Paul L. Caron
Dean





Thursday, March 2, 2023

U.S. News, Department Of Education, And Law Schools Take The Gloves Off In Rankings Battle

Wall Street Journal Op-Ed:  Why Elite Law and Medical Schools Can’t Stand U.S. News, by Eric J. Gertler (Chairman & CEO, U.S. News):

US News Grad Schools (2022)The decision by some elite law and medical schools to opt out of the U.S. News & World Report ranking surveys has ignited a national debate on meritocracy and equity. But lost in this discussion is the reason U.S. News ranks academic institutions and why our rankings are so important to aspiring students. ...

Our rankings don’t capture every nuance. Academic institutions aren’t monolithic or static; comparing them across a common data set can be challenging. But we reject our critics’ paternalistic view that students are somehow incapable of discerning for themselves from this information which school is the best fit.

Moreover, the perspective of elite schools doesn’t fit with that of the broader law- and medical-school community. Our editors held meetings with 110 law deans following the outcry over our rankings. Excepting the top 14 law schools, almost 75% of the schools that submitted surveys in 2022 did so in 2023. For medical schools, the engagement level was higher.

While we know that our rankings are important to students, we’re incredulous that our critics blame our rankings for just about every issue academia confronts. ... [E]lite schools object to our use of a common data set for all schools because our rankings are something they can’t control and they don’t want to be held accountable by an independent third party. ...

By refusing to participate, elite schools are opting out of an important discussion about what constitutes the best education for students, while implying that excellence and important goals like diversity are mutually exclusive.

Is it tolerable to leave schools unaccountable for the education they deliver to students? We think not.

Reuters, U.S. News Rankings Come Under Fire at Yale, Harvard Conference:

The U.S. Secretary of Education on Wednesday criticized annual higher education rankings published by U.S. News and World Report, saying they have "created an unhealthy obsession with selectivity."

Secretary Miguel Cardona was speaking at a conference organized by the law schools at Harvard and Yale universities, amid a backlash over the magazine's influential law school rankings.

“We need a culture change," Cardona said, asserting that U.S. News' emphasis on selectivity and exclusivity has helped steer underserved students to lower-tier institutions. "It’s time to stop worshipping at the false altar of U.S. News & World Report.”

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March 2, 2023 in Law Review Rankings, Law School Rankings, Legal Ed News, Legal Ed Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink

Tuesday, January 17, 2023

Resources For Authors Submitting Law Review Articles In The Spring 2023 Cycle

Submissions

1. Bryce Clayton Newell (Oregon), 2022 Meta-Ranking Of Flagship U.S. Law Reviews:

This is an updated ranking of the top flagship law reviews at US law schools. ...

The MetaRank was computed by averaging ranks (using a 25% weighting from each) of the following rankings:

prRank = US News Peer Reputation score ranking (averaged over 10 years);
usnRank = overall US News school ranking (averaged over 10 years);
wluRank = Washington & Lee Law Journal Ranking;
gRank = Google Scholar Metrics ranking (note: “1000” means journal was not indexed).

2. Nancy Levit (UMKC) & Allen Rostron (UMKC), Information for Submitting Articles to Law Reviews & Journals (Revised Jan. 13, 2022):

This document contains information about submitting articles to law reviews and journals, including the methods for submitting an article, any special formatting requirements, how to contact them to request an expedited review, and how to contact them to withdraw an article from consideration. It covers 195 law reviews.

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January 17, 2023 in Law Review Rankings, Law School Rankings, Legal Ed News, Legal Ed Rankings, Legal Ed Scholarship, Legal Education | Permalink

Monday, September 19, 2022

2022 Meta-Ranking Of Flagship U.S. Law Reviews

Bryce Clayton Newell (Oregon), 2022 Meta-Ranking of Flagship US Law Reviews:

This is an updated ranking of the top flagship law reviews at US law schools (updated as of September 16, 2022). For a summary and more details about method, see below the table. You can also compare MetaRanking since 2018, including changes in ranking over time here: MetaRank Comparison 2018-2022.

The MetaRank was computed by averaging ranks (using a 25% weighting from each) of the following rankings:

prRank = US News Peer Reputation score ranking (averaged over 10 years);
usnRank = overall US News school ranking (averaged over 10 years);
wluRank = Washington & Lee Law Journal Ranking;
gRank = Google Scholar Metrics ranking (note: “1000” means journal was not indexed).

Journal MetaRank prRank usnRank wluRank gRank
Harvard Law Review 1 1 3 1 1
Yale Law Journal 2 3 1 2 2
Stanford Law Review 3 2 2 3 5
Columbia Law Review 4 4 5 5 3
California Law Review 5 7 9 4 4
University of Chicago Law Review 6 5 4 12 6
University of Pennsylvania Law Review 7 9 7 6 8
New York University Law Review 8 6 6 13 9
Michigan Law Review 8 8 9 8 9
Georgetown Law Journal 10 14 14 7 9
Duke Law Journal 11 11 11 11 12
Northwestern University Law Review 12 13 12 14 16
Virginia Law Review 13 10 8 22 17
Texas Law Review 13 15 15 15 12
Vanderbilt Law Review 15 17 17 18 7
UCLA Law Review 16 16 16 10 18
Notre Dame Law Review 17 22 21 9 12
Minnesota Law Review 18 20 20 16 20
Cornell Law Review 19 12 13 23 29
Boston University Law Review 20 24 21 20 15
Southern California Law Review 21 19 19 26 27
Iowa Law Review 22 29 25 21 18
Washington University Law Review 23 18 18 29 34
Emory Law Journal 24 21 23 33 24
George Washington Law Review 25 25 24 31 23
Boston College Law Review 26 29 30 25 21
UC Davis Law Review 27 26 37 19 25
Fordham Law Review 28 34 39 17 22
William & Mary Law Review 29 33 33 24 31
Indiana Law Journal 30 32 34 27 29
North Carolina Law Review 31 23 31 35 34
Washington Law Review 32 36 38 30 28
University of Illinois Law Review 33 39 43 28 26
Wisconsin Law Review 34 27 32 39 39
Alabama Law Review 35 38 25 36 41
Ohio State Law Journal 36 31 35 37 43
Florida Law Review 37 37 41 32 38
Washington and Lee Law Review 38 41 36 44 42
Arizona State Law Journal 39 40 27 47 51
UC Irvine Law Review 40 28 28 56 55
Arizona Law Review 41 44 45 41 39
Hastings Law Journal 42 43 55 40 32
Georgia Law Review 43 35 29 43 64
Maryland Law Review 44 48 48 45 37
University of Colorado Law Review 45 42 46 46 45
Cardozo Law Review 46 53 59 34 36
Wake Forest Law Review 47 45 42 50 48
Brigham Young University Law Review 48 50 40 55 48
Utah Law Review 49 49 47 49 50
American University Law Review 50 51 77 38 32
University of Richmond Law Review 51 69 52 53 53
Houston Law Review 52 60 56 58 55
Tulane Law Review 53 46 51 73 64
Temple Law Review 54 57 54 64 64
Connecticut Law Review 55 52 57 52 83
SMU Law Review 55 65 50 74 55
George Mason Law Review 57 58 44 59 85
Denver Law Review 58 56 74 75 52
Lewis & Clark Law Review 59 86 90 42 43
Chicago-Kent Law Review 59 75 87 54 45
Georgia State University Law Review 61 64 65 80 53
University of Miami Law Review 62 54 69 81 60
Brooklyn Law Review 62 70 88 51 55
Tennessee Law Review 64 66 60 72 1000
Pepperdine Law Review 65 62 58 83 70
Nevada Law Journal 66 76 66 62 71
Case Western Reserve Law Review 67 68 67 81 61
Florida State University Law Review 68 47 49 98 85
Oklahoma Law Review 68 78 72 68 61
University of Kansas Law Review 70 67 73 85 61
Missouri Law Review 71 71 64 79 75
Seton Hall Law Review 72 88 61 69 73
Nebraska Law Review 73 84 70 78 64
Villanova Law Review 74 82 75 77 64
Penn State Law Review 75 92 68 61 80
Michigan State Law Review 76 91 92 48 75
Kentucky Law Journal 76 72 63 86 85
Buffalo Law Review 78 99 101 60 55
South Carolina Law Review 79 85 94 66 72
Seattle University Law Review 80 93 115 67 45
Loyola University Chicago Law Journal 81 73 76 89 83
Oregon Law Review 82 54 86 96 1000
San Diego Law Review 83 59 81 115 85
Saint Louis University Law Journal 83 98 91 87 64
University of Cincinnati Law Review 85 89 79 98 79
Texas A&M Law Review 86 105 100 71 1000
CUNY Law Review 87 112 122 57 1000
Hofstra Law Review 88 101 114 63 73
Marquette Law Review 89 95 103 75 80
Rutgers University Law Review 90 74 82 126 75
Santa Clara Law Review 91 80 113 70 102
Baylor Law Review 92 87 53 113 1000
Indiana Law Review 93 81 104 101 85
University of Pittsburgh Law Review 93 63 80 121 107
Arkansas Law Review 95 94 84 103 91
Loyola of L.A. Law Review 96 61 71 132 110
UMKC Law Review 97 108 117 65 91
New Mexico Law Review 97 90 83 104 1000
Louisiana Law Review 99 104 93 95 91
Syracuse Law Review 100 96 99 97 101

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September 19, 2022 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Ed Rankings, Legal Ed Scholarship, Legal Education | Permalink

Friday, October 1, 2021

2021 Meta-Ranking Of Flagship U.S. Law Reviews

Update2022 Meta-Ranking Of Flagship U.S. Law Reviews

Bryce Clayton Newell (Oregon), 2021 Meta-Ranking of Flagship US Law Reviews:

This is an updated ranking of the top flagship law reviews at US law schools (updated as of September 29, 2021). ... The ranking table below includes 193 flagship law reviews from ABA accredited law schools. Even if you ignore the “MetaRank,” the table provides access to the updated rankings from US News (peer reputation and overall rankings, averaged over the 10-year period from 2013 edition through the 2022 edition of US News’ rankings) and the current Washington & Lee Rankings (2016-2020; released on June 30, 2021) and Google Scholar (July 2021) rankings. 

prRank = Average 10-year US News Peer Reputation score ranking;
usnRank = Average 10-year overall US News school ranking; 
wluRank = Washington & Lee Law Journal Ranking; 
gRank = Google Scholar Metrics ranking; 
wlu(IF)Rank = Washington & Lee Law Journal Impact Factor Ranking (NOT included in meta-rank).

