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The research, titled "From Prestige to Performance: Evaluating Law School Outcomes Using Value-Added Modeling," analyzed a 10-year panel dataset of 189 ABA-accredited law schools to assess institutional contributions to student success on bar passage and employment outcomes.
"Bar passage and employment rates are widely used to evaluate law school performance, yet these raw outcomes often reflect student selection rather than institutional performance," the study's authors—Jason Scott, Andrea Pals, and Dominique Monserrat—wrote in the report.
The researchers found that all five schools with the lowest ultimate bar passage rates in 2024 demonstrated at least one positive value-added score for bar passage, despite what their raw passage rates suggest about performance.
The study introduces value-added modeling to legal education, a statistical approach that isolates the impact of the law school learning environment while controlling for factors such as incoming LSAT scores, undergraduate GPAs, economic conditions, and institutional resources.
Traditional rankings heavily weight metrics like bar passage and employment rates, which account for 58% of a school's U.S. News ranking and 40% of the Above the Law Top 50 ranking. However, these systems reward or penalize schools for factors largely outside their control, according to the research.
"When these outcomes are used to evaluate school performance without accounting for factors such as the entering credentials of a school's students, the definition of quality shifts away from an institution's ability to mold and develop the students it admits," the authors stated.
The findings have particular implications for mission-driven institutions and Historically Black Colleges and Universities, which often admit students with lower standardized test scores but may provide substantial educational value.
The study found that schools traditionally ranked at the top often attain small value-added scores—not because they fail to contribute to student success, but because their students enter with credentials associated with high baseline odds of bar passage and employment, and have little room for improvement beyond already-high passage rates exceeding 90%.
The researchers identified three potential applications for their findings: providing law schools with empirical evidence for ABA Standard 316 compliance reviews, serving as a more equitable framework for institutional comparison, and aligning with upcoming ABA program-level assessment requirements beginning in the 2026-2027 academic year.
However, the authors cautioned against using value-added scores to create new hierarchical ranking systems. "Value-adds should be used for the purposes of quality evaluation and improvement but not as the basis for a new hierarchical rankings system," they wrote, citing guidance from the American Statistical Association.
The study also revealed concerning patterns regarding racial equity. Value-added estimates from three of the four models showed negative associations with the proportion of underrepresented students of color enrolled, suggesting that schools with higher minority enrollment may have their contributions underestimated even when controlling for demographic factors.
