Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 13, 1990                   TAG: 9003133592
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-1   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: DANIEL HOWES HIGHER EDUCATION WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TWO VA. LAW SCHOOLS MAKE TOP 25 LIST

The University of Virginia School of Law was ranked 10th and Washington and Lee University's School of Law tied for 25th. The rankings appear in the March 19 issue, which hit newsstands Monday.

George Mason University Law School in Fairfax, because of what the magazine described as "recent innovations and improvements," was labeled a rising star among the 175 schools accredited by the American Bar Association that offer the doctor of jurisprudence degree.

The College of William and Mary's Marshall-Wythe School of Law and the University of Richmond's T.C. Williams School of Law did not make the list.

Although rated 10th overall, UVa ranked eighth in academic reputation and sixth among lawyers and judges. To develop a system for evaluating the schools, U.S. News spent several months interviewing scores of faculty members and deans at dozens of institutions, the magazine said in a statement issued Monday.

Yale University was the top-ranking law school, followed by the University of Chicago, Stanford University, Columbia University and Harvard University.

The magazine considered placement rates, graduation rates, instructional resources, academic reputation and student selectivity, which was determined by acceptance rates, undergraduate grade-point averages and scores on the Law School Admission Test.

Of the top 25 schools, Washington and Lee was the only one with fewer than 500 students, with just 120 per class. And although tied for 25th, the Lexington school was ranked seventh in the quality of instructional resources, which include library holdings and per-student spending in the overall law-school budget.

"I'm not a great fan of rankings," Randy Bezanson, dean of Washington and Lee's law school, said in an interview Monday. "Law schools are too diverse in the purposes they serve to fit into a single qualitative framework.

"I'm not happy U.S. News is doing this," he said, admitting, however, that he was pleased the 360-student school made the national list. "It's a service to a point, but there are serious dangers because inevitably there are arbitrary cutoffs."

He said those dangers lay in prospective students' allowing the rankings to govern which schools they might seek to attend and law school administrators directing resources to areas criticized by the poll instead of where they might best benefit their schools.