The Impact Of The U.S. News Rankings On The Cost Of Law School

Following up on my previous post, Symposium: Uncomfortable Conversations About Legal Education — Student Debt, Diversity, And More:  Law.com, Cracking the Case of Law School Cost:

Here’s the million-dollar question on my mind today: How do you make a law degree more affordable?

That was the focus on a day-long session I attended last week on bringing down the cost of a legal education held at the American Bar Association’s Annual Meeting in San Francisco. It was an interesting—and at times frustrating—discussion, so I’m going to devote this newsletter to parsing some of the ideas that emerged. ...

The U.S. News rankings loomed large in the day’s conversation, and Law School Transparency Executive Director Kyle McEntee tackled it head on with a talk about how the rankings can be improved and their influence curbed. He proposed a change to the rankings formula that would do away with the expenditure-per-student metric, which rewards schools for spending money. In its place, he proposed an alternative measure that would divide the total amount of J.D. revenue a school receives annually by the number of long-term, fulltime bar passage required or J.D. advantage jobs its graduates land. This would essentially reward schools for keeping tuition low while also sending graduates on to good legal jobs.

McEntee also made news when he announced that in 2020 Law School Transparency will launch its own law school certification system, which is intended to create some competition for U.S. News in terms of evaluating the quality of law schools. It will award badges to law schools that meet its criteria in different areas, such as affordability and diversity and inclusion. The badges will offer schools alternative benchmarks that don’t hinge solely on the U.S. News formula, McEntee said. Law schools can then use the LST badges in their marketing materials and websites as a signifier of quality, along the lines of LEED certification for energy efficient construction. He said law deans are hungry for alternatives to the U.S. News rankings because they feel very constrained by those rankings’ narrow definition of what makes a good law school and the perverse incentives they create, such as the need to devote funds to merit scholarships at the expense of need-based ones. ...

[Q]uite a few legal educators associate efforts to reduce student costs with also reducing the quality of legal education. That’s a pretty serious obstacle to overcome. The way I see it, faculty and the various stakeholders involved in legal education need to buy into the idea that law school can cost less while also serving as the gatekeeper into the profession if there is ever to be progress made.

2019 World Law School Rankings

Quacquarelli Symonds has released the 2019 World Law School Rankings as part of its World University Rankings. The methodology is 50% academic reputation, 30% employer reputation, 15% h-index per faculty member, and 5% citations per paper.  The rankings consist of 300 law schools, 150 in the United States.  Here are the U.S. law schools in the Top 50, along with each school's position in the latest SSRN Top 750 Law School Faculty Rankings -- Total Downloads):

1. Harvard (#1 in SSRN)
4. Yale (#6)
5. Stanford (#2)
8. UC-Berkeley (#4)
9. Columbia (#5)
10. NYU (#3)
11. Chicago (#7)
17. Georgetown (#9)
23. UCLA (#15)
27. Michigan (#12)
30. Pennsylvania (#11)
33. Duke (#18)
35. Cornell (#27)
50. Northwestern (#14)

Anderson: Citation Engagement v. One-Off Citations

Robert Anderson (Pepperdine), Citation Engagement Counts - The Case of Corporate Law Scholars:

Citation counts (and other types of citation-based metrics) are increasing in importance in the legal academy. Some people like the objectivity of these measures and others lament their failure to capture important non-quantifiable aspects of scholarly influence.

One of the most influential citation count rankings in the legal academy is the Sisk-Leiter approach that Greg Sisk updates every three years. Last fall when the new Sisk et al. citation count study came out I proposed a small change to the Sisk-Leiter method that would attempt to measure engagement, defined as citing a particular article more than once. This was designed to address the "throwaway" citation problem that critics of citation counts have raised — that some papers may receive a large number of perfunctory "one off" citations that are less meaningful as a measure of scholarly influence.