Journal MetaRank prRank usnRank wluRank gRank wlu(IF)Rank
Harvard Law Review 1 1 3 1 1 13
Yale Law Journal 2 2 1 2 2 2
Stanford Law Review 3 3 2 4 5 1
Columbia Law Review 4 4 5 8 3 29
California Law Review 5 7 9 3 7 3
Univ. of Penn. Law Review 6 9 7 6 6 5
Univ. of Chicago Law Review 7 5 4 14 8 15
Georgetown Law Journal 8 14 14 5 4 6
Michigan Law Review 9 8 10 9 11 8
Virginia Law Review 10 9 8 18 10 12
Duke Law Journal 11 11 11 12 14 7
NYU Law Review 12 6 6 22 19 21
Texas Law Review 13 15 15 16 9 16
UCLA Law Review 14 16 16 13 13 4
Cornell Law Review 15 12 13 15 22 8
Northwestern Univ. Law Rev. 15 13 12 23 14 18
Vanderbilt Law Review 17 17 17 20 11 24
Minnesota Law Review 18 20 20 10 16 14
Notre Dame Law Review 19 23 21 7 16 10
Iowa Law Review 20 29 25 11 16 20
Boston University Law Review 21 25 24 21 20 23
Washington Univ. Law Review 22 18 18 30 29 17
George Washington Law Rev. 23 24 23 29 21 36
Emory Law Journal 24 21 22 32 24 21
Southern California Law Rev. 25 19 19 31 32 18
Boston College Law Review 26 29 29 24 22 33
William & Mary Law Review 27 33 35 19 27 11
Fordham Law Review 28 34 39 17 25 43
U.C. Davis Law Review 29 26 37 26 30 27
Washington Law Review 30 35 33 28 28 25
North Carolina Law Review 31 22 36 34 36 31
Indiana Law Journal 32 32 31 35 34 33
Wisconsin Law Review 32 27 32 33 40 26
Univ. of Illinois Law Review 32 39 41 27 25 31
Ohio State Law Journal 35 31 37 37 36 28
Washington & Lee Law Rev. 36 40 34 41 41 49
Alabama Law Review 36 37 26 43 50 39
Florida Law Review 38 37 43 36 41 29
Arizona State Law Journal 39 41 27 51 44 58
Hastings Law Journal 40 42 55 38 30 46
Arizona Law Review 41 44 44 42 36 33
Maryland Law Review 42 48 48 39 33 39
Cardozo Law Review 43 53 59 25 34 41
Wake Forest Law Review 44 45 40 45 45 57
Georgia Law Review 45 35 30 46 70 36
Univ. of Colorado Law Rev. 46 43 45 47 50 51
BYU Law Review 47 49 41 48 48 48
American Univ. Law Review 48 50 75 40 36 43
U.C. Irvine Law Review 49 28 28 84 62 99
Utah Law Review 50 51 47 60 56 62
Connecticut Law Review 51 52 57 49 62 36
Houston Law Review 52 63 56 53 54 54
George Mason Law Review 53 57 46 50 78 51
Univ. of Richmond Law Rev. 54 70 54 56 54 49
Tulane Law Review 55 46 51 72 67 76
Case Western Reserve L. Rev. 56 67 64 58 48 79
SMU Law Review 57 65 50 73 62 84
Temple Law Review 58 58 53 64 78 58
Tennessee Law Review 59 61 60 69 1000 54
Missouri Law Review 60 69 64 70 52 77
Florida State Univ. Law Rev. 61 47 49 82 78 70
Lewis & Clark Law Review 62 83 89 44 43 45
Pepperdine Law Review 63 66 58 68 70 65
Denver Law Review 64 56 73 80 56 79
Chicago-Kent Law Review 64 73 83 57 52 69
Brooklyn Law Review 66 71 85 54 56 65
Univ. of Miami Law Review 67 54 69 81 67 71
Nevada Law Journal 68 80 68 62 67 53
Univ. of Kansas Law Review 69 62 74 83 59 95
Michigan State Law Review 70 92 91 52 45 46
Loyola Univ. Chicago L.J. 71 75 76 75 62 81
Georgia State Univ. Law Rev. 72 68 62 102 59 112
Oklahoma Law Review 73 77 70 71 75 68
Seton Hall Law Review 74 87 61 65 87 75
Nebraska Law Review 74 81 72 77 70 84
Seattle Univ. Law Review 76 91 112 54 47 62
San Diego Law Review 77 59 81 88 78 84
Penn State Law Review 78 93 71 61 85 42
Villanova Law Review 79 88 80 76 70 73
Kentucky Law Journal 80 72 63 93 93 90
DePaul Law Review 81 97 116 58 62 61
Buffalo Law Review 82 99 99 74 70 71
Saint Louis Univ. L.J. 83 98 92 94 59 106
South Carolina Law Review 84 89 95 67 93 62
Univ. of Cincinnati Law Rev.  85 86 77 98 87 115
Hofstra Law Review 86 100 111 63 76 67
Rutgers Univ. Law Review 87 74 84 115 78 129
Indiana Law Review 88 79 104 87 87 99
Marquette Law Review 89 94 103 78 87 77
Santa Clara Law Review 90 76 110 79 102 54
Arkansas Law Review 91 95 87 100 93 109
UMKC Law Review 92 107 120 66 85 81
Oregon Law Review 93 55 88 120 1000 123
Univ. of Pittsburgh Law Rev. 93 60 79 122 116 123
New Mexico Law Review 95 90 82 106 1000 88
Louisiana Law Review 96 103 90 97 100 97
St. John's Law Review 97 104 86 109 93 112
Baylor Law Review 98 85 52 129 1000 119
Loyola of L.A. Law Review 99 63 67 142 128 137
West Virginia Law Review 99 110 101 96 93 97
Howard Law Journal 99 84 115 103 98 95
CUNY Law Review 99 111 119 85 1000 60

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October 1, 2021 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Ed Rankings, Legal Ed Scholarship, Legal Education | Permalink

Tuesday, July 20, 2021

The Roaring Fall 2021 Admissions Season: Will A Law School Have A 175 LSAT Or 4.0 UGPA Median?

Following up on yesterday's post, 98% Of The Way Through The Fall 2021 Law School Admissions Cycle: Applicants Are Up 14%, With Biggest Increase (66%) Among The 170+ LSAT Band:  Spivey Consulting, Recapping the 2020-2021 Law School Admissions Cycle & Predicting the Upcoming Cycle:

In this podcast, Mike Spivey is joined by PowerScore founder and CEO Dave Killoran and Spivey Consulting Business Intelligence Director Justin Kane ... to discuss takeaways from this previous 2020-2021 admissions cycle and to make predictions for the upcoming 2021-2022 cycle.

The fall 2021 admissions discussion addressed a number of interesting points, including:

  • Potential causes of the dramatic increase in LSAT scores
    • The pandemic gave test-takers more time to study
    • The online test was shorter and taken in the more convenient and comfortable home environment
  • Predicted LSAT and UGPA medians:  +2, +.05
  • Predicted 1L enrollment: +10%
  • Which will occur first: a school with a 175 LSAT median or a 4.0 UGPA median? (The current highs are a 173 LSAT median (Harvard, Yale) and a 3.94 UGPA Median (Alabama, Yale)

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July 20, 2021 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Ed News, Legal Ed Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink

Thursday, July 8, 2021

2003-2020 Tax Journal Rankings: Tax Law Review Is #1, Virginia Tax Review Is #2

Following up on yesterday's post, 2020 Tax Journal Rankings: Florida Tax Review Is #1, Virginia Tax Review Is #2:  here are the Washington & Lee 2003-2020 tax law review combined rankings of eight major tax journals:

  • W&L-law-journal-rankingsColumbia Journal of Tax Law ("Columbia")
  • Florida Tax Review ("Florida")
  • Houston Business & Tax Review ("Houston")
  • Pittsburgh Tax Review ("Pittsburgh")
  • Tax Law Review ("NYU")
  • Tax Lawyer ("ABA")
  • Tax Notes Federal ("Tax Notes")
  • Virginia Tax Review ("Virginia")

The rankings are based on the annual combined rankings in 2003-2020 among these eight journals by:

Ave

Journal

20

19

18

17

16

15

14

13

12

11

10

09

08

07

06

05

04

03

1.7 1. NYU 3 2 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
2.5 2. Virginia 2 4 4 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 3 4 4 4 4 4
2.7 3. Florida 1 1 1 2 3 4 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 3 2 2 3 2
3.1 4. Tax Notes 4 3 2 4 4 3 4 4 4 3 3 3 2 2 3 3 2 3
5.4 5. ABA NR 6 NR 5 5 5 5 5 6 5 6 6 6 6 5 5 5 5
7.9 6. Houston NR NR NR 10 9 7 6 6 7 7 7 8 8 9 8 8 9 9
7.9 7. Pittsburgh NR NR NR 8 8 8 7 8 5 6 5 5 5 22 NR NR NR NR
11.3 8. Columbia 5 5 NR 6 6 10 10 13 14 33 NR NR NR NR NR NR NR NR

Tax Notes Federal fares poorly in the Impact Factor category (citations/number of articles published) because W&L apparently counts as "articles" all of the advance sheet material in Tax Notes Federal.

Tax Notes Federal is #1 by a wide margin in the number of citations in law reviews:

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July 8, 2021 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education, Scholarship, Tax, Tax Analysts, Tax Rankings, Tax Scholarship, W&L Tax Journal Rankings | Permalink

Wednesday, July 7, 2021

2020 Tax Journal Rankings: Florida Tax Review Is #1, Virginia Tax Review Is #2

Washington & Lee has just released the 2020 tax law review rankings of six major tax journals:

  • W&L Law Journal RankingsColumbia Journal of Tax Law ("Columbia")
  • Florida Tax Review ("Florida")
  • Tax Law Review ("NYU")
  • Tax Lawyer ("ABA")
  • Tax Notes Federal ("Tax Notes")
  • Virginia Tax Review ("Virginia")

The rankings are based on citations to articles published in 2016-2020 (methodology):

 

Combined

Impact

Journals

Cases

Currency

1. Florida

11.12

0.69

161

1

1.43

2. Virginia

10.90

0.75

135

1

1.19

3. NYU

10.64

0.62

166

0

1.11

4. Tax Notes

8.92

0.01

290

1

0.02

5. Columbia

8.10

0.58

93

0

1.18

ABA

NR

NR

NR

NR

NR

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July 7, 2021 in Law Review Rankings, Law School Rankings, Legal Ed Rankings, Legal Education, Tax, Tax Analysts, Tax Rankings, Tax Scholarship, W&L Tax Journal Rankings | Permalink

Monday, January 11, 2021

October 2020 California Bar Exam Results

California State BarThe California State Bar has released school-by-school data on the October 2020 California Bar Exam.  Here are the results for first time test takers for the 21 California ABA-accredited law schools, along with each school's U.S. News ranking (California and overall):

Bar Pass

Rank (Rate)

 

School

US News Rank

CA (Overall)

1 (97.7%)

Stanford

1 (2)

2 (96.7%)

UCLA

3 (15)

3 (96.0%)

UC-Berkeley

2 (9)

4 (91.8%)

Loyola-L.A.

9 (62)

5 (91.3%)

USC

4 (19)

6 (88.8%)

San Diego

 10 (83)

7 (87.6%)

UC-Irvine

5 (27)

8 (86.7%)

UC-Davis

6 (38)

9 (86.1%)

UC-Hastings

8 (59)

10 (85.9%)

McGeorge

Rank Not Published

11 (84.6%)

Southwestern

Rank Not Published

      84.1%

Statewide Ave. (CA ABA-accredited)

12 (80.7%)

San Francisco

Rank Not Published

13 (80.6%)

Chapman

12 (111)

14 (79.6%)

Pepperdine

7 (47)

15 (75.6%)

Santa Clara

11 (107)

16 (72.9%)

La Verne

Rank Not Published

17 (71.8%)

Cal-Western

Rank Not Published

18 (55.9%)

Western State

Rank Not Published

19 (46.7%)

Thomas Jefferson

Rank Not Published

20 (44.4%)

Golden Gate

Rank Not Published

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January 11, 2021 in Law Review Rankings, Law School Rankings, Legal Ed News, Legal Education | Permalink

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

2019 Tax Journal Rankings: Tax Notes #1, Florida Tax Review #2

Here are the Washington & Lee tax law review rankings of the six major tax journals:

  • Columbia Journal of Tax Law ("Columbia")
  • Florida Tax Review ("Florida")
  • Tax Law Review ("NYU")
  • Tax Lawyer ("ABA")
  • Tax Notes
  • Virginia Tax Review ("Virginia")

The rankings are based on citations to articles published in 2015-2019 (methodology):

 

Combined

Impact

Journals

Cases

Currency

1. Tax Notes

15.16

0.02

406

5

0.03

2. Florida

14.30

0.75

188

1

1.45

3. NYU

12.29

0.65

161

0

1.16

4. Virginia

8.52

0.46

108

2

0.61

5. Columbia

6.98

0.45

69

0

0.53

6. ABA

5.82

0.16

115

4

0.23

As I have previously noted, Tax Notes fares poorly in the Impact Factor category (citations/number of articles published) because W&L apparently counts as "articles" all of the advance sheet material in Tax Notes. Tax Notes is #1 by a wide margin in the number of citations in law reviews, with more than double the citations of its nearest competitor.

