USNWR promises three new employment rankings for law schools in its 2025 rankings release

Ahead of the new USNWR rankings release April 8, USNWR just released this detail:

Outcomes are critical when considering an advanced degree. That is why three brand new law school rankings that compare schools on different career outcomes for graduates will be unveiled with the overall rankings this year.

Because the rankings should be a starting point and not an end point in research, U.S. News offers the MyLaw Rankings quiz that enables users to create custom rankings based on preferences. The law school search function also enables users to find schools based on information that is not collected by the American Bar Association, such as average starting salary and graduate employment. This was further facilitated this year by 10 additional law schools compared to the prior year having reported data to U.S. News, mirrored by improved response rates in the qualitative assessments U.S. News sends to top law school officials and legal professionals.

It’s worth noting a few things. The first is that “boycotting” law schools are down (perhaps as some schools realized it was not in their self interest to do so). But the second is that USNWR plans new rankings on three employment-related metrics.

Of course, as I’ve written about extensively, there are challenges in how USNWR assesses employment outcomes. For the rankings, a job is a job. But there are qualitative differences between many types of employment. That said, even articulating what those are (e.g., is a “Big Law Firm” job higher quality than other jobs, is a “federal clerkship” higher quality than other jobs, etc.) is fraught. It appears USNWR will include three flavors of rankings that allows students the opportunity to evaluate school employment outcomes in the categories they view as most valuable. And it appears USNWR will run these parallel to its overall rankings, which is helpful for students—students trying to compare two apparently similarly-situated schools can use differentiators like these employment rankings to help make comparisons. Upon reflection, it is possible (and this is entirely speculative) that one ranking might focus on “elite” employment outcomes (e.g., large law firms and federal clerkships); another might focus on “public service” (e.g., public interest and government jobs, perhaps state and federal clerkships). But this is speculation, as there are many ways to slice and dice the sub-categories of employment.

Now, naturally, it calls into question the whole enterprise of attempting a “one size fits all” ranking in the first place, but that ship has long since sailed….