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More On A Dean's Perspective On Diversity, Socioeconomics, The LSAT, And The U.S. News Law School Rankings

My talk last week at SEALS on A Dean's Perspective On Diversity, Socioeconomics, The LSAT, And The U.S. News Law School Rankings focused on the tension faced by deans and faculty as they try to increase the diversity of their student bodies in the light of the great weight U.S. News places on median LSATs and UGPAs in its law school rankings methodology — 22.5% of the total ranking. Several folks asked for copies of this chart of the racial and ethnic composition of the 2017-2018 law school applicant pool from LSAC data:

The chart shows that Caucasian and Asian applicants are over-represented (compared to their share of the applicant pool) in the top 160-180 LSAT band (Caucasians comprise 57% of total applicants, and 68% of the top LSAT band; Asians: 10%, 15%), and African-Americans and Hispanic/Latinos are under-represented in the top LSAT band (African-Americans: 13%, 3%; Hispanic/Latinos: 12%, 7%). In terms of raw numbers, only 590 African-Americans in the applicant pool scored at least 160 on the LSAT. African-Americans and Hispanic/Latinos are over-represented in the bottom 120-149 LSAT band (African-American: 13%, 27%; Hispanic/Latinos: 12%, 17%).

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Caron Presents A Dean's Perspective On Diversity, Socioeconomics, The LSAT, And The U.S. News Law School Rankings Today At SEALS

One of the Legal Ed panels today at the 2019 SEALS Annual Conference in Boca Raton, Florida:

Building Bridges: Socioeconomics, the LSAT and U.S. News and World Report Rankings
This panel explores methodologies and programs that will help students from low income and diverse backgrounds have opportunities available to them to attend law school. AALS President Wendy Perdue of the University of Richmond has said: “As our society struggles with this problem of deep polarization, lawyers and law schools have an important role to play. Lawyers, are, after all, in the dispute resolution business. Resolving conflict is central to what we do. And today, perhaps more than ever before, the skills that we as lawyers have, and we as law professors teach, are of critical importance.” In order to resolve these conflicts, we need to make sure that all communities have access to engage in these important conversations. The Before the J.D. Study shows that African American and Hispanic students think about going to law school before going to high school and college. In addition, the study highlights that over 60% of students report the most important advice about going to graduate or professional school comes from a family member or relative. Many students from low-income backgrounds do not have family members who are lawyers and are at a disadvantage in getting advice about going to law school because they may not be encouraged by these close family members or friends. There is still a small percentage of African American and Latino/a attorneys Nationwide 5% of lawyers are African American and 5% are of Hispanic origin. These percentages have remained consistent for almost the past ten years. So many students from these racial and ethnic backgrounds also can’t readily turn to family members or friends for inspiration and advice about going to law school. The ABA reports that the entering class for 2017 has an aggregate African American enrollment of 8.6% and 13.2% for Hispanics. Meanwhile, African Americans consist of approximately 13% and Hispanics approximately 18% of the overall U.S. population. These two racial groups, along with Asian Americans, are on target to be a majority of the U.S. population in the next 30 years. Given the growth trends in these demographic groups, there will be an insufficient percent of lawyers from these groups to meet their (and society’s) legal needs in the next few years. Moreover, some scholars have argued that there is a strong tie between socioeconomics and law schools admissions. There has recently been a very passionate Twitter discussion of this issue on Lawprofblawg. Some believe that the LSAT and U.S. News privileges those from middle- and upper middle-class backgrounds. Others point out the LSAT’s strength in providing an accurate assessment of core skills required for success in law school and that an admission process that correctly uses the LSAT as one factor in a multi-factor holistic admission process is fairest to applicants. Recently, U.S. News attempted to reduce economic privilege in its rankings of undergraduate schools by injecting socio economic factors. The formula now includes indicators meant to measure "social mobility" and drops an acceptance rate measure that benefited schools that turned the most students away. A recent Politico article reported that U.S. News will change its methodology at the college level. This panel consists of experts who examine these issues in terms of the LSAT, U.S. News & World Report law school rankings, and socioeconomic and diversity issues.