December 1, 2020 in Law Review Rankings, Law School Rankings, Legal Ed Rankings, Legal Education, Tax, Tax Analysts, Tax Rankings, Tax Scholarship, W&L Tax Journal Rankings | Permalink | Comments (0)

Monday, July 20, 2020

2020 Meta-Ranking Of Flagship U.S. Law Reviews

Update2022 Meta-Ranking Of Flagship U.S. Law Reviews

Bryce Clayton Newell (Oregon), 2020 Meta-Ranking of Flagship US Law Reviews:

This is an updated ranking of the top flagship law reviews at US law schools (updated as of July 15, 2020). ... The ranking table below includes 191 flagship law reviews from ABA accredited law schools. Even if you ignore the “MetaRank,” the table provides access to the updated rankings from US News (peer reputation and overall rankings, averaged over the 10-year period from 2012 through the 2021 edition) and the current W&L (2015-2019; released on June 1, 2020) and Google Scholar (July 2020) rankings.. ...

prRank = Average 10-year US News Peer Reputation score ranking;
usnRank = Average 10-year overall US News school ranking; 
wluRank = Washington & Lee Law Journal Ranking; 
gRank = Google Scholar Metrics ranking; 
wlu(IF)Rank = Washington & Lee Law Journal Impact Factor Ranking (NOT included in meta-rank).

Journal MetaRank prRank usnRank wluRank gRank wlu(IF)Rank
Yale Law Journal 1 2 1 1 1 2
Harvard Law Review 2 1 3 2 2 20
Stanford Law Review 3 3 2 3 3 1
Columbia Law Review 4 4 5 4 4 19
University of Chicago Law Review 5 5 4 9 6 15
Univ. of Pennsylvania Law Rev. 6 9 7 5 7 4
California Law Review 7 7 9 7 10 6
New York University Law Review 8 6 6 10 12 14
Georgetown Law Journal 9 14 14 6 5 10
Virginia Law Review 10 9 8 16 12 17
Michigan Law Review 11 8 9 15 16 8
Texas Law Review 12 15 15 14 8 20
UCLA Law Review 13 16 16 12 9 3
Duke Law Journal 13 11 11 17 14 5
Vanderbilt Law Review 15 17 17 19 15 13
Notre Dame Law Review 16 24 21 8 16 6
Cornell Law Review 17 12 13 23 22 12
Minnesota Law Review 18 20 20 13 18 15
Iowa Law Review 19 28 25 11 10 23
Northwestern Univ. Law Review 20 13 12 24 26 27
Washington Univ. Law Review 21 18 18 26 28 18
Boston University Law Review 22 25 24 22 20 22
Southern California Law Review 23 19 19 27 30 11
George Washington Law Review 24 23 22 29 22 42
Emory Law Journal 24 21 23 30 22 29
Boston College Law Review 26 29 30 21 19 27
William & Mary Law Review 27 33 35 18 21 8
UC Davis Law Review 28 26 36 28 22 26
Fordham Law Review 29 34 38 20 27 46
Indiana Law Journal 30 32 29 35 34 33
Washington Law Review 30 35 31 34 30 32
Wisconsin Law Review 32 26 34 39 37 38
Ohio State Law Journal 33 31 37 33 36 25
Univ. of Illinois Law Review 34 36 41 32 29 39
North Carolina Law Review 35 22 39 36 45 37
Florida Law Review 36 38 44 31 30 34
Washington & Lee Law Review 37 39 33 43 40 43
Alabama Law Review 38 40 27 40 52 35
Arizona Law Review 39 43 43 42 34 36
Hastings Law Journal 40 41 53 37 37 40
Arizona State Law Journal 41 44 28 55 42 61
UC Irvine Law Review 42 30 26 66 51 58
Cardozo Law Review 43 53 59 25 37 24
Wake Forest Law Review 44 45 40 47 47 49
Maryland Law Review 45 47 48 44 42 43
American Univ. Law Review 46 49 71 38 30 40
Colorado Law Review 47 42 45 50 55 52
Georgia Law Review 48 37 32 58 66 52
BYU Law Review 49 50 42 60 49 66
Utah Law Review 50 51 47 53 52 54
Houston Law Review 51 64 56 46 48 43
Connecticut Law Review 52 52 57 41 66 29
George Mason Law Review 53 56 46 49 66 51
Case Western Reserve Law Rev. 54 63 64 52 42 66
Univ. of Richmond Law Review 55 73 55 54 52 49
Tulane Law Review 56 46 51 69 85 83
Univ. of Miami Law Review 57 54 67 68 63 62
Temple Law Review 57 58 54 61 79 47
Brooklyn Law Review 59 70 82 48 58 66
SMU Law Review 59 66 49 64 79 77
Pepperdine Law Review 61 67 58 71 63 66
Lewis & Clark Law Review 61 81 87 51 40 56
Florida State Univ. Law Review 63 48 50 89 75 74
Seton Hall Law Review 64 85 62 62 55 58
Missouri Law Review 64 68 73 65 58 65
Nevada Law Journal 66 84 68 45 75 48
Chicago-Kent Law Review 67 72 80 63 58 74
San Diego Law Review 68 58 77 80 61 72
Michigan State Law Review 69 95 90 59 45 63
Univ. of Kansas Law Review 70 62 74 85 70 88
Nebraska Law Review 71 80 70 83 61 80
Loyola Univ. Chicago Law Journal 72 75 76 72 72 66
Oklahoma Law Review 73 78 69 76 75 87
Denver University Law Review 74 57 72 88 85 88
Penn State Law Review 75 93 66 57 90 31
Tennessee Law Review 76 61 61 96 94 110
Seattle University Law Review 77 91 108 56 63 71
Indiana Law Review 78 76 98 77 79 83
Georgia State Univ. Law Review 78 69 60 109 92 147
Univ. of Cincinnati Law Review 80 83 75 82 96 81
Villanova Law Review 80 86 85 86 79 88
South Carolina Law Review 82 89 95 87 70 83
DePaul Law Review 83 98 112 67 66 56
Kentucky Law Journal 84 71 63 108 107 125
Hofstra Law Review 85 99 109 74 72 81
West Virginia Law Review 86 109 99 70 79 58
Buffalo Law Review 87 100 96 84 79 74
Saint Louis Univ. Law Journal 88 97 92 102 72 114
Marquette Law Review 89 92 100 78 94 79
Rutgers Univ. Law Review 90 74 83 123 85 142
Baylor Law Review 90 87 52 113 1000 103
Albany Law Review 92 127 119 73 49 83
Arkansas Law Review 93 96 84 105 85 129
Santa Clara Law Review 94 77 106 99 96 77
UMKC Law Review 95 106 118 81 75 108
Louisiana Law Review 96 102 89 98 96 125
St. John’s Law Review 97 104 86 112 99 136
Howard Law Journal 98 90 116 100 99 103
Catholic Univ. Law Review 99 101 100 107 102 114
Loyola of L.A. Law Review 100 64 65 150 133 150

Oregon Law Review 101 55 88 136 1000 142
Texas A&M Law Review 101 123 115 75 102 63
Syracuse Law Review 103 94 96 101 126 99
Drake Law Review 103 132 110 90 85 91
Idaho Law Review 105 117 129 119 55 106
Univ. of Pittsburgh Law Review 106 60 81 141 112 136
New Mexico Law Review 107 88 79 131 1000 119
Chapman Law Review 108 141 131 79 1000 54
Texas Tech Law Review 109 135 113 91 92 99
Mississippi Law Journal 110 103 107 110 119 114
Cleveland State Law Review 111 140 117 94 90 91
Vermont Law Review 112 112 133 95 102 103
Univ. of Louisville Law Review 113 108 93 122 1000 97
Univ. of San Francisco Law Rev. 114 119 142 93 1000 73
Washburn Law Journal 115 136 128 97 1000 96
Northeastern Univ. Law Journal 116 82 77 150 1000 150
Maine Law Review 117 105 124 130 102 110
Mercer Law Review 118 121 121 111 115 136
Akron Law Review 119 144 135 92 102 91
Univ. of Hawai'i Law Review 119 79 94 150 1000 150
CUNY Law Review 121 114 120 121 1000 112
Tulsa Law Review 122 125 91 150 112 150
Montana Law Review 122 120 126 116 1000 95
Creighton Law Review 124 134 122 106 119 119
Stetson Law Review 125 110 104 134 1000 149
Quinnipiac Law Review 126 131 130 114 1000 99
Wayne Law Review 127 116 100 150 131 150
Univ. of Memphis Law Review 128 143 147 103 107 133
Univ. of St. Thomas Law Journal 129 139 125 139 99 125
Pace Law Review 130 132 136 128 109 136
Wyoming Law Review 131 118 126 132 1000 122
Duquesne Law Review 132 148 134 115 1000 99
Drexel Law Review 132 115 111 143 1000 130
Univ. of Baltimore Law Review 134 122 123 134 1000 112
Loyola Law Review 135 113 140 137 126 128
Suffolk Univ. Law Review 135 130 151 120 115 136
FIU Law Review 137 147 105 146 119 136
Gonzaga Law Review 138 111 114 147 1000 148
New York Law School Law Rev. 139 129 132 142 119 130
Southwestern Law Review 140 138 150 129 109 114
Univ. of Toledo Law Review 141 142 141 125 119 142
Univ. of Arkansas LR Law Rev. 142 107 137 150 134 150
Univ. of the Pacific Law Review 143 128 139 150 112 150
Univ. of New Hampshire Law Rev. 143 126 103 150 1000 150
Ohio Northern Univ. Law Review 145 169 153 104 1000 122
St. Mary's Law Journal 146 157 158 117 119 119
Mitchell Hamline Law Review 147 145 144 150 115 150
South Dakota Law Review 147 146 147 133 128 133
Capital University Law Review 149 170 161 117 109 107
Willamette Law Review 150 124 138 150 1000 150
Touro Law Review 151 167 161 127 115 130
Northern Kentucky Law Review 152 162 161 124 1000 91
Campbell Law Review 153 170 146 140 119 122
John Marshall Law Review 154 149 152 149 131 145
North Dakota Law Review 155 137 149 150 1000 150
Univ. of Detroit Mercy Law Rev. 155 173 161 126 1000 97
South Texas Law Review 157 157 156 148 128 145
Roger Williams Univ. Law Rev. 158 155 161 150 128 150
Southern Illinois Univ. L.J. 159 154 156 150 135 150
Cumberland Law Review 160 153 145 150 1000 150
Widener Law Review 161 150 161 144 1000 114
Univ. of Dayton Law Review 162 151 154 150 1000 150
Northern Illinois Univ. Law Rev. 163 156 155 150 1000 150
Widener Commonwealth Law Rev. 163 152 159 150 1000 150
New England Law Review 165 168 161 145 1000 133
Nova Law Review 166 159 161 150 1000 150
Regent Univ. Law Review 167 184 161 138 1000 108
Elon Law Review 167 160 161 150 1000 150
Golden Gate Univ. Law Review 169 161 161 150 1000 150
California Western Law Review 170 163 161 150 1000 150
Belmont Law Review 170 181 143 150 1000 150
Oklahoma City Univ. Law Review 170 165 159 150 1000 150
Mississippi College Law Review 173 164 161 150 1000 150
University of Mass. Law Review 174 166 161 150 1000 150
N. Carolina Central Law Review 175 172 161 150 1000 150
Univ. of the D.C. Law Review 176 174 161 150 1000 150
Florida A&M Univ. Law Review 177 175 161 150 1000 150
W. New England Law Review 178 176 161 150 1000 150
St. Thomas Law Review 179 177 161 150 1000 150
Thurgood Marshall Law Review 179 177 161 150 1000 150
John Marshall Law Journal 181 179 161 150 1000 150
Southern Univ. Law Review 182 180 161 150 1000 150
Charleston Law Review 183 182 161 150 1000 150
Faulkner Law Review 184 183 161 150 1000 150
Florida Coastal Law Review 185 184 161 150 1000 150
Appalachian Journal of Law 186 186 161 150 1000 150
Liberty University Law Review 187 187 161 150 1000 150
Barry Law Review 188 188 161 150 1000 150
Western State Univ. Law Review 189 189 161 150 1000 150
Thomas M. Cooley Law Review 189 189 161 150 1000 150
Ave Maria Law Review 191 191 161 150 1000 150

July 20, 2020 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Ed Rankings, Legal Ed Scholarship, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thursday, July 25, 2019

2019 Meta-Ranking Of Flagship U.S. Law Reviews

Update2022 Meta-Ranking Of Flagship U.S. Law Reviews

Bryce Clayton Newell (Oregon), 2019 Meta-Ranking of Flagship US Law Reviews:

This is an updated ranking of flagship law reviews at US law schools (updated as of July 23, 2019, including the 2020 US News numbers). ... The ranking table below includes all of the law reviews that ranked in the top 150 in in the MetaRanking, including all journals that ranked in the top 100 at least one of the following rankings: US News Peer Reputation Score Ranking (avg., 2011-2020), US News Overall Ranking (avg., 2011-2020), the Washington & Lee University ranking (current version, 2010-2017; default weighting), the Google Scholar ranking (index as of July 2019), and the W&L Impact Factor Ranking (not included in the MetaRank). ...

prRank = US News Peer Reputation score ranking;
usnRank = Overall US News school ranking;
wluRank = Washington & Lee Law Journal Ranking;
gRank = Google Scholar Metrics ranking;
wlu(IF)Rank = Washington & Lee Law Journal Impact Factor Ranking.

