A New Ranking of Law Schools' Effects on Other Law Schools

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Propecia of AL 1:57AM June 03, 2009

While the exercise of "statistics gathering" provides an interesting look at the nuances of the top schools, the effect of these rankings on Willamette is that they are placed at the absolute bottom of the "ranking" list because the school's name starts with a W and the fourth tier is listed alphabetically. The effect of this "rank" is that Willamette faculty and students have no way to determine where they stand in relation to their tier 4 peers. People remember the last name on a list titled "rankings"; this has to affect the reputation of the school and how other law schools view the school. It is the second time in the last three years in my tenure as a student at Willamette Law I have observed how these rankings crush our moral and make it a little harder to prepare for finals and a lot harder to respect the people at USNW. If Willamette was truly last on the list because of some score or statistic this might be a little easier to swallow.

Willamette Student third year of OR 1:33PM April 25, 2009

In addition, this ranking is looking at the overall influence in the legal academia. Only a tiny fraction of law school students become law professors, less than 3% even at top schools. In fact, the vast majority of students who go to law school do not have any intention of entering academia. To accurately measure "success in placement", they should take the number of law school graduates who enter academia and divide by the number of entering law students interested in becoming law professors. That would be pretty hard to do in practice, however. The only thing this ranking might really be useful for is in gauging the overall influence of a particular school in the legal academia.
Yale has a reputation of being theoretical and so attracts a higher than usual percentage of students interested in the legal academia. Harvard students have traditionally preferred to go into big law firms in major cities. But because it's a big school, it has also produced large number of graduates entering other fields, ie. academia, government, politics, etc., which is why many of its graduates are so prominent in many fields.

john of MA 12:17PM April 25, 2009

The ranking is looking at the overall influence of a particular school, so it makes sense that schools with larger number of graduates will have more influence.
I think most people would agree that the country with the most influence in the world economy today is the United States. Partly it's because it is larger, has more people than most countries, and has lots of resources, both physical and intellectual. If you looked at the gross national product per capita, the U.S. would fall behind many other countries, including countries like Denmark, Luxemborg, etc. Would you consider Luxemborg to be a major economic power in the world? Similarly, would you discount China as a major economic power because its GNP per capita is low?

john of MA 11:58AM April 25, 2009

I'm not an attorney or anything, but shouldn't this ranking by "per student," or else one law school (like Harvard) can have WAY more graduates than another (like Yale) and just by brute numbers have more ex-students be counted. Another silliness of such rankings--probably the least of many.

GD of CA 2:32PM April 01, 2009

Is your point that other survey instruments are just as flawed and as biased as US News', thereby justifying your biased system? Would you agree that the purpose of law school is to produce well-trained lawyers who will serve as zealous and ethical advocates for the interests of their clients? If so, please say how this new study -- and US News' -- addresses this. Where is a study measuring the value gained by students during their time in law school, where the real value of a legal education should be demonstrated?

JM of CA of CA 10:54AM April 01, 2009

[short notes]
TITLE 50 > CHAPTER 36 > SUBCHAPTER ISUBCHAPTER I—ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE
How Current is This? § 1801. Definitions
§ 1802. Electronic surveillance authorization without court order; certification by Attorney General; reports to Congressional committees; transmittal under seal; duties and compensation of communication common carrier; applications; jurisdiction of court
§ 1803. Designation of judges
§ 1804. Applications for court orders
§ 1805. Issuance of order
§ 1806. Use of information
§ 1807. Report to Administrative Office of the United States Court and to Congress
§ 1808. Report of Attorney General to Congressional committees; limitation on authority or responsibility of information gathering activities of Congressional committees; report of Congressional committees to Congress
§ 1809. Criminal sanctions
§ 1810. Civil liability
§ 1811. Authorization during time of war
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/50/usc_sup_01_50_10_36_20_I.html
http://www.cornellcollege.edu/campus-safety/index.shtml
Students Charged With Surveillance
October 24, 2005 - 8:00pm
Three freshmen were charged with unlawful surveillance in the 2nd degree and conspiracy in the 5th degree following a week-long investigation yesterday, according to a University statement. The three were arraigned yesterday in Ithaca City Court, the release stated.
[exorcising physco-babble-voodoo speak from the NAMi, et Al]
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/fashion/13psych.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2
And the users of some sites have found the support of Jim Guest, a Republican state representative in Missouri, who wrote last year to his fellow legislators calling for an investigation into the claims of those who say they are being tortured by mind control.
“I’ve had enough calls, some from credible people — professors — being targeted by nonlethal weapons,” Mr. Guest said in a telephone interview, adding that nothing came of his request for a legislative investigation. “They become psychologically affected by it. They have trouble sleeping at night.”
He added: “I believe there are people who have been targeted by this. With this equipment, you have to test it on somebody to see if it works.”
http://www.google.com/patents?q=darpa+neural+targeting&spell=1&scoring=1&output=rss
WHAT is The Rule of Law?
[p.s. the Citidel stinks , what a medevil idea as top honoured college]
http://www.google.com/patents?q=bica&lr=&start=10&scoring=1&output=rss
http://www.darpa.mil/ipto/personnel/personnel.asp
https://www.llnl.gov/str/Nov07/white.html
The EMSolve team has performed several studies for DARPA.
The simulations revealed how wall composition affects the propagation of radar waves.
[and woody norris]

miss kitty of CA 5:04PM March 30, 2009

So there's a lot of Harvard and Yale Professors around the country. Then US news asks professors around the country to rank the best schools. And, lo and behold, those Yale and Harvard professors rank their alma maters highly.
To be more fair, US News should find a way to spread out its survey so graduates of different law schools are more equally represented in the survey.

Johnny of CA 6:52PM March 27, 2009

A more interesting question, a la Gladwell: If an orchestra, using blind auditions, WOULD hire a female tuba player sitting behind a screen (but would NOT do so knowing that the player was a female...what with her likely lower lung capacity), how likely is it that the connections in the above table would exist if professors were hired after a "blind" review of their resume (no institutional name presented), and a "blind" personal interview or review of their scholarship and classroom presence.
Same question for citations: If scholarly work did NOT carry an institutional affiliation how often would it be cited based on quality alone?
Doesn't the scientific method suggest that peer review, publications and hirings all be "blind" in nature in order to ensure that "social coloration" doesn't impact the decision?
How much mutual back-scratching goes on: I'll hire your graduates if you enroll my students (which you should be willing to do, because, after all, they were taught by your students to begin with, so they must have learned from the best)?

R. Will. of NY 11:25AM March 27, 2009