• Leonard Baynes (Dean, Houston), Pre-Law Pipeline Program: We’ve Got The Power
• Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), A Dean's Perspective on Diversity, Socioeconomics, the LSAT, and the U.S. News Law School Rankings
• Victor Quintanilla (Professor & Co-Director, Center for Law, Society & Culture, Indiana), Initial Results on Relationship Between the LSAT, USNWR, SES, and Demographics From the Productive Mindset Intervention Study
• Robert Morse (Chief Data Strategist, U.S. News), Building Bridges: Socioeconomics, the LSAT and U.S. News and World Report Rankings  
• Kellye Testy (President & CEO, LSAC; former Dean, University of Washington), Adversity and Admission: Tackling “Opportunity to Learn”

Ranking Legal Publications

Michael Birnhack (Tel Aviv University, Buchmann Faculty of Law), Oren Perez (Bar-Ilan University, Faculty of Law), Ronen Perry (University of Haifa, Faculty of Law) & Doron Teichman (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Faculty of Law), Ranking Legal Publications: The Israeli Inter-University Committee Report:

The Report offers a global ranking of academic legal publications, covering more than 900 outlets, and using a four-tier categorization. The ranking is based on a combined quantitative and qualitative methodology. The Report was composed in the context of the Israeli academic system, but the methodology and the results are not jurisdiction-specific.

Evaluating academic publications is a never-ending challenge. Such evaluation is an integral part of internal hiring, promotion, and tenure procedures, and of external funding decisions and institutional rankings. The proper way to evaluate academic publications has been the subject of fierce debate.

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Maintaining Scholarly Integrity In The Age Of Bibliometrics

Andrew T. Hayashi (Virginia) & Gregory Mitchell (Virginia), Maintaining Scholarly Integrity in the Age of Bibliometrics, 68 J. Legal Educ. ___ (2019):

As quantitative measures of scholarly impact gain prominence in the legal academy, we should expect institutions and scholars to engage in a variety of tactics designed to inflate the apparent influence of their scholarly output. We identify these tactics and identify countermeasures that should be taken to prevent this manipulation. The rise of bibliometrics poses a significant risk to the scholarly endeavor but, with foresight, we can maintain scholarly integrity in the age of bibliometrics.

U.S. News Pulls Rankings Of UC-Berkeley (#22), Scripps (#30), And 3 Other Colleges For Misreporting Data

U.S. News & World Report, Updates to 5 Schools' 2019 Best Colleges Rankings Data:

Five Schools Notified U.S. News that they misreported data used to calculate their rankings for the 2019 edition of Best Colleges. The schools are the University of California-Berkeley, Scripps College, Mars Hill University, the University of North Carolina-Pembroke and Johnson & Wales University.

What Does This Mean?
The misreporting by each school resulted in their numerical ranks being higher than they otherwise would have been. Because of the discrepancies, U.S. News has moved the schools to the "Unranked" category, meaning they do not receive numerical ranks.

All five schools' Unranked status will last until the publication of the next edition of the Best Colleges rankings and until the schools confirm the accuracy of their next data submission in accordance with U.S. News' requirements. All other schools' rankings in the 2019 Best Colleges will remain the same on usnews.com.

University of California—Berkeley: The school originally reported that its two-year average alumni giving rate for fiscal years 2017 and 2016 was 11.6%. UC-Berkeley informed U.S. News that its correct average alumni giving rate for just fiscal year 2016 was 7.9%. The school also told U.S. News that it incorrectly included pledges in the alumni giving data provided to U.S. News since at least 2014. The average alumni giving rate has a weight of 5% in the Best Colleges ranking methodology.