Journal MetaRank prRank usnRank wluRank gRank wlu(IF)Rank
Yale Law Journal  1 2 1 1 1 2
Harvard Law Review  2 1 3 2 2 26
Stanford Law Review  3 3 2 4 3 1
Columbia Law Review  4 4 4 5 5 7
Univ. of Pennsylvania Law Review 5 9 7 3 4 3
NYU Law Review 6 6 6 11 13 12
Virginia Law Review  6 9 8 7 12 5
California Law Review  8 7 9 15 7 17
Georgetown Law Journal  9 13 14 6 6 8
Michigan Law Review  9 8 10 7 14 5
Univ. of Chicago Law Review 9 5 4 21 9 29
Texas Law Review  12 15 15 10 7 19
UCLA Law Review  13 16 16 9 10 4
Duke Law Journal  14 11 11 16 16 9
Cornell Law Review 15 12 13 16 21 9
Minnesota Law Review  16 20 20 12 14 14
Vanderbilt Law Review  17 17 17 18 16 11
Iowa Law Review  18 28 25 14 10 15
Northwestern Univ. Law Review 19 14 12 26 30 22
Boston Univ. Law Review  20 26 24 20 19 36
Notre Dame Law Review  21 24 22 19 26 20
G. Washington Law Review 22 23 21 31 24 34
Southern Calif. Law Review 22 19 18 38 24 30
Emory Law Journal 24 21 23 35 21 26
Washington Univ. Law Review 25 18 19 32 32 23
Boston College Law Review  26 29 30 23 21 24
Fordham Law Review  27 34 39 13 18 39
Indiana Law Journal  28 31 28 27 26 21
William & Mary Law Review  29 33 35 22 29 18
U.C. Davis Law Review  30 27 34 34 26 32
North Carolina Law Review  31 22 38 29 43 25
Wisconsin Law Review 32 25 33 36 39 28
Univ. of Illinois Law Review 33 35 41 30 31 33
Washington Law Review  33 37 31 49 20 49
Washington & Lee Law Review 35 36 36 37 33 41
Florida Law Review  36 39 46 24 34 16
Ohio State Law Journal 37 30 37 39 40 31
Wake Forest Law Review  38 44 40 40 35 46
Hastings Law Journal  39 40 52 33 35 43
Arizona Law Review  40 42 43 42 35 43
Alabama Law Review 41 41 27 45 53 43
UC Irvine Law Review 42 32 26 66 51 57
Cardozo Law Review  43 53 59 25 40 38
Connecticut Law Review  44 52 56 28 47 13
Maryland Law Review 45 47 48 46 46 47
Colorado Law Review  46 42 44 60 43 69
American Univ. Law Review  47 49 66 41 35 40
Arizona State Law Journal 48 45 29 67 51 82
BYU Law Review 49 50 42 48 53 60
Georgia Law Review 50 38 32 51 85 37
George Mason Law Review  51 55 45 44 65 35
Utah Law Review  52 51 47 47 68 50
Houston Law Review 53 66 54 52 47 56
Case Western Reserve Law Review 54 63 63 57 40 71
Tulane Law Review  55 46 51 61 74 83
Florida State Univ. Law Review 56 48 50 68 72 55
Univ. of Miami Law Review 56 54 67 70 47 62
Pepperdine Law Review 58 68 58 54 59 60
Lewis & Clark Law Review  59 82 86 42 47 41
Seton Hall Law Review 60 83 64 54 59 54
San Diego Law Review 61 57 76 72 56 69
Univ. of Richmond Law Review 62 75 57 69 65 65
Brooklyn Law Review 63 69 81 56 68 72
Temple Law Review 63 59 55 83 77 59
SMU Law Review  65 64 49 98 68 115
Denver Univ. Law Review 66 60 71 71 85 85
Univ. of Cincinnati Law Review 67 80 72 61 77 74
Michigan State Law Review 67 97 92 58 43 81
Nevada Law Journal 67 87 70 74 59 58
Missouri Law Review 70 67 75 83 68 96
Chicago-Kent Law Review 71 70 80 85 65 96
Univ. of Kansas Law Review 71 61 74 88 77 96
Oregon Law Review 73 56 89 63 93 67
Loyola Univ. Chicago Law Journal 74 74 78 63 93 62
Tennessee Law Review 75 62 61 93 93 78
Nebraska Law Review 75 79 73 98 59 78
Seattle Univ. Law Review 77 89 103 50 72 62
Penn State Law Review 78 92 69 53 101 47
DePaul Law Review 79 100 109 58 58 53
Oklahoma Law Review 80 78 68 122 59 125
Indiana Law Review 81 76 94 82 85 104
Rutgers Univ. Law Review 82 73 83 92 93 85
Kentucky Law Journal 83 70 62 95 116 78
Loyola of L.A. Law Review 84 65 65 80 135 91
Santa Clara Law Review 84 77 104 63 101 52
Buffalo Law Review 86 101 98 72 77 51
Villanova Law Review 87 86 85 102 77 96
Marquette Law Review 88 90 101 75 85 74
Georgia State Univ. Law Review 89 72 60 96 124 115
Univ. of Pittsburgh Law Review 90 58 79 115 108 96
South Carolina Law Review 91 91 99 86 93 85
Louisiana Law Review 92 102 88 76 106 66
Mitchell Hamline Law Review 93 143 141 90 1000 123
Albany Law Review 94 126 116 78 56 115
Catholic Univ. Law Review 95 96 100 91 90 74
Saint Louis Univ. Law Journal 95 98 95 94 90 105
West Virginia Law Review 97 110 96 107 74 105
Arkansas Law Review 97 95 83 132 77 161
Hofstra Law Review 99 99 107 97 85 118
Syracuse Law Review 100 94 93 128 74 141
Mississippi Law Journal 101 104 108 89 93 85
Howard Law Journal 102 93 116 102 101 93
UMKC Law Review 103 106 115 100 93 123
Baylor Law Review 104 88 53 138 1000 126
Idaho Law Review 105 114 125 133 53 132
Akron Law Review 106 145 134 76 77 67
St. John’s Law Review 107 103 87 135 108 141
Vermont Law Review 108 109 132 79 116 73
Gonzaga Law Review 109 111 113 108 1000 94
Texas Tech Law Review 110 135 112 87 108 85
New York Law School Law Review 111 125 131 81 108 94
Maine Law Review 112 105 123 121 108 130
Duquesne Law Review 112 149 138 111 59 122
Univ. of Louisville Law Review 114 107 97 128 1000 113
Univ. of Hawaii Law Review 115 80 90 170 124 166
Cleveland State Law Review 116 140 120 105 101 74
Drake Law Review 117 131 111 104 124 96
New Mexico Law Review 118 85 76 156 1000 152
Pace Law Review 119 133 136 100 106 110
Univ. of San Francisco Law Review 120 119 140 109 1000 105
Wyoming Law Review 121 115 122 141 101 137
Texas A&M Law Review 122 134 133 1000 108 83
Quinnipiac Law Review 123 132 127 136 93 132
Maryland Law Review  124 120 118 116 135 150
Univ. of Baltimore Law Review 124 122 121 123 1000 91
Tulsa Law Review 126 124 91 151 124 170
The Wayne Law Review 127 116 102 142 135 135
Creighton Law Review 128 128 119 111 142 126
Washburn Law Journal 129 136 130 106 131 105
Chapman Law Review 130 141 129 116 120 103
Univ. of the Pacific Law Review 131 127 137 119 124 155
CUNY Law Review 132 118 127 136 1000 105
Drexel Law Review 133 117 114 145 1000 138
Stetson Law Review 134 112 105 155 1000 182
Southwestern Law Review 134 137 147 123 120 118
Univ. of Memphis Law Review 136 144 145 109 131 90
Northeastern Univ. Law Journal 137 84 82 182 1000 179
Loyola Law Review 138 113 143 127 148 126
Suffolk Univ. Law Review 139 130 150 119 135 146
Univ. of St. Thomas Law Journal 140 139 126 138 1000 118
South Dakota Law Review 141 146 145 118 135 110
Univ. of Arkansas Law Review 142 108 135 152 1000 161
Capital Univ. Law Review 143 169 161 111 108 96
Montana Law Review 143 121 124 162 142 152
Willamette Law Review 145 123 139 146 1000 146
New England Law Review 146 166 161 114 1000 130
Univ. of Toledo Law Review 146 142 142 125 146 146
Touro Law Review 148 167 161 134 108 158
FIU Law Review 149 153 110 160 150 170
John Marshall Law Review 150 150 153 126 150 141

July 25, 2019 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Ed Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (2)

Thursday, March 28, 2019

Law Reviews And The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

HarvardLawProfBlawg (Anonymous Professor, Top 100 Law School), Law Reviews And The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy:

It’s time once again to take a look at things in the top 10 law review front. ... Out of the top 10 law journals, 80 percent of the publications in top 10 law reviews for 2018 are written by authors whose alma mater is one of those schools. ... In 2018, Yale Law School J.D. alums account for 25 percent of all T10 articles published.  Harvard accounts for 19 percent. ...

What this does suggest is that, unsurprisingly, the hierarchy perpetuates itself.  As the data suggests, there is some modicum of privilege that arises from being an alum of a highly ranked law school.  One might call it classism in academia.  Even if you decide not to call it that, it’s a combination of unsavory things that give rise to hierarchy.

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March 28, 2019 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (2)

Wednesday, August 15, 2018

The Most-Cited Tax Faculty At The 68 Most-Cited Law Schools

Following up on this morning's post, The 68 Most-Cited Law Faculties:  here are the 19 Tax Profs among the 10-most cited faculty at the Top 68 law schools:

2.   Harvard:  Louis Kaplow
12.  UC-Irvine:  Vic Fleischer
14.  Michigan:  Reuven Avi-Yonah 
21.  Minnesota:  Kristin Hickman
23.  USC:  Ed Kleinbard, Ed McCaffery, Mike Simkovic
29.  Florida State:  Jeff Kahn, Steve Johnson
29.  Cardozo:  Ed Zelinsky
36.  Indiana:  David Gamage, Leandra Lederman
49.  BYU:  Cliff Fleming
54.  Pittsburgh:  Tony Infanti
58.  Santa Clara:  Pat Cain; Boston College:  Diane Ring; Georgia:  Gregg Polsky

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August 15, 2018 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education, Tax | Permalink | Comments (1)

Tuesday, May 8, 2018

SSRN e-Journal Rankings By Average Downloads Per Paper

SSRN LogoRyan Whalen (University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law), SSRN e-Journals and Downloads:

I did a bit of SSRN/LSN hacking, and determined that ... there are some pretty major differences in the average number of downloads different LSN journals get. The below relies on data from just under a quarter million papers that are classified to LSN e-journals, and only extends to LSN classifications (i.e. working paper series or other SSRN e-journal classifications are not included).

