wrote in my Spring 2022 message to our community shortly after the announcement that AUWCL’s USNWR overall ranking had a significant upward jump (up eight slots to #73, a seven-year high) under the magazine’s former methodology, “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.”
With gratitude,
Roger A. Fairfax, Jr.
Dean and Professor of Law