Last fall, I blogged a publication study of the faculties at Tier 3 and Tier 4 law schools (as well as the New England law schools) by Michael J. Yelnosky (Roger Williams).  This year, Michael is expanding the study to include all law schools ranked 51 or lower by U.S. News (as well as the…

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In our article, Ranking Law Schools: Using SSRN to Measure Scholarly Performance, 81 Ind. L.J. 83 (2006), Bernie Black and I discuss the four existing methods for measuring the scholarly performance of law faculties — publication counts, citation counts, SSRN downloads, and reputation surveys.  With Brian Leiter’s update of his 2007 citation count study, I…

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Following up on Case Dean Gary Simson’s call to boycott the U.S. News rankings (blogged here and here): National Law Journal:  Deans Say Call to Boycott Law School Rankings a Good Idea — But Only in Theory, by Leigh Jones: Andrew M. Coats (Oklahoma, #68):  "As long as they tell us that we need to…

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I previously blogged (here, here, here, here, here, and here) the announcement (here and here) by Robert Morse, Director of Data Research at U.S. News & World Report, that the magazine is considering counting both full-time and part-time entering student admission data for the median LSAT score and median undergraduate GPA ranking categories.  Mr. Morse…

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I previously blogged (here, here, here, here, and here) the announcement (here and here) by Robert Morse, Director of Data Research at U.S. News & World Report, that the magazine is considering counting both full-time and part-time entering student admission data for the median LSAT score and median undergraduate GPA ranking categories.  Bill Henderson (Indiana)…

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Jason Solomon (Georgia) has begun an intriguing series of posts on PrawsBlawg on taking back the U.S. News law school rankings and producing a "Voters’ Guide" to assess the "value added" for students at different law schools: Preparing to Vote…for U.S. News (7/7/08) What are we voting about in US News? (7/8/08) What Would Leiter…

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Robert Morse, Director of Data Research at U.S. News & World Report, has just announced that the magazine will be changing the job placement component (at graduation (4% of ranking) and 9 months after graduation (14%)) of its law school rankings in light the change in the way the ABA requires schools to report its…

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I previously blogged the announcement of, and critical reaction to, the proposal by Robert Morse, Director of Data Research at U.S. News & World Report, that the magazine is "seriously studying" two changes to its law school rankings methodology that would affect 24.5% of the overall ranking: Counting both full-time and part-time entering student admission…

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Brian Leiter flagged this report of a hilarious U.S. News rankings gaffe by a fundraiser for the University of Minnesota Law School A University of Minnesota fundraiser sent an urgent e-mail this week to law school alumni: Please give even $1 by week’s end. Why? Even 100 pennies from 200 new donors might boost the…

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Robert Morse, Director of Data Research at U.S. News & World Report, notes that the magazine is "seriously studying" two changes to its law school rankings methodology that would affect 24.5% of the overall ranking: Counting both full-time and part-time entering student admission data for the median LSAT score (12.5% of ranking) and median undergraduate…

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Following up on this morning’s post:  a reader informed me that more up to date law school moot court rankings are available at LawSchoolAdvocacy.com.  The rankings for the complete 2007 moot court season list 69 schools.  Here are the Top 25 law school moot court programs for 2007: 1.   South Texas 2.   UC-Hastings 3.   Chicago-Kent…

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Best Moot Court Programs ranks the Top 53 law school moot court programs, based on this methodology.  Here are the Top 25: 1.   UC-Hastings 2.   Washington University 3.   Georgetown 4.   Chicago-Kent 5.   South Texas 6.   Brooklyn       Georgia 8.   Lewis & Clark 9.   American 10. George Mason 11. Mississippi College 12. Michigan State 13.…

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As regular readers of this blog know, I publish monthly rankings of Tax Profs as measured by downloads of their papers from SSRN, and Ted Seto publishes here similar rankings of tax faculties and graduate tax faculties.  Today’s New York Times hsa an article on the SSRN rankings, Now Professors Get Their Star Rankings, Too,…

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In our Moneyball article, we note several glaring of examples of deans who have signed the LSAC letter urging law school applicants to ignore the U.S. News rankings who nevertheless issue glowing press releases when their schools advance in the rankings. What Law Schools Can Learn from Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics, 82 Texas…

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Brian Leiter lists the ten law schools that take the most transfer students as a percentage of their first year class.  Because 22.5% of the U.S. News rankings is based on the quality of the 1L class, decreasing the 1L class and making up for the foregone revenue by increasing the number of transfer students…

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See the details, including this audio of Fiona Barlow-Brown, at Times On Line: “If Kingston comes down the bottom, no one’s going to want to employ you because they’re going to think your degree is shit,” she added. “Although this is going to sound incredibly biased, if you think something’s a four, my encouragement would…

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The Best Law School … Softball Team (Legal Blog Watch), by Robert J. Ambrogi: Forget the U.S. News and World Report law school rankings. Here is an honor that reveals the true grit of a law school — the best student softball team. Over the weekend of April 4 to 6, more than 100 law…

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LawSchoolNumbers.com ranks the 195 law schools by 1L attrition rates.  (The ABA Section on Legal Education publishes aggregate attrition rates, and each school’s attrition rate is available on its official ABA data sheet.)  Here are the 25 law schools with the highest attrition rates according to LawSchoolNumbers.com, along with the school’s 2009 U.S. News overall…

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William D. Henderson (Indiana) & Andrew P. Morriss (Illinois), What Rankings Don’t Say About Costly Choices: Some Students Should Consider Lower-Ranked Schools That Offer More Grants, Better Opportunities (National Law Journal): Based upon our combined 21 years of experience as legal educators and our empirical study of rankings, we think students rely on law school…

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Top Law Schools Tighten Their Hold on NLJ 250 Firms (National Law Journal), by Leigh Jones: A bigger percentage of students graduating from top law schools in 2007 took jobs at NLJ 250 law firms than those graduating in 2006. Columbia landed in the No. 1 spot again as the school that sent the greatest…

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Video of the hour-long ABA-sonsored Q&A with Robert Morse, the impresario of the U.S. News & World Report law school rankings, is available here. Update:  For a summary of Morse’s comments, see here.

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Vault has released a ranking of the Top 25 law schools based on a survey of "nearly 400 hiring partners, hiring committee members, associate interviewers and recruiting professionals across the country on which law schools best prepare their graduates to achieve in the firm environment": With 58% of law school graduates entering private practice, Vault’s…

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Al Brophy, US News: Take 4–Lawyer/Judge Assessment Scores: The mean change for Lawyer/Judge assessment is negative (reflecting lower ratings in 2009 than 2008), but it’s only -0.02. The SD, while also fairly small (0.16), is more than twice that for peer assessment, which perhaps deserved more attention than I’ve given it so far. And now…

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Gregory M. Stein (Tennessee) has published a very telling op-ed in today’s Chicago Tribune:  Note From the Dean: Send After U.S. News Rankings are Published, which contains two alternative letters to be sent by a law school dean, depending on whether his or her school has risen or fallen in the latest U.S. News rankings:…

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Law Schools Shouldn’t Grub For Rankings (Hartford Courant), by Michael Seringhaus (J.D. 2010, Yale): In this piece, I discuss the overblown and often alarmist reactions of law school deans to the 2009 U.S. News rankings, published last Friday, in light of the their 2006 open letter to prospective students — in which law school deans…

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