The Tax Law & Policy Journals rank 54th out 94 SSRN e-journals, with 185 downloads per paper:

SSRN 3

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May 8, 2018 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

2018 Meta-Ranking Of Flagship U.S. Law Reviews

Update2022 Meta-Ranking Of Flagship U.S. Law Reviews

Bryce Clayton Newell (Kentucky), 2018 Meta-Ranking of Flagship US Law Reviews:

This is an updated ranking of flagship law reviews at US law schools (updated as of March 20, 2018, including the 2019 US News numbers). ... The ranking table below includes all of the law reviews that ranked in the top 150 in in the MetaRanking, including all journals that ranked in the top 100 at least one of the following rankings: US News Peer Reputation Score Ranking (avg., 2010-2019), US News Overall Ranking (avg., 2010-2019), the Washington & Lee University ranking (current version, 2009-2016; default weighting), the Google Scholar ranking (index as of June 2017), and the W&L Impact Factor Ranking (not included in the MetaRank). ...

prRank = US News Peer Reputation score ranking;
usnRank = Overall US News school ranking;
wluRank = Washington & Lee Law Journal Ranking;
gRank = Google Scholar Metrics ranking;
wlu(IF)Rank = Washington & Lee Law Journal Impact Factor Ranking.

Continue reading

March 21, 2018 in Law Review Rankings, Law School Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Are The Google Law Review Rankings 'Worthless'?

Google Scholar (2015)Following up on yesterday's post, 2016 Google Law Review Rankings:

Brian Leiter (Chicago), Annals of "Bullshit" Rankings:

The problem (we've encountered it in philosophy in the past, but now everyone there knows Google  Scholar is worthless for measuring journal impact) is that there is no control for the volume of publishing by each journal, so any journal that publishes more pages and articles per year will do better than a peer journal with the same actual impact that publishes fewer articles and pages.

Rob Anderson (Pepperdine), Google Scholar Releases 2016 Journal Rankings, Controversy Ensues:

Leiter's arguments are (mostly) incorrect. And as my previous posts about Google Scholar were used as part of the ranking, I felt the need to respond. ...

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July 27, 2016 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (9)

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

2016 Google Law Review Rankings

Google Scholar (2015)PrawfsBlawg: Google Scholar Law Review Rankings — 2016, by Bryce C. Newell (Tilburg University):

Includes only flagship/general law reviews at ABA accredited schools (I think I've captured (almost) all of these, but let me know if I've missed any). Rankings are calculated based on the average of Google's two scores (h5-index and h5-median), as proposed here by Robert Anderson. The final column shows how much a journal's rank has changed in 2016 versus last year's ranking (0 indicates no change, a positive number indicates the ranking has gone up in 2016, while a negative number indicates a drop in ranking in 2016).

Bryce lists 194 flagship law reviews. Here are the Top 25:

Continue reading

July 26, 2016 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (3)

Monday, May 9, 2016

Law Review Rankings By Supreme Court Citations: 2013-2016

Supreme Court (2014)Empirical SCOTUS, Gold Standard Cites:

Publications and citations are essential to the research academic. They help separate experts from novices in a given field. They provide metrics for universities to gauge the quality of their professors’ scholarship. In legal scholarship there is a particularly meaningful measure that distinguishes law from other disciplines: citations in published opinions. Supreme Court citations to law reviews convey the importance of an article to a particular area of law.

Articles by Sirico [The Citing of Law Reviews by the Supreme Court:1971-1999, 75 Ind. L.J. 1009 (2000)] and Newton [Law Review Scholarship in the Eyes of the Twenty-First Century Supreme Court Justices: An Empirical Analysis 2001-2011, 4 Drexel L. Rev. 399 (2012)] previously tracked these citations over different periods of time in the 20th and 21st centuries.

1.  Harvard (27 citations in 23 cases)
2.  Yale (26,18)
3.  Columbia (16,12)
4.  Chicago (11,9)
5.  NYU (9,8)
6.  Stanford (8,6)
7.  Michigan (7,5)
7.  Penn (7,7)
9. Georgetown (6,4)
9. Texas (6,5)
9.  Texas (6,5)

Continue reading

May 9, 2016 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

2016 Meta-Ranking Of Flagship U.S. Law Reviews

Bryce Clayton Newell (Tilburg University), 2016 Meta-Ranking of Flagship US Law Reviews:

I decided to create a meta-ranking of the possible contenders for gauging the relative importance of journals and offers: US News Overall Ranking (averaged from 2010-2017), US News Peer Reputation Ranking (also averaged from 2010-2017), W&L Combined Ranking (at default weighting; 2007-2014), and Google Scholar Metrics law journal rankings (averaging the h-index and h-median of each journal, as proposed here by Robert Anderson). I've ranked each journal within each ranking system, averaged these four ranks using a 25% weighting for each, and computed and ranked the final scores. I think this approach benefits from incorporating a couple different forms of impact evaluation (W&L + Google) while not disregarding the general sentiment that law school “prestige” (USN combined rank + peer reputation rank, each averaged over an 8-year period) is an important factor in law review placement decisions.

Here are the Top 25:

MetaRank

Journal

Change from USN Rank

MetaScore

Avg. USN Peer Rank

Avg. USN Overall Rank

W&L Rank

Google Rank

1

Harvard Law Review

1

1.5

1

2

2

1

2

The Yale Law Journal

-1

1.75

1

1

3

2

3

Stanford Law Review

0

2.75

3

3

1

4

4

Columbia Law Review

0

3.75

4

4

4

3

5

University of Pennsylvania Law Review

2

6.5

9

7

5

5

6

Michigan Law Review

4

8

8

10

8

6

7

California Law Review

1

9

7

8

12

9

8

New York University Law Review

-2

9.25

6

6

14

11

8

Virginia Law Review

1

9.25

9

9

9

10

10

The Georgetown Law Journal

4

9.75

13

14

6

6

11

Texas Law Review

4

12

15

15

10

8

12

University of Chicago L. Rev.

-7

12.75

5

5

25

16

12

Duke Law Journal

-1

12.75

11

11

16

13

14

Cornell Law Review

-1

13.25

12

13

15

13

15

UCLA Law Review

1

13.5

16

16

7

15

16

Northwestern University Law Review

-4

15.25

14

12

13

22

17

Minnesota Law Review

3

15.75

20

20

11

12

18

Vanderbilt Law Review

-1

17.5

17

17

20

16

19

Notre Dame Law Review

4

21.75

27

23

19

18

20

Iowa Law Review

5

22.5

27

25

18

20

21

Boston University Law Review

3

24.25

25

24

22

26

22

William and Mary Law Review

8

25.5

32

30

21

19

23

The George Washington L. Rev.

-2

26

23

21

29

31

23

North Carolina Law Review

11

26

21

34

28

21

25

Southern California Law Review

-7

26.5

19

18

32

37

26

Boston College Law Review

5

27.25

29

31

23

26

The big movers here (in this ranking versus the average US News Overall Rank from 2010-2017) seem to be (but there are quite a few others who moved around):

  • New York Law School moved up a whopping 38 places (to #99);
  • Vermont moved up 31 places (to #91);
  • UC Irvine dropped 30 places (to #59);
  • Akron moved up 28 places (to #99);
  • Albany moved up 27 places (to #96).

Journals like Fordham (#26, up 10 places), Hastings (#36, up 12 places), Cardozo (#42, up 18 places), American (#46, up 11 places), and Lewis and Clark (#53, up 23 places) that have been frequently referred to in Angsting Thread comments as “hitting above their weight” all also improved at least 10 places (as did Missouri, Connecticut, Denver, Brooklyn, Chicago-Kent, Seattle, Oregon, Buffalo, Santa Clara, Indy, DePaul, South Carolina, St. Louis, Hofstra, Marquette, and Howard). Other journals dropping 10 or more places include: Arkansas-Fay., Kentucky, Georgia State, Temple, SMU, Arizona State, Georgia, and Alabama.

Other sizable moves in the top 20:

Continue reading

April 5, 2016 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (9)

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

2015 Google Law Review Rankings, Including Specialty Journals: The 10 Most-Cited Articles In The Tax Law Review

Google Scholar LogoFollowing up on last week's post on the 2015 Google Law Review Rankings: my Pepperdine colleague Rob Anderson has expanded his annual Google Law Review Rankings to include specialty, secondary, and law-related peer-reviewed journals.  The Tax Law Review is the only tax journal to make the list of the Top 299 law review, at #121.  Here are the ten most cited articles in the Tax Law Review over the past five years:

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February 24, 2016 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education, Scholarship, Tax | Permalink | Comments (1)

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Google Law Review Rankings

Google Scholar LogoMy friend and colleague Rob Anderson (Pepperdine) has updated his annual Google Law Review Rankings, which cover 152 law reviews.  Here are the Top 25:

Rank

Law Journal Name

Average

h5-index

h5-median

1

Harvard Law Review

62

42

82

2

Yale Law Journal

52.5

38

67

3

Columbia Law Review

50

39

61

4

Stanford Law Review

49.5

37

62

5

University of Pennsylvania Law Review

47

36

58

6

Georgetown Law Journal

43

36

50

7

Michigan Law Review

43

30

56

8

Texas Law Review

41

32

50

9

California Law Review

40.5

34

47

10

Virginia Law Review

39

31

47

11

New York University Law Review

38.5

28

49

12

Minnesota Law Review

38

29

47

13

Cornell Law Review

35.5

30

41

14

Duke Law Journal

35.5

29

42

15

UCLA Law Review

35

29

41

16

Vanderbilt Law Review

34

27

41

17

University of Chicago Law Review

34

26

42

18

Notre Dame Law Review

32.5

27

38

19

William and Mary Law Review

32

26

38

20

Iowa Law Review

31.5

27

36

21

North Carolina Law Review

30.5

26

35

22

Florida Law Review

30

25

35

23

Northwestern University Law Review

30

25

35

24

Fordham Law Review

30

24

36

25

Wisconsin Law Review

30

21

39

February 16, 2016 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Academic Journal Rockets To #1 Scholarly Impact Ranking Through Self-Citation

JournalChronicle of Higher Education, What Happens When a Scholarly Journal Constantly Cites Itself?:

The Journal of Criminal Justice has been on a roll. Once considered a somewhat middling publication — not in the same league as top journals like Criminology and Justice Quarterly — it is now ranked No. 1 in the field according to its impact factor, which measures the average number of citations a journal receives and is meant to indicate which titles are generating the most buzz.

Rocketing to No. 1 is even more impressive when you find out that in 2012 the Journal of Criminal Justice was way back in 22nd place. That’s quite a leap!

Predictably, that sharp uptick made some researchers in a field devoted to misdeeds a tad suspicious. Among them was Thomas Baker, an assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of Central Florida. So Mr. Baker did what good researchers in all fields do: He took a hard look at the data. Then, after emailing it to a few friends, he decided to publish what he had found in the field’s widely read newsletter, The Criminologist.

What he found was this: Much of the rise in the journal’s impact factor was due to citations in articles published in the Journal of Criminal Justice itself.

