Yale Law School, Harvard Law School and, most recently, the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, have all publicly shunned the U.S. News & World Report education rankings, and others have indicated they're mulling similar decisions. But observers remain split on whether these moves will inflict any lasting damage on the highly influential publication.

Jeff Thomas, Kaplan's executive director of legal programs, said U.S. News and other outlets will likely find ways to utilize publicly available data to the continue publishing the rankings.

"There will always be rankings," Thomas said. "This is not the end of rankings."