I need to hire someone for contract work which would be perfect for a new or new-ish attorney. If I advertise the position, I anticipate receiving a large number of applicants. Since I know nothing about them other than what’s on their résumé and the internet, I will have to look at the law school they attended to make assumptions about their intelligence, work habits, their ability to persuade a jury, and their likelihood of bringing in Fortune 500 clients. I know about the T14s and some of the schools in my state. But since many good applicants will come from law schools I know nothing about, I will have to see where the schools are ranked.

In a few days, the rankings factory that is sometimes known as U.S. News and World Report will release its annual law school rankings. For the reasons explained below, I publicly refuse to use the U.S. News law school rankings to determine who I will interview and hire. And I am hoping that other employers and recruiters will agree.

The rankings methodology is arbitrary and the end result is useless to employers. The U.S. News rankings use the following factors to rank a school:

Quality assessment (weighted by 0.40)

Selectivity (weighted by 0.25)

Placement success (weighted by 0.20)

Faculty resources (weighted by 0.15)

As an employer, factors like quality assessment and selectivity are important in determining the quality of a school. But other factors are irrelevant. For example, let’s look at faculty resources, a factor I didn’t care about when I was applying to law school and one I certainly don’t care about now as an employer. This has three subfactors: expenditures per student, student-faculty ratio, and library resources.

The “expenditures per student” subfactor looks at the average spending per student for instruction, library and supporting services, financial aid, and other items. That expenditure money has to come from somewhere, namely tuition. And it wouldn’t surprise me if a big chunk of the expenditures went to administrators, faculty, and interest payments on fancy buildings. There are no studies that show that spending more money on a student will improve his chances on being a reputable attorney.

The “library resources” subfactor measures the number of volumes and titles in a school’s law library. This factor is suspect and should be obsolete because of technological advances. Are law schools gaming the rankings by keeping outdated treatises and books on their shelves and calling them volumes? Since many reference materials are available on the internet, would switching to an online format negatively affect the number of volumes in a law library?

Now let’s switch to the “placement success” factor. This is measured by employment rates for students immediately after graduation, nine months after graduation, and bar passage rate. For 0Ls, this factor is crucial in determining which law school to attend. But for me, as an employer, this factor means little to nothing. As a solo practitioner, I will have a hard time recruiting students whose main aspirations after graduation are Biglaw, a federal clerkship, or some other high-end job.

But should employers care about the placement success of a school’s graduates? Some might argue that it matters because a school must be good if most of their graduates end up working in prestigious positions. I don’t buy this because it sounds like the old “If everyone else jumps off a cliff, so should you” argument. Also, the placement success rates are untrustworthy. Many law schools have been less than forthcoming about their graduates’ employment outcomes for years, if not decades. And I cannot trust that U.S. News will independently verify whatever the law schools report. Doing that will be costly and will subject them to criticism that they don’t have to take.

I can go on and on, but I’m not here to nitpick every single factor. My point is that the U.S. News ranking looks at factors that students, employers, and academics think are important and combines them using a strange, arbitrary weighting formula. The end result is a ranking that is practically useful to no one.

The ranking system encourages law schools to charge higher tuition leaving graduates with escalating student loan debt. The U.S. News and World Report ranking gives no incentive for law schools to reduce costs and operate efficiently. The “expenditures per student” subfactor encourages schools to spend money to increase their rank. U.S. News conducted a study to determine which of the top 100 law schools spent the most efficiently. Only two of the T14 schools made the efficiency list and one of them came close to last place.

To boost their quality assessment ranking, law schools send out reams of advertising materials to faculty of other schools. This is also known as “law porn”. To be fair, I suppose this is equivalent to solos and small firms sending out monthly spam client advisory reports.

Finally, in order to increase their placement success scores, schools hire their own graduates for short-term jobs which conveniently last for nine months. Once that student is counted as “employed after nine months,” the school makes it clear that she won’t get promoted to assistant professor.

The above expenses are a pointless waste of tuition and donation money. But every law school is doing this at some level to stay competitive with the rankings. As a result, tuition is raised every year above the pace of inflation and graduates have larger student loan debts every year.

Students graduating with large student loan debts are not likely to be the most stable employees for solos and small firms. They will constantly look for something better, in or out of law. Some may even do risky things hoping for the “big score.”

The rankings are now being used as a bargaining tool. Back in my day, we prepared our law school applications and sent them to various schools. Once we received our acceptance letters, we chose the school mainly because of its U.S. News ranking. There was some level of bargaining for tuition discounts or scholarships but it was usually granted based on need.

Now, law schools are getting desperate for applicants who are increasingly aware that there is no significant difference in employment outcomes for law schools ranked between number 30 and 300. I am delighted to learn that more applicants are getting aggressive about demanding tuition discounts. They are also willing to take a chance at a lower-ranked school at a substantial discount with the option of transferring later.

As a result, employers will have to diversify their recruiting efforts because not all of the traditionally “smarter” students will go to the highest-ranked school they were accepted to. Applicants today are using the rankings as a tool to ensure that they attend the right school at the lowest cost.

No law school rankings system is perfect. Its flaws will be exposed primarily by the sore losers sucking on their sour grapes. While there is no denying that the U.S. News rankings are still influential, they have become less useful to potential law students and employers. Even though applicants are getting better at negotiating discounts with law schools, the U.S. News rankings promote an expenditure arms race at the expense of the naive. Unfortunately, law school faculty have neither the power nor the will to change the system and law students just don’t know any better. So employers might be able to influence change. If more employers and recruiters would publicly announce their plans to use alternative and more relevant rankings in their hiring campaigns, then it might convince U.S. News to make some fundamental changes to its methodology or risk becoming irrelevant.

Shannon Achimalbe was a former solo practitioner for five years before deciding to sell out and get back on the corporate ladder. Shannon can be reached at sachimalbe@excite.com.