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October 6, 2015 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (0)

Monday, August 25, 2014

Google Law Review Rankings

Google Scholar LogoMy friend and colleague Rob Anderson (Pepperdine) has updated his Google Law Review Rankings to cover 229 law reviews.  Here are the Top 25:

Rank

Law Review Name

H5 Index

H5 Median

Avg

1

Harvard Law Review

39

71

55

2

Stanford Law Review

34

63

48.5

3

Yale Law Journal

37

56

46.5

4

Columbia Law Review

37

56

46.5

5

University of Pennsylvania Law Review

38

49

43.5

6

Michigan Law Review

31

56

43.5

7

UCLA Law Review

32

51

41.5

8

Duke Law Journal

31

52

41.5

9

Georgetown Law Journal

30

52

41

10

Cornell Law Review

31

48

39.5

11

Virginia Law Review

32

46

39

12

Texas Law Review

31

47

39

13

New York University Law Review

29

46

37.5

14

California Law Review

31

43

37

15

Minnesota Law Review

29

44

36.5

16

Journal of Law & Economics

27

46

36.5

17

Northwestern University Law Review

28

43

35.5

18

Iowa Law Review

27

43

35

19

University of Chicago Law Review

27

41

34

20

William and Mary Law Review

27

37

32

21

Vanderbilt Law Review

25

37

31

22

University of Illinois Law Review

24

38

31

23

Notre Dame Law Review

26

35

30.5

24

Boston College Law Review

24

37

30.5

25

Emory Law Journal

22

39

30.5

August 25, 2014 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

What Makes Lawyers Happy?

Lawrence S. Krieger (Florida State University, College of Law) & Kennon M. Sheldon (University of Missouri (Columbia), Department of Psychological Sciences), What Makes Lawyers Happy? Transcending the Anecdotes with Data from 6200 Lawyers:

Attorney well-being and depression are topics of great concern, but there has been no theory-driven empirical research to guide lawyers and law students seeking well-being. This article reports a unique study establishing a hierarchy of five tiers of factors for lawyer well-being, including choices in law school, legal career, and personal life, and psychological needs and motivations established by Self-Determination Theory. Data from several thousand lawyers in four states show striking patterns, repeatedly indicating that common priorities on law school campuses and among lawyers are confused or misplaced. Factors typically afforded most attention and concern, those relating to prestige and money (income, law school debt, class rank, law review, and USNWR law school ranking) showed zero to small correlations with lawyer well-being. Conversely, factors marginalized in law school and seen in previous research to erode in law students (psychological needs and motivation) were the very strongest predictors of lawyer happiness and satisfaction. Lawyers were grouped by practice type and setting to further test these findings. The group with the lowest incomes and grades in law school, public service lawyers, had stronger autonomy and purpose and were happier than those in the most prestigious positions and with the highest grades and incomes. Additional measures raised concerns: subjects did not broadly agree that judge and lawyer behavior is professional, nor that the legal process reaches fair outcomes. Specific explanations and recommendations for lawyers, law teachers, and legal employers are drawn from the data, and direct implications for attorney productivity and professionalism are explained.

Chart

Chart 2

March 18, 2014 in Law Review Rankings, Law School | Permalink | Comments (1)

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Alford: The Strunk & White Law Review Rankings

Strunk & WhiteOpinio Juris:  Omit Needless Words, by Roger Alford (Notre Dame):

Watching my youngest son draft and redraft his high school essays under the watchful eye of his English teacher, who is smitten by the inerrant wisdom of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, I was curious how the best legal scholarship in the country fares by classic rules of writing. To simplify my task, I have chosen one rule that is easily quantifiable. ... "[T]he expression 'the fact that' should be revised out of every sentence in which it occurs." ...

A ten-year search of the number of occurrences “the fact that” appeared in the flagship journals of the top law schools reveals the following: 

  1. Harvard Law Review: 869
  2. Michigan Law Review: 496
  3. Yale Law Journal: 459
  4. Columbia Law Review: 436
  5. Chicago Law Review: 431
  6. NYU Law Review: 428
  7. Penn Law Review: 408
  8. California Law Review: 406
  9. Stanford Law Review: 388
  10. Virginia Law Review: 364

October 10, 2013 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Law Review Circulation and Efficiency Continue to Plummet (2012)

Ross E. Davies (George Mason), The Increasingly Lengthy Long Run of the Law Reviews: Law Review Business 2012 – Circulation and Production, 3 J. of Law 245 (2013):

This article is the latest in a series of simple annual studies of the sales of some leading law reviews, undertaken with an eye to getting an admittedly rough and partial sense of the state of publishing in the legal academy. Over the years, the data itself has turned out to be a little bit interesting in spots. More interesting (perhaps), and more amusing and worrisome (certainly), have been the continuing small discoveries that some law reviews report relatively low paid circulation numbers to the U.S. Postal Service (which appear only in tiny-type government forms buried in the rarely read front- or back-matter of the reporting law review), but then tout higher sales numbers in promotional sections of their websites. It is reminiscent of the way some law schools have number-fudged their presentation of other kinds of data to, for example, U.S. News & World Report. The law review-school comparison might prompt the reader to wonder light-heartedly how many law school deans were once law review editors. But answering that question would be too easy, and too far afield from the focus here on publishing in the legal academy. There is, however, another question whose answer might be more interesting, and more likely to lead to intriguing comparisons. The question: How have the size and composition of law review editorial staffs changed over time, in absolute terms and in terms of their relationship to the product they put out? Possible comparisons will probably suggest themselves. This year’s report covers the usual ground relating to paid circulation and associated editorial behavior. It also offers a limited and tentative first take on the production question.

Chart 1 PNG

Chart 3

Prior TaxProf Blog coverage:

August 27, 2013 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

2003-2012 Tax Journal Rankings: NYU #1, Tax Notes #2

Here are the Washington & Lee tax law review combined rankings of the five major tax journals:

  • Florida Tax Review ("Florida")
  • Tax Law Review ("NYU")
  • Tax Lawyer ("ABA")
  • Tax Notes
  • Virginia Tax Review ("Virginia")

The rankings are based on the annual combined rankings in 2003-2012 among these five journals by:

Rank

Journal

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

1.1

NYU

2

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2.9

Tax Notes

4

3

3

2

2

2

5

3

2

3

3.0

Florida

3

4

4

4

3

3

2

2

3

2

3.1

Virginia

1

2

2

3

4

4

3

4

4

4

4.9

ABA

5

5

5

5

5

5

4

5

5

5

As I have previously noted, Tax Notes fares poorly in the Impact Factor category (citations/number of articles published) because W&L apparently counts as "articles" all of the advance sheet material in Tax Notes.

Tax Notes is #1 by a wide margin in the number of citations in law reviews, with more than double the citations of its nearest competitor:

Rank

Journal

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

1.0

Tax Notes

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2.9

ABA

4

3

4

4

3

3

2

2

2

2

3.0

NYU

3

4

3

3

2

2

3

4

3

3

3.1

Virginia

2

2

2

2

4

4

4

3

4

4

5.0

Florida

5

5

5

5

5

5

5

5

5

5

March 6, 2013 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education, Scholarship, Tax, Tax Analysts, Tax Rankings, Tax Scholarship, W&L Tax Journal Rankings | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

2012 Tax Journal Rankings: Virginia #1, NYU #2

Here are the Washington & Lee tax law review rankings, based on citations to articles published in 2005-2012:

Here are the Top 25 tax journals (out of 48 ranked tax journals):

Rank

Tax Journal

Combined

Impact

Law Reviews

Cases

Currency

1

Virginia Tax Review

100.0

0.72

595

5

1.20

2

Tax Law Review

80.2

0.66

382

1

0.92

3

Elder Law Journal

66.1

0.58

279

8

0.55

4

Florida Tax Review

62.0

0.58

217

0

0.96

5

Tax Notes

54.5

0.01

762

15

0.02

6

Pittsburgh Tax Review

40.5

0.43

81

2

0.25

6

Tax Lawyer

40.5

0.21

335

14

0.14

8

Houston Bus. & Tax J.

39.7

0.34

170

5

0.14

9

Akron Tax Journal

28.9

0.30

71

3

0.38

10

Heckerling Inst. Est. Plan.

26.4

0.21

132

0

0.48

11

Marquette Elder's Advisor

24.8

0.20

124

1

0.14

12

National Tax Journal

23.1

0.11

206

2

0.19

13

Journal of Taxation

17.4

0.03

215

6

0.05

14

New Zealand J. Tax' Law

14.0

0.11

73

0

0.10

15

Estate Planning

13.2

0.04

148

1

0.19

16

Tax Notes International

10.7

0.00

151

0

0.00

17

Exempt Org. Tax Review

5.0

0.00

75

0

0.01

17

Taxes  Magazine

5.0

0.01

55

0

0.04

19

British Tax Review

4.1

0.01

42

0

0.02

19

Tax Management Mem.

4.1

0.01

48

1

0.05

19

Taxation of Exempts

4.1

0.02

40

0

0.10

22

Canadian Tax Journal

3.3

0.02

30

0

0.02

23

eJournal of Tax Research

2.5

0.02

11

0

0.06

23

J. Australasian Tax Ass'n

2.5

0.02

13

0

0.02

23

Tax Management Int'l J.

2.5

0.01

27

0

0.03

Tax Notes is #1 by a wide margin in citations in law reviews (762 v. #2's Virginia Tax Review's 595), but fairs relatively poorly (.001, ranked #20) in the Impact Factor category (citations/number of articles published).  My guess is that W&L counted as "articles" all of the advance sheet material in Tax Notes. (Note:  I omitted the NYU Journal of Law and Business from the above chart because it is not a tax journal.)

Prior W&L Tax Journal Rankings:

(Hat Tip: Omri Marian,)

February 27, 2013 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education, Scholarship, Tax, Tax Rankings, Tax Scholarship, W&L Tax Journal Rankings | Permalink | Comments (1)

Monday, February 25, 2013

Google Law Review Rankings

Google Scholar LogoMy friend and colleague Rob Anderson (Pepperdine) has expanded his Google Law Review Rankings to cover 216 law reviews based on articles published in 2007-2011 (with links to the most-cited articles for each journal).  Here are the Top 25, along with each journal's ranking in the Washington & Lee law review rankings:

Rank

Law Review

Google h5-Index

Google h5-Median

W&L Rank

1

Harvard

44

71

1

2

Stanford

44

67

4

3

Columbia

43

70

2

4

Pennsylvania

41

70

8

5

Michigan

38

65

6

6

UCLA

38

59

7

7

Texas

38

55

9

8

Yale

38

53

3

9

Georgetown

36

63

5

10

Virginia

36

55

10

11

California

35

45

12

12

Minnesota

33

53

18

13

Duke

33

52

21

14

Chicago

33

44

24

15

Northwestern

32

49

16

16

Illinois

32

45

27

17

Iowa

31

54

17

18

Cornell

31

50

15

19

J. Law & Econ.

30

51

382

20

Notre Dame

30

45

13

21

UC-Davis

30

39

29

22

NYU

29

54

14

23

Am. J. Int'l Law

29

51

56

24

Vanderbilt

28

49

20

25

Boston University

28

42

22

February 25, 2013 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

2011 Tax Journal Rankings: NYU #1, Virginia #2, Tax Notes #3

Here are the Washington & Lee tax law review rankings, based on citations to articles published in 2004-2011:

Here are the Top 25 tax journals (out of 44 ranked tax journals):

Rank

Tax Journal

Combined

Impact

Law Reviews

Cases

Currency

1

Tax Law Review

100.0

0.98

412

1

1.74

2

Virginia Tax Review

89.6

0.71

554

9

1.00

3

Tax Notes

76.0

0.01

1165

14

0.02

4

Florida Tax Review

60.8

0.63

210

0

0.75

5

Elder Law Journal

57.6

0.54

257

8

0.36

6

Tax Lawyer

44.0

0.21

435

10

0.40

7

Pittsburgh Tax Review

41.6

0.48

85

3

0.42

8

Houston Bus. & Tax J.

35.2

0.31

184

4

0.30

9

Journal of Taxation

28.8

0.06

370

5

0.11

10

Heckerling Inst. Est. Plan.

26.4

0.22

150

0

0.41

11

Akron Tax Journal

22.4

0.25

56

3

1.17

12

National Tax Journal

22.4

0.11

217

0

0.16

13

Marquette Elder's Advisor

17.6

0.14

107

1

0.14

14

Estate Planning

14.4

0.04

172

1

0.17

15

Taxes

14.4

0.05

162

0

0.08

15

Tax Notes International

12.8

0.00

193

0

0.00

17

New Zealand J. Tax'n Law

9.6

0.08

58

0

0.00

18

Tax Management Mem.

9.6

0.03

111

1

0.05

18

Tax Management Int’l J.

