As budget cuts threaten Louisiana colleges and universities, many are concerned with how the state’s institutions will match up with others around the nation.
U.S. News and World Report released its 2016 ranking of the best law schools in the U.S. In the report, the Paul M. Hebert Law Center remained one of the top 100 law schools coming in at 94.
The U.S. News and World Report ranked 198 accredited law schools and rankings are based off of criteria such as acceptance rates, student-faculty ratio and bar passage rate. The data was collected in fall 2014 and early 2015.
The Law Center’s current ranking is down 22 spots from last year’s ranking of 72. The Law Center first got a spot in the top 100 ranking in 2004.
Second year law student Hannah Grantham said she was not expecting the Law Center to drop in the report.
“I was actually really surprised at that,” Grantham said. “Obviously things like that fluctuate, but I wasn’t aware it was going to drop quite that much.”
Grantham said even though the ranking dropped, the quality of education the Law Center offers is still as strong as ever.
“I don’t see how the quality in our education dropped 20 points over the course of a year,” Grantham said.
Despite the drop, Law Center Chancellor Jack Weiss remains adamant that the school’s value and quality of education remains competitive.
“Our employment outcomes remain strong, with only 26 schools according to US News, public or private, having higher employment rates than LSU Law nine months after graduation,” Weiss said in a news release. “I’d encourage prospective students and their parents to look instead at value — the outcomes students at LSU Law achieve relative to the reasonable cost of attending law school here.”
Even though the Law Center dropped from number 72 to 94, Weiss said the overall score calculated by U.S. News and World Report of the school only dropped by one point.
“When we have moved up in the rankings, I have said repeatedly that the U.S. News rankings system is unpredictable and far from a full measure of the quality of a legal education program,” Weiss said in an email. “That remains my view. The U.S. News rankings system is seriously flawed.”
Weiss attributed the drop in rankings to the state’s budge issues.
Since 2008, the Law Center’s budget has been slashed by 50 percent, dropping from $10 million to $5 million per year and the cuts affect the rankings, Weiss said.
“As the old saying goes, you can’t get something for nothing; money matters,” Weiss said in an email.

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Raegan Labat

In a recent report by U.S. News World Report, the LSU Law School ranks at 94 in the top 100 law schools.