Hold Breath No Longer — This Top Law School Has Announced Their US News Plan!

// Washington University School of Law in St. Louis has decided to announce that they will not be withdrawing from the US News ranking process. This bold decision comes two weeks after Yale kicked off the process of refusing US News’ rankings on principles which have nothing to do with the recent boycotts levied against them by reactionary judges.

Russell K. Osgood, dean and professor of law at the law school, sent a statement to Law.com expressing his intentions to not withdraw from the rankings.

“Prospective law students should have multiple robust sources of information about law schools, and I am generally in favor of making information available,” Osgood said. “School websites can be incomplete, misleading or simply hard to compare.”

Therefore, WashULaw has no plan to withhold information from U.S. News and World Report, he stated, adding, “I have been through several efforts to get rid of the rankings as dean of Cornell Law School and President of Grinnell College,” but “[t]here will always be various rankings.”

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Professor Osgo…I mean Dean Osgood. He was the weird professor that was good at his job and had a penchant for running when I was there — no seriously, check his Wikipedia article. Title changes can be hard. But he’s right. There will always be various rankings, one of which happens to be Above The Law’s. I am partial to it, not because I find its methods to be better than US News’, though I do. I like it because it ranks WashU at #6, which bodes much better for my frail ego. If you’re interested in the objectively better law school ranking, you can check out our list and methodology here. Just know that if WashU does decide to kick US News to the curb, they will have a home here. Or at any other ranking system that puts them above Vanderbilt.

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Damn Vanderbilt, they waitlisted me and I never quite got over it.

No. 16-Ranked Washington University Law Says It Will Not Bail on the US News Rankings [Law.com]

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Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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Dean Russell Osgood, Law Schools, US News, Washington University in St. Louis School of Law