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Hyphens In Paper Titles Harm Citation Counts

American Association for the Advancement of Science, Hyphens in Paper Titles Harm Citation Counts and Journal Impact Factors:

According to the latest research results, the presence of simple hyphens in the titles of academic papers adversely affects the citation statistics, regardless of the quality of the articles. The phenomenon applies to all major subject areas. Thus, citation counts and journal impact factors, commonly used for professorial evaluations in universities worldwide, are unreliable.

This breakthrough finding poses a fundamental challenge to the rule of the game in determining the contributions of papers, journals, and professors. It is unveiled in a paper titled Metamorphic Robustness Testing: Exposing Hidden Defects in Citation Statistics and Journal Impact Factors by Zhi Quan Zhou, T.H. Tse, and Matt Witheridge, recently published in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, the top journal in the field. ...

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

Bryce Clayton Newell (Kentucky), 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

Robert Morse Of U.S. News Receives Lifetime Ranker Achievement Award

Robert Morse Honored with Lifetime Ranker Achievement Award:

Robert Morse Received the “Lifetime Ranker Achievement Award” from the IREG Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence at their 2019 conference in May in Bologna, Italy. Morse has been at the helm of the U.S. News & World Report Education rankings since 1987. Over the last three decades, Morse led the expansion of U.S. News’ flagship Best Colleges rankings from a reputation survey to a data-driven evaluation of 1,800 schools across the country.

Additionally, U.S. News Education rankings now span from high school to graduate programs. These include the Best High Schools rankings, Best Graduate Schools, Best Online Programs and Best Global Universities. U.S. News also offers its millions of users year-round editorial content and advice on topics such as finding the right college, applying to graduate degree programs and paying for online education.

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U.S. News Requests University Of Oklahoma President And Board Chair To Certify Accuracy Of Its Rankings Data For Next Three Years

Following up on my previous posts:

• University Of Oklahoma Inflated Its Alumni Giving Data For 20 Years, U.S. News Strips Its #127 Ranking (May 24, 2019)
• Former Student Files Class Action Against University Of Oklahoma For Submitting False Data To Inflate Its U.S. News Ranking For 20 Years (June 1, 2019)

Robert Morse (Director of Data Research, U.S. News & World Report), U.S. News Requests Data Certification From University of Oklahoma Chairman and President:

U.S. News has asked both of the university’s top officials to certify the data submitted for the next three years of Best Colleges rankings.

U.S. News & World Report was told by the University of Oklahoma that it submitted inflated alumni giving data to U.S. News for many years. Oklahoma University also disclosed to U.S. News that, for many years, Oklahoma University’s Health Sciences Center’s data was incorrectly included with Oklahoma University's data reported to U.S. News for our Best Colleges rankings.

In light of both these misreporting issues, U.S. News has asked Oklahoma University's Chairman of the Board of Regents Leslie Rainbolt and Oklahoma University's president, Joseph Harroz Jr. to provide a letter certifying the accuracy of Oklahoma University's data in its data submissions to U.S. News for the next three Best Colleges rankings.

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The Blog Must Go On For This Law Dean

Law.com, The Blog Must Go On for This Law Dean:

Pepperdine University Law Dean Paul Caron reflects on his two years of running a law school while also publishing his widely read TaxProf Blog, which chronicles legal education's biggest stories.

Paul Caron—legal education’s so-called Blog Emperor—took the reins at Pepperdine University School of Law in 2017, and his two years as dean have been a remarkable ride.

Things got off to a rough start in the spring of 2018 when the school was removed from the U.S. News & World Report rankings after Pepperdine discovered a mistake in the data it submitted that artificially increased its ranking and reported it to the publication. (Pepperdine returned to the ranking this year, moving up from its previous No. 72 to No. 51).

The challenges didn’t end there. In November, a Pepperdine law student was present at a nearby music venue when an armed man opened fire, killing 12. The law student was unharmed but the massacre, in which a Pepperdine undergraduate died, shook the Malibu, California, campus. A day later, the so-called Woolsey Fire tore through the area and came close to leveling the campus. The law school was spared, but closed for more than two weeks in the aftermath.