5.6

0.02

66

0

0.05

20

Taxation of Exempts

4.0

0.02

33

0

0.08

21

British Tax Review

3.2

0.01

36

0

0.01

22

Corporate Taxation

3.2

0.02

31

0

0.04

23

eJournal of Tax Research

3.2

0.03

16

0

0.03

24

Real Estate Taxation

3.2

0.02

24

1

0.01

25

Tax Mgmt Real Estate J.

3.2

0.02

23

0

0.01

Tax Notes is #1 by a wide margin in citations in law reviews (1165 v. #2's Virginia Tax Review's 554), but fairs relatively poorly (.001, ranked #24) in the Impact Factor category (citations/number of articles published).  My guess is that W&L counted as "articles" all of the advance sheet material in Tax Notes. (Note:  I omitted the NYU Journal of Law and Business from the above chart because it is not a tax journal.)

Prior W&L Tax Journal Rankings:

Update: Thanks to Omri Marian for letting me know that Washington & Lee has released an updated ranking based on citations to articles published in 2005-2012.  I will blog those rankings in a forthcoming post.

February 19, 2013 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education, Scholarship, Tax, Tax Rankings, Tax Scholarship, W&L Tax Journal Rankings | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sunday, February 10, 2013

The Need for a New Law Review Ranking System

The Legal Watchdog:  Law Review Publishing: In Search of a Useful Ranking System:

My initial decision on where to publish has typically been guided by the US News rankings of law schools, which, in legal publication circles, is used as a proxy for the quality of a law school’s journal. ... To be sure, there are other means by which to choose among publication offers.  Washington & Lee University, for example, ranks journal impact, i.e., how often the journal is cited. ...

Given the major flaws in the two primary journal ranking systems, I would like to see a law professor develop a ranking methodology based on authors’ experiences with the publishing journals. Law professors are already ranking nearly every imaginable thing under the sun—see, for example, here, here, here, here, and here. And a “law review author ranking” would actually be meaningful. I would love for a semi-mathematically inclined professor to run with this idea, and conduct an annual survey of authors (nearly all of whom will be his/her fellow law professors) in order to rank their law journal editing and publishing experiences.

I’ll get the ball rolling. The categories to be ranked could include: timeliness of the publication (on time = 10 points); time allowed for the author to review edits (two weeks = 10 points); deference to the author’s style (high deference = 10 points); creation of errors during editing process (no editor-created errors = 10 points); responsiveness to the author’s edits (short response time = 10 points); and quality of the journal’s website (an up-to-date website posting the article = 10 points).  Of course, there are probably a dozen other categories that could be included, but the total number of categories ranked should be few, and the respondents should be guaranteed anonymity, in order to induce participation by authors.

It is true that law review editors turn-over every year, and a new batch takes their place.  This means that a great experience with “Journal A” could easily have been a bad experience had the article been published a year earlier or later.  It is further true that some law professors—especially those seeking tenure—will, by necessity, continue to be slaves to the US News rankings when selecting among publication offers.  However, ranking the journals on the quality of their editing process would still do two important things. 

First, by ranking certain categories, such as whether the editors were deferential to the author’s writing style, authors would be clearly communicating to journal editors what they value in the publication process. And most of the editors will likely respond by improving performance in these areas.  ...

And second, if a particular journal ranks high, it will likely be a source of pride, which will transfer to the next year’s editorial board. Similarly, if a particular journal ranks low, that too will be passed on, and will give the next year’s board the incentive to do better than its predecessor board.  Remember, rankings are powerful.  Law review editors are students, and some students do drastic, life-ruining things based on rankings, e.g., going into debt $150,000 or more to go to a law school ranked in the 20s instead of taking a full scholarship at a school ranked in the 50s.

February 10, 2013 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education, Scholarship | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Monday, November 19, 2012

Google Law Review Rankings

Google Scholar LogoFrom my friend and colleague Rob Anderson (Pepperdine), Google Ranks Law Reviews:

Google has announced an enhancement to its Scholar Metrics that allows users to view citation rankings of journals in various categories. Among the rankings is Google's ranking of law reviews, as well as a number of specialty law reviews such as technology law and international law. The rankings are based on Jorge Hirsch's "h-index," which is an alternative to impact factor as a measure of a journal's importance.


Law Reviewh1-indexh5-median
1. Harvard 44 71
2. Stanford 44 67
3. Columbia 43 70
4. Pennsylvania 41 70
5. Michigan 38 65
6. UCLA 38 59
7. Texas 38 55
8. Yale 38 53
9. Georgetown 36 63
10. Virginia 36 55
11. California 35 45
12. Minnesota 33 53
13. Duke 33 52
14. Chicago 33 44
15. Northwestern 32 49
16. Illinois 32 45
17. Iowa 31 54
18. Cornell 31 50
19. J. Law & Econ. 30 51
20. Notre Dame 30 45

November 19, 2012 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Law Review Circulation Continues to Plummet (2011)

Ross E. Davies (George Mason), Law Review Circulation 2011: More Change, More Same, 2 J. Legal Metrics 179 (2012):

In 2011, for the first time since the U.S. Postal Service began requiring law reviews to track and report their circulation numbers, no major law review had more than 2,000 paying subscribers. The Harvard Law Review remains the top journal, but its paid circulation has declined from more than 10,000 during much of the 1960s and ’70s to about 5,000 in the 1990s to 1,896 last year.

Davies

February 29, 2012 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Fall 2011 Law Review Article Submission Guide

Nancy Levit (UMKC) & Allen Rostron (UMKC) have updated their incredibly useful document, which contains two charts for the Fall 2011 submission season covering 202 law reviews.

The first chart (pp. 1-64) contains information gathered from the journals’ websites on:

  • Methods for submitting an article (such as by e-mail, ExpressO, or regular mail)
  • Any special formatting requirements
  • How to request an expedited review
  • How to withdraw an article after it has been accepted for publication elsewhere

The second chart (pp. 65-71) contains the ranking of the law reviews and their schools under six measures:

  • U.S. News: Overall Rank
  • U.S. News: Peer Reputation Rating
  • U.S. News: Judge/Lawyer Reputation Rating
  • Washington & Lee Citation Ranking
  • Washington & Lee Impact Factor
  • Washington & Lee Combined Rating

They also have posted a list of links to the submissions information on each law journal’s website.

July 27, 2011 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Galle: Scholarly Influence in Law Review Rankings

Tax Prof Brian Galle (Boston College) offers his thoughts on law review rankings:

Maybe it’s the hundred-degree heat talking, but I think law review rankings are a little bit useful. As a reader and researcher, I do make some use of an article’s placement as a screen for how close of an initial read to devote to it. When I look at the c.v.’s of two scholars whose work I’ve never read, I’m probably inclined to look more attentively at the work of the one with the fancy cites.  Yeah, I said it. Put away the pitchforks, dear readers: I don’t think I’m alone. Satisficing is not going away. ...

It would be nice, then, if there were reliable guides to the signaling value of a given journal placement. U.S. News gives us a decent if limited signal; since most authors agree that at the pinnacle its rankings are roughly meaningful, we get scarcity.  So we can assume that journals at the top are more selective than others.  Whether they make good decisions when picking the few from the many we don't know. ... Is there a better way to rank journals?  ...

An approximation of a value-neutral approach might be to simply rank publications based on the use others scholars make of them.  (For a thoughtful review of why that method works and what its problems are, see Russell Korobkin, 26 FSU L. Rev. 851, and Ronen Perry.)  Korobkin argues that, basically, citation counts create the least bad set of incentives; usefulness to others seems like a decent result even if it's somewhat distorting of the real scholarly mission. ...

Well, the Washington & Lee Law Library, as many readers will know, offers a ranking of law journals based on total citations and "impact factor," or IF. ... As weak as IF is in general, W&L’s implementation is particularly problematic. ...Finally, to be parochial, W&L only uses Westlaw to generate its citation counts, and Westlaw doesn’t include Tax Notes, a major publication for us tax types. (This is also our gripe with Leiter). So tax articles are (sniff) even more under-appreciated. ...

[W]hat I'd particularly like to see is some kind of quality-weighted influence measure, along the lines of google pageview, as described here.

July 21, 2011 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education, Tax | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Monday, February 14, 2011

Spring 2011 Law Review Article Submission Guide

Nancy Levit (UMKC) & Allen Rostron (UMKC) have updated their incredibly useful document, which contains two charts for the Spring 2011 submission season covering 202 law reviews.

The first chart (pp. 1-72) contains information gathered from the journals’ websites on:

  • Methods for submitting an article (such as by e-mail, ExpressO, or regular mail)
  • Any special formatting requirements
  • How to request an expedited review
  • How to withdraw an article after it has been accepted for publication elsewhere

The second chart (pp. 73-79) contains the ranking of the law reviews and their schools under six measures:

  • U.S. News: Overall Rank
  • U.S. News: Peer Reputation Rating
  • U.S. News: Judge/Lawyer Reputation Rating
  • Washington & Lee Citation Ranking
  • Washington & Lee Impact Factor
  • Washington & Lee Combined Rating

They also have posted a list of links to the submissions information on each law journal’s website.

February 14, 2011 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Law Review Circulation Continues to Plummet

Ross E. Davies (George Mason) has published The Dipping Point: Law Review Circulation 2010, 14 Green Bag 2d 547 (2011). Here is the abstract:

For the past couple of years we have needled the Harvard Law Review (HLR) about its tendency to err on the side of inflation when describing the size of its subscriber base. So, it seems only fair now to salute the HLR’s recent correction, and to note that the extravagant circulation claims made these days by the Virginia Law Review make the HLR’s old claims seem downright modest. This year we are offering two new perspectives on the law review business. The first is really just a bigger version of an old one. We have added several law schools’ flagship law reviews to our little tables of journal circulation rates. The newcomers are: Boston University Law Review, Emory Law Journal, Minnesota Law Review, Indiana Law Journal, Illinois Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Boston College Law Review, Iowa Law Review, William and Mary Law Review, George Washington Law Review, Fordham Law Review, Alabama Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, Washington Law Review, Washington and Lee Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, UC Davis Law Review, Georgia Law Review, Wisconsin Law Review. We also corrected a few errors in earlier versions of the tables and filled in a few blanks, an exercise that will doubtless be repeated in the future. The second new perspective is a look at the distant past, when only a few law reviews published any circulation numbers. A casual review of some of those early numbers, in tandem with an equally casual glance at the advertising pages of those early law reviews, provides an ironic reminder of a plausible piece of conventional wisdom about the decline in sales of print editions of law reviews: that the decline has been and is being caused by the rise of searchable electronic databases and of an Internet via which to conveniently tap into those databases.

[T]ake a look at the graph on page 550. It shows the trends in paid subscriptions at three leading law reviews — the HLR, the Yale Law Journal, and the Columbia Law Review — for which we have at least some data from the 1960s to the present. (The graph is prettier than it ought to be because we have filled in the blanks and smoothed the curves for each journal by assuming that its circulation rates in years for which we lack data are the same as the rates in the immediately preceding years.) The gray bar cutting across all three circulation trend lines marks the period during which Westlaw advertisements began appearing in the law reviews. Correlation does not indicate causation, of course, but it is hard to resist the thought that the appearance of that ink-on-paper Westlaw advertisement in the November 1979 ink-on-paper HLR marked what might eventually turn out to be the beginning of the end for the ink-on-paper HLR, and for ink-on-paper law reviews more generally.

Chart 

January 27, 2011 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

Monday, May 3, 2010

Law Review Rankings by Social Science Impact

Mikhail Koulikov (Reference/Research Librarian, New York Law Institute) has published Indexing and Full-Text Coverage of Law Review Articles in Nonlegal Databases: An Initial Study, 102 Law Lib. J. 39 (2010). Here is the abstract:

Mr. Koulikov examines the level of coverage that articles originally published in law reviews receive in eight major general academic databases. His findings are very similar to those of other discipline-specific database coverage studies, and reveal that coverage varies widely by database, regardless of the database’s claim to cover legal periodicals. This has particular implications for the level of engagement that nonlegal scholars have with the literature of the legal academia, and for the potential for meaningful interaction between legal scholars and their peers in other academic fields.

