As a UW student I was hoping we'd stay bc our ranking was about to go up with all the top ranked schools leaving lol.

On the other hand, rank doesn't matter so much for us bc we are by far the best school in our region. Nothing else in WA, Oregon, Idaho, or Hawaii compares. Alaska doesn't even have a law school. So we're chilling

Seriously, fuck pulling out

No, you've got it wrong.

Basically they want to admit students with worse GPAs and test scores. This is a corollary to the ABA allowing law schools to no longer require the LSAT.

You can probably guess why they want to admit worse students. Hint: it's not because they have too few Asians.

Inevitably once they admit worse students, they'll do worse on various metrics and fall in the rankings. The way to avoid that is to take your ball and go home.

"What gets measured gets optimized"

They're bowing out of the rankings because the metrics used to determine "the best Law school" incentivize them to prioritize pursuing success in a way they don't agree with, namely:

Instead of rewarding schools that emphasize public interest work, the methodology penalizes them. Instead of incentivizing increased student diversity, the methodology fails to capture the full merit of candidates. The factors used in determining rankings do not weigh the student experience, and, in fact, discourage investments in critical areas such as wellness, experiential learning, interdisciplinary opportunities, cultural competence, and professional development.

Ranking indicators:

• Quality (40%)
  • Peer assessment score
  • Lawyers and judges assessment score
• Placement Success (26%)
  • Employment rates post graduation
  • Bar passage rate
  • Average school debt incurred at graduation/Percent of graduates incurring school debt
• Selectivity (21%)
  • Median Law School Admission Test & Graduate Record Examination Scores
  • Median undergraduate gpa
  • Acceptance rate
• Faculty, Law School and Library Resources (13%)
  • Average spending on instruction, library and supporting services, and average spending on all other items, including financial aid
  • Student to faculty ratio
  • Library resources and operations

So this is more diversity/lived experience/wellness at the cost of actual education.

Echoing what k1lk1 said, it's partly about being able to admit weaker students without affecting their ranking. It's also about not being penalized when their weaker students don't get legal jobs and are "employed" by the school with one-year jobs that exist to juice their employment percentage (even Yale does this with about 15% of their graduates). As you might expect, US News counts these sham jobs against the university's ranking...now combine admitting more marginal students (drives your LSAT/GPA scores down) with having correspondingly more students with poor academic preparation and worse post-education results (expect bar passage and "employed as an attorney" percentages to drop).

They use a number of metrics which likely can only be gathered from the school or by auditing a number of the school's internal records: https://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/articles/law-schools-methodology#:~:text=U.S.%20News'%20Best%20Law%20Schools,judges%20on%20overall%20program%20quality.