Tax Prof Fantasy League

Joseph Liu (Concurring Opinions) makes a wonderful proposal:  a fantasy law school league.  The outpouring of new empirical measures of law schools and faculty -- by SSRN and Brian Leiter -- "indicate that we are entering a brave new era in the evaluation of law school quality and talent. No more fuzzy and impressionistic scouting of talent; bring on the new and more scientific Moneyball approach."  Joe proposes 1-year seasons, beginning September 1, with 10 law schools per league, 15 law professors per school:

Required Positions:  Dean, Contracts, Property, Torts, Civil Procedure, Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, Corporations, Evidence, Tax, Junior Faculty Member (less than 5 years), Student Body (pick school). Remaining positions are optional, but must be in different subject matters. Subject matter positions are for teaching, and may be completely disconnected from research.

Statistics:

1. Donations: $200k = 1 point
2. Citations: 1 cite in Westlaw's JLR or SCT = 1 point
3. SSRN downloads: 10 downloads = 1 point. (gaming of downloads will result in forfeit)
4. Law review articles: top-10 journal = 10 points. 10-30 journal = 5 points. remaining = 1 point
5. Books: Top-5 academic press = 20 points. casebook, new = 10 points, new edition = 5 points. all others = 1 point
6. Entering class median LSAT: 170-180 = 10 points, 165-170 = 5 points, 160-165 = 1 point
7. Entering class median GPA: 3.8-4.0 = 10 points, 3.6-3.8 = 5 points, 3.4-3.6 - 1 point
8. Blogging: 20 posts = 0 points. 40 posts or more = -1 point [editor's note:  yikes!]

What additional statistics should we measure for a Tax Prof fantasy league?  Here are some preliminary thoughts (I've opened the comments for others):

1. Citations:  1 cite in Tax Court opinion or IRS ruling = 1 point
2. SSRN downloads:  Presence in Top 25 SSRN Tax Faculty SSRN Rankings = 10 points
3. Law review articles:  Tax Law Review = 10 points; Florida Tax Review, Tax Lawyer, Virginia Tax Review, Pittsburgh Tax Review, Tax Notes Special Report = 5 points; all other tax journals = 3 points
4. Op-eds:  New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Tax Notes = 1 point
5. Books:  tax treatise with Aspen, Foundation, Lexis, West, WG&L = 20 points; all other tax treatises = 10 points
6. Presentations:  present tax papers at Harvard, Michigan, NYU, Northwetsern, Penn, Toronto, UCLA, Virginia, or Washington tax colloquia series = 5 points; present tax papers at all other law schools = 3 points; participate on AALS or ABA Tax Section panel:  1 point
7. Students:  Success in ABA Tax Section Law Student Tax Challenge:  finalists = 5 points; semi-finalists = 3 points. Finalists in other student tax competitions = 1 point
8. Placement: graduating students who clerk for Tax Court or pursue tax LL.M. degree = 1 point

In our Moneyball article, we compared law faculty rankings to baseball  fantasy leagues and joked whether law professors would ever be featured on cards like their baseball counterparts, replete with their "statistics" on the back.  So if Joe's idea ever catches on, perhaps law professor cards will follow!