Journals

(Hat Tip: Blackbook Legal Blog.)

May 3, 2010 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Law Review Circulation Continues to Plummet

Ross E. Davies (George Mason) has posted Law Review Circulation 2009: The Combover, Green Bag Almanac & Reader 419 (2010).  Here is the abstract:

For our second annual study of the law review business [see the first study here], we added circulation data for four flagship law reviews (UCLA, Texas, USC, and Washington University) and two specialty journals (NYU’s Tax Law Review and Duke’s Law and Contemporary Problems). We also corrected a few errors in the tables in our first study and filled-in a few blanks. And, finally, we noticed something that might be worth thinking about: the possibility that the law school combover culture has infected law reviews.

Davies documents an enromous decline in law review circulation over the 1979-2009 period.  The Tax Law Review's circulation, for example, has declined 89.1% from a peak of 5,685 in 1980-81 to 620 in 2006-07.

Update: National Law Journal, Study Finds Sharp Decline in Law Review Circulation.

February 17, 2010 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education, Tax | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBack (0)

Friday, August 28, 2009

Brophy: The Signaling Value of Law Reviews -- An Exploration of Citations and Prestige

Alfred L. Brophy (North Carolina) has published The Signaling Value of Law Reviews:  An Exploration of Citations and Prestige, 36 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 229 (2009).  Here is the abstract:

This brief Essay reports a study of citations to every article published in 1992 in thirteen leading law journals. It uses citations as a proxy (an admittedly poor one) of article quality and then compares the citations across journals. There are, not surprisingly, vast differences in the number of citations per article. While articles in the most elite journals receive more citations on average than the other less elite (but still highly regarded) journals studied, some articles in the less elite journals are more heavily cited than many articles in even the most elite journals. In keeping with studies in other disciplines and other citation studies of legal journals, the results here suggest that we should be wary of judgments about quality based on place of publication. We should also be wary of judgments about quality of scholarship based on the number of citations, and we should, therefore, continue to evaluate scholarship through close reads of it.

Brophy

August 28, 2009 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education, Scholarship | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Law School Rankings iPhone App

Law School 100 Following up on yesterday's post:  the Law School 100 rankings are now available as an app for your iPhone (at a cost of 99 cents).  From the iTunes description:

Since the year 2000, LawTV has compiled the list of the best law schools in the United States, based on qualitative (rather than quantitative) criteria.  More than half a million pre-law students, law students, law professors, and lawyers use the Law School 100 rankings each year.

The Law School 100 includes every ABA-accredited law school.  The top 100 law schools are listed in their ranking order.  The second 100 law schools (Tier 2 law schools) are listed in alphabetical order.

(Hat Tip: Legal Blog Watch.) 

     

August 11, 2009 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Rankings Boost For UC-Hastings?

UC-Hastings opens a new parking garage.  (Hat Tip:  Law School Headlines.)

May 21, 2009 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Thursday, May 14, 2009

This Won't Help Arizona State in the U.S. News Rankings

Monday, February 2, 2009

Law Review Circulation Down 62%

From our article, What Law Schools Can Learn from Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics, 82 Tex. L. Rev. 1483, 1534-35 & n.296 (2004):

[L]aw reviews could be ranked, as are newspapers and other periodicals, based on circulation. Surprisingly, although the U.S. Post Office collects circulation figures for periodicals desiring reduced postage rates, we found no attempt in the literature to rank law reviews based on circulation. Our own preliminary ranking of law reviews by circulation yielded surprising results. Only five of the top twenty law reviews, but eight of those ranked lower than one-hundred (as measured by U.S. News & World Report), are included in the top twenty law reviews based on circulation figures.

[Here were the Top 10 law reviews by circulation, along with the schools' U.S. News peer reputation ranking:

1. Harvard 7500 (1)
2. Arkansas (Fayetteville) 5000 (97)
3. Yale 4500 (1)
4. Arkansas (Little Rock) 3800 (119)
5. Cornell 3500 (11)
6. McGeorge 3200 (108)
7.  Boston University 3000 (25)
     Brooklyn 3000 (64)
     Seattle 3000 (108)
     South Carolina 3000 (87)]

Ross E. Davies (George Mason) has compiled the circulation figures of the general law reviews at the Top 15 law schools as ranked by U.S. News in Law Review Circulation, Green Bag Almanac & Reader 164 (2009).  Here is the abstract:

Many law reviews are required by law to publish accurate reports of basic information about their subscribers and circulation. But many do not -- do not report accurate information or do not report information at all. Perhaps this is in response to steep declines in subscriptions, which the available reports illustrate.

Davies documents a 62.4% decline in law review circulation over this 29-year period, from 47,543 in 1979-80 (3,170 per law review) to 17,878 in 2007-08 (1,192 per law review) (using data from the closest year if data was missing for either 1979-80 or 2007-08).  The biggest percentage declines were:

  1. Virginia:  -77.9%
  2. Michigan:  -73.5%
  3. Harvard:  -70.2%
  4. Georgetown:  -71.1%
  5. Northwestern:  -67.5%
  6. UC-Berkeley:  -65.3%

See Inside Higher Ed, Documenting the Decline of (Print) Law Reviews, by Doug Lederman.

February 2, 2009 in Law Review Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Update on LSAT-Free Admissions and LSAT Retesting of Admitted Applicants

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Ranking Scholarly Journals: The European Experience

In this week's Chronicle of Higher Education: New Ratings of Humanities Journals Do More Than Rank — They Rankle, by Jennifer Howard:

A large-scale, multinational attempt in Europe to rank humanities journals has set off a revolt. In a protest letter, some journal editors have called it "a dangerous and misguided exercise." The project has also started a drumbeat of alarm in this country, as U.S.-based scholars begin to grasp the implications for their own work and the journals they edit.

The ranking project, known as the European Reference Index for the Humanities, or ERIH, is the brainchild of the European Science Foundation, which brings together research agencies from many countries. It grew from a desire to showcase high-quality research in Europe. Panels of four to six scholars, appointed by a steering committee, compiled initial lists of journals to be classified in 15 fields. Each journal was assigned to a category — A, B, or C — depending on its reputation and international reach.  (See box below.) ...

Continue reading

October 7, 2008 in Law Review Rankings | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Thursday, September 25, 2008

LSAT-Free Law School Admissions Can Goose U.S. News Ranking

My MoneyLaw colleague Tom Bell (Chapman) notes Michigan's new Wolverine Scholars Program -- in which Michigan undergrads with a minimum 3.80 GPA are admitted to Michigan Law School if they agree to not take the LSAT.  The rankings benefit is that there is no LSAT score to report to U.S. News, while the minimum 3.80 GPA will boost Michigan's median 3.64 GPA, which counts 10% in U.S. News' methodology. Other schools presumably will follow Michigan's lead and create similar programs to recruit their undergrads while also goosing their U.S. news ranking.

Update #1: As usual, my Law Professor Blog Network colleague Bill Henderson (Indiana) hits the nail on the head:

The rankings motive is further corroborated by the disqualification if the potential Wolverine Scholar has taken the LSAT. ... [T]here are terrible externalities from this alleged merit-based program. It is impossible to deny that the Wolverine Scholars program will encourage students to (a) take easier classes and majors to avoid the need to take the LSAT to get into an elite law school, (b) discourage extracurriculars that will threaten the 3.8, and (c) make a lot of Michigan undergraduate professors miserable with complaints from students that their B+ or A- grade is going to blow their Wolverine Scholar application.

From a rankings perspective, what happens when you get 20, 30, or 40 candidates with 3.8+ UPGA and no LSAT score? From day 1 of admissions season, Michigan has much greater latitude to lock in higher median LSAT and UPGA numbers--because zero Wolverine Scholars are dragging down the LSAT and all are helping the UPGA numbers. Further, because of the idiosyncrasies of the USNWR rankings formula, see Ted Seto's Understanding the U.S. News Law School Rankings, at the upper ranges, small changes in UGPA have a much greater sway on rankings that a single LSAT point. For example, in the simulation model that Andy Morriss and I created, a move from 3.64 to 3.66 has a greater effect than a move from 169 to 170. If Michigan can get to a 3.80 UGPA, they could tie with NYU at #5.

Update #2:  A reader let me know that Georgetown has a similar Early Assurance Program:

Early Assurance applicants are exempt from taking the LSAT and registering with the LSDAS. Instead, please include an official transcript with at least five semesters of undergraduate grades. Early Assurance applicants must submit two recommendations, one of which must be the Early Assurance Dean's Certification Form. Competitive Early Assurance applicants should have an undergraduate GPA of at least a 3.8.

Update #3:  For more, see:

September 25, 2008 in Law Review Rankings | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBack (0)

Friday, August 22, 2008

Texas Law School Rankings

Texas Lawyer has released its annual ranking of the nine Texas law schools, based on a survey completed by 1,132 students enrolled at the school (the response rate ranged from 10%-25% at each school).  The ranking equally weighs eight variables:

  • Teaching Quality
  • Faculty Accessibility
  • Preparation for Practice
  • Placement Office Helpfulness
  • Collegiality
  • Student Diversity
  • Technology
  • Library Services

Here is the overall ranking of the Texas law schools under the Texas Monthly methodology, along with their ranking in U.S. News and World Report (overall and peer reputation) and SSRN downloads (as well as their ranking among U.S. law schools) [click on chart to enlarge]:

Texas_law_school_rankings_2008_4 

August 22, 2008 in Law Review Rankings | Permalink | Comments (21) | TrackBack (0)

Friday, August 15, 2008

Forbes College Rankings

Forbes has launched a new ranking of 569 colleges and universities, based on this methodology:

  • Listing of Alumni in Who's Who in America (25%)
  • Student Evaluations of Professors from Ratemyprofessors.com (25%)
  • Four- Year Graduation Rates (16 2/3%)
  • Enrollment-adjusted numbers of students and faculty receiving nationally competitive awards (16 2/3%)
  • Average four year accumulated student debt of those borrowing money (16 2/3%)

Here are Forbes' Top 25:

  1. Princeton
  2. California Institute of Technology
  3. Harvard
  4. Swarthmore
  5. Williams
  6. U.S. Military Academy
  7. Amherst
  8. Wellesley
  9. Yale
  10. Columbia
  11. Northwestern
  12. Wabash
  13. Centre College (KY)
  14. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  15. Bowdoin College
  16. U.S. Air Force Academy
  17. Middlebury
  18. University of Chicago
  19. Smith
  20. Pomona
  21. Wesleyan
  22. Haverford
  23. Stanford
  24. Hamilton
  25. Sarah Lawrence

August 15, 2008 in Law Review Rankings | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

Monday, July 28, 2008

Seto on the Proposed Boycott of the U.S. News Rankings

Theodore P. Seto (Loyola-L.A.), author of the influential article, Understanding the U.S. News Law School Rankings, 60 SMU L. Rev. 493 (2007), shares his thoughts on Case Dean Gary Simson's call to boycott the U.S. News rankings (blogged here, here, and here): 

Writing in the on-line edition of the National Law Journal, Dean Gary Simson of Case Western says the following about U.S. News’ recent announcement of possible changes to its methodology:

This announcement, and the wrench that it threatens to throw into structural changes that have been made to avoid being disadvantaged by a deeply flawed methodology, should cause law school faculties and administrations everywhere to finally say ‘enough’ and that they are done participating in a ranking system that has done substantial harm and little, if any, good to legal education in the United States.

In response, Mr. Robert Morse of U.S. News states;

If a law school refuses to provide U.S. News directly with statistical data from their annual American Bar Association (ABA) accreditation data questionnaire, then U.S. News still can get almost all of that school’s official ABA data from the ABA website. U.S. News would still be able to rank a law school, even if it refused to participate

Mr. Morse’s response is correct, but only with significant caveats.

Continue reading

July 28, 2008 in Law Review Rankings | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)