Through it all, Caron maintained his role as the town crier of legal education with his TaxProf Blog, which aggregates news about tax law and law schools. The 15-year-old blog is a must-read for legal educators and has become an important tool to raise Pepperdine’s profile and stature in the academy. Caron posts stories about events and initiatives at Pepperdine, not to mention plenty of photos of its seaside campus. Law.com caught up with Caron this week to discuss juggling the blog with his dean duties and why he hasn’t given TaxProf Blog up. His answers have been edited for length and clarity.

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Journal Prestige And Journal Impact In Law

Ignacio Cofone (McGill) & Pierre-Jean G. Malé (Harvard), Journal Prestige and Journal Impact in Law:

While much has been said about the curiosity of the American law review submissions system, something even more curious has been overlooked: American legal scholars ignore the impact-factor of journals, and choose in which journal to publish based on publishing school’s ranking. To investigate whether ranking translates into impact, we collect and analyze historical data from American law journal’s impact-factor and the ranking of their publishing law schools. We first show that there is a correlation between prestige ranking and impact-factor over the years. However, the correlation is not perfect and it varies substantially over time. Second, journal impact-factor shows a larger inter-annual variation than school ranking. This means that impact-factor is a worse predictor of future journal impact than school ranking is of future school prestige. Third, we show that journals published by better law schools have higher inter-annual variation in impact-factor but lower variation in impact-factor based ranking. This result is surprising. We hypothesize that journals from high-ranked schools belong to a less homogeneous pool: few journals make most of the impact due to an exposure bias. We then move to consider authors’ utility from publishing in one journal or another. The optimal strategy for authors will depend on whether they prefer to maximize their prestige among their peers or their impact on the discipline, and how risk averse they are. Conditional on desiring impact, risk-averse scholars should look at school ranking and risk-neutral scholars should look at impact-factor.

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February 2019 California Bar Exam Results

Following up on my previous post, 31% Passed February 2019 California Bar Exam, Up 4% From Last Year: the California State Bar has released school-by-school data on the February 2019 California Bar Exam. The pass rate for first-time test-takers from California ABA-approved law schools was 45.2%, down 0.1% from last year. Here are the results for the California ABA-approved law schools with ten or more test-takers released by the bar (as well as Pepperdine's data) and each school's U.S. News ranking (California and overall):

Bar Pass Rank (Rate)	School	US News Rank CA (Overall)
1 (66.7%)	Pepperdine	7 (51)
1 (66.7%)	Santa Clara	11 (104)
3 (64.3%)	San Diego	10 (86)
4 (63.6%)	USC	4 (17)
5 (45.8%)	Cal-Western	Tier 2
45.2%	Statewide Avg. (CA ABA-Approved)
6 (43.8%)	McGeorge	Tier 2
7 (42.9%)	Western State	Tier 2
8 (42.1%)	Loyola-L.A.	8 (62)
9 (38.5%)	Golden Gate	Tier 2
10 (29.5%)	Thomas Jefferson	Tier 2
11 (28.6%)	Southwestern	Tier 2
12 (25.0%)	Chapman	12 (132)
12 (25.0%)	Whittier	Tier 2

The pass rate for repeat test-takers from California ABA-approved law schools was 37.9%, up 6.6% from last year. Here are the results for the California ABA-approved law schools with ten or more test-takers released by the bar and each school's U.S. News ranking (California and overall):

