One of the most troubling aspects of the U.S. News rankings is
that it discourages law schools from providing critical support for
students seeking public interest careers and devalues graduates pursuing
advanced degrees

The problem is that school is expensive. Going from undergrad to law school to other advanced degrees accrues an incredible amount of debt. There are public service loan forgiveness programs for students seeing public interest careers, but they can be very difficult to work with and if they are federal loans the requirements can change between different administrations.

My friends who have done this in other fields have had difficult times getting certain jobs to count for it even though they were told that it would. And even if it does go through you still have big monthly interest payments for a decade+ that you need to make along with the lower public career salary, these types of programs aren't cure-alls and can give students a false sense of how easy it will be to pay back their loans.

IMO there's valid criticisms against the rankings but it seems like Yale just wants points for hiding how difficult it will be to repay your loans instead of just making things cheaper.