<p>I really appreciate the fact that my school hasn't said a word about the rankings. I haven't even heard students talking about them (of course, we stayed the same this year, son there's not much to say...)</p>
<p>Those letters are very interesting and show the enormous pressure on law schools to keep their place in the rankings (or move up). Still, a few places is not anything to get too worked up about.</p>
<p>My oh my, they really take those rankings seriously</p>
<p>I think that the most interesting part of these letters (and there are other memoranda, mentions in speeches and e-mails from other schools, as these are only a sampling) is that so many law schools make repeated statements about how little weight should be given to the rankings, and how meaningless the rankings are due to the criteria on which they are based, but clearly, these law schools also recognize how important these rankings are to potential students and potential employers for those same students a year or two later. </p>
<p>There are also new allegations floating around about law schools manipulating their data in order to enhance their ranking on this list (a few months back there was a thread on this topic). I've been hearing that Pepperdine, for example, included students who are studying for the bar exam full time within the numbers of students who are "employed," significantly increasing their "employed 6 months after graduation" numbers. I'm sure that there are many, many other examples out there.</p>