Rafael Gely and I have posted our Introduction to the Indiana rankings symposium, Dead Poets and Academic Progenitors: The Next Generation of Law School Rankings, on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

This Symposium is an outgrowth of our article, What Law Schools Can Learn from Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics, 82 Tex. L. Rev. 1483 (2004). With the approaching twentieth anniversary of the first U.S. News & World Report law school rankings, it is a particularly propitious time to take a fresh look, to hear new voices, and to reconsider issues surrounding law school rankings. Many of America’s most thoughtful law professors (as well as academics in other disciplines) gathered on April 15, 2005 at the Indiana University School of Law – Bloomington to discuss The Next Generation of Law School Rankings. The papers and commentary presented at the event and recorded in these pages reflect a wide array of creative, challenging, and captivating perspectives on the rankings tableau. In the pages that follow, we are confident that you will agree that we have fulfilled the goal we set for the Symposium:

The goal of this Symposium is to deepen our understanding of rankings and their effects on legal education. The participants in this Symposium will examine the need for law school rankings; the effects of rankings on legal education; and the various new approaches to addressing the public’s insatiable demand for ever more and increasingly sophisticated rankings, which permeate not only legal education but also all aspects of American life.

We believe the Symposium papers and commentary make an enormous contribution to our understanding of rankings and their effects on legal education.

[The title comes from the movie The Dead Poet’s Society, and particularly the scene in which Robin William (as teacher John Keating) responds with derision (and barnyard language) to a fictional scholar’s attempt to measure the greatness of poetry.]