Many fear that they and their schools could be disadvantaged by competitor schools that manipulate data in ways that technically comply with the rules but perhaps present an overly rosy picture.
"There is a lot of distrust," Leipold said of law school administrators and the rankings.
The issue came to the fore over the weekend with the disclosure by Villanova University that its law school had knowingly submitted inflated admissions statistics to the American Bar Association for use in its guide to law schools for prospective students.
The data also are used by U.S. News to compile its highly influential law school rankings.
"I think that those of us in legal education understand the implications of data that is entirely self-reported," said JoAnne A. Epps, dean of Temple University Law School. "Everyone wants the outside evaluation to be as favorable as it can be."
But Epps said she doubted there was widespread cheating, and did not believe the ranking system had a built-in incentive to fudge the numbers.
Still, she criticized rankings such as U.S. News for focusing on metrics that tell little about the real value of the educational experience at a given law school.
"The ranking is pernicious," she said.
Of the Villanova disclosures, she said: "I am really aware of how sad this is."
Perhaps not surprising, some laws schools apply a highly technical and legalistic approach to deciding what data can be submitted and what information should be left out, Leipold said.
That is sometimes the case with reports on how many law school graduates have found jobs, as well as with admissions data.
