Publication Study of Faculty at Non-Top 50 Law Schools

Roger Williams University School of Law has updated its per capita publication study of the faculties at law schools ranked 51 or lower by U.S. News (as well as the New England law schools).  The study covers the 1993-2009 period and uses methodology developed by Brian Leiter, with one change: although Brian focused exclusively on the Top 20 journals, this study examines the Top 50 journals, defined as the general law reviews published by the 54 schools receiving the highest U.S. News peer assessment scores (2.8 or higher), plus an additional 13 journals that appear in the Top 50 of the Washington & Lee Law Journal Combined Rankings. (See here for an alphabetical listing of those journals.)

Roger Williams ranks the Top 40 Non-Top 50 law schools.  Here are the Top 25:

1	San Diego	13.85
2	Florida State	13.30
3	Richmond	9.56
4	Missouri-Columbia	8.82
5	Chicago-Kent	8.71
6	UNLV	8.54
7	Case Western	8.51
8	Cincinnati	8.15
9	Brooklyn	8.00
10	Pepperdine	7.45
11	Roger Williams	6.76
12	Florida	6.73
13	Hofstra	6.56
14	Arizona State	6.44
15	Pittsburgh	6.25
16	Seattle	6.10
17	Temple	6.06
18	Seton Hall	5.92
19	Houston	5.84
20	Loyola-L.A.	5.82
21	DePaul	5.78
	Rutgers-Newark	5.78
23	Tennessee	5.47
24	Kentucky	5.42
25	Miami	5.41

• 2008 Rankings
• 2007 Rankings

Update:  Brian Leiter notes that "this study nicely confirms what one would suspect--e.g., San Diego and Florida State are tops--and provides some very useful perspective on the scholarly seriousness and ambition of schools that are 'demoted' by U.S. News to tiers three and four. The strong showing of the relatively new law school at the University of Nevada is another striking, and quite reasonable, result."