Bar Pass Rank (Rate)	School	US News Rank CA (Overall)
1 (64.3%)	UCLA	3 (15)
2 (59.3%)	UC-Irvine	5 (23)
3 (58.7%)	UC-Davis	6 (31)
4 (53.1%)	San Diego	10 (86)
5 (52.5%)	Pepperdine	7 (51)
6 (50.0%)	UC-Berkeley	2 (10)
6 (50.0%)	USC	4 (17)
8 (48.3%)	UC-Hastings	8 (62)
9 (46.8%)	Loyola-L.A.	8 (62)
10 (40.9%)	Southwestern	Tier 2
11 (40.7%)	Cal-Western	Tier 2
37.9%	Statewide Avg. (CA ABA-Approved)
12 (37.1%)	Santa Clara	11 (104)
13 (35.6%)	Chapman	12 (132)
14 (34.9%)	McGeorge	Tier 2
15 (27.0%)	Western State	Tier 2
16 (26.8%)	San Francisco	Tier 2
17 (25.4%)	Golden Gate	Tier 2
18 (21.3%)	Whittier	Tier 2
19 (19.4%)	Thomas Jefferson	Tier 2
20 (12.2%)	La Verne	Tier 2

The Recorder, How Law Schools Fared on California's February 2019 Bar Exam:

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'Adversity' In Law School Admissions?

Law.com, 'Adversity' In Law School Admissions?:

The College Board made headlines last month when it unveiled plans for a new “adversity score” it would calculate for each SAT taker—a metric intended to help colleges gauge the challenges their applicants have encountered in their lives. Officials haven’t unveiled exactly how the score will be calculated, but it will take into account factors such as the percentage of students in the applicant’s high school who qualify for free and reduced lunch, and the average income in the test taker’s zip code. (It won’t factor in race). The adversity scores will be reported separately from SAT scores, and college and university admissions offices will be free to use or not use them in their decision making.

The announcement caused a stir and touched off quite a bit of criticism. This got me wondering whether a similar score could be created for the LSAT, as law schools have long struggled to improve the racial and socio-economic diversity of their student bodies. So I called up Aaron Taylor, the executive director of AccessLex Center for Legal Education Access. Taylor has spent years researching issues of diversity and access within legal education, so I was particularly interested in his thoughts on whether an “adversity score” could work in the law school context. ...

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Former Student Files Class Action Against University Of Oklahoma For Submitting False Data To Inflate Its U.S. News Ranking For 20 Years

Following up on my previous post, University Of Oklahoma Inflated Its Alumni Giving Data For 20 Years, U.S. News Strips Its #127 Ranking:

OU Daily, Former Student Files Lawsuit Against OU For Providing False Data to US News & World Report, Inflating University's Ranking:

A former OU student has filed a class action lawsuit against the University of Oklahoma as a result of the university being stripped of its U.S. News & World Report ranking. [Gretzer v. Oklahoma, No. 19-490 (W.D. OK May 28, 2019]

The lawsuit, which was filed May 28 on behalf of former OU student Elani Gretzer and all OU undergraduate students since 1999, alleges the university broke contract by providing false alumni giving data to U.S. News & World Report, inflating its ranking in U.S. News & World Report's "Best Colleges" ranking as a result.

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Alabama Donor Doesn't Want His $21 Million Back; He Wants Law School To Increase Enrollment And 'Tell U.S. News, F*** You.’

Following up on my previous posts (links below):  Law.com, Culverhouse's Rift with Law School—Fomented by Abortion Law—Puts $27M Gift in Peril: 

The University of Alabama is poised to return more than $21 million given to the law school after a dispute seemingly touched off by the state’s new abortion law—a move that would strip the name Hugh Culverhouse from its law school. ...

Culverhouse on Wednesday called for students to boycott the University of Alabama in a bid to pressure state lawmakers to roll back the law, which bans abortion. But university officials responded that tensions between the law school and its namesake donor predate the abortion law and that they would not stand for donor meddling.

Culverhouse said in an interview Thursday that he has pushed law school dean Mark Brandon to increase the size of the student body and offer more scholarships to bring in students, but that the school has instead opted to maintain it class size in a bid to preserve its U.S. News & World Report ranking. (The school is currently ranked No. 25, up two spots from the previous year.) ...

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Alabama Donor Doesn't Want His $21 Million Back; He Wants Law School To Increase Enrollment And 'Tell U.S. News, F*** You.’

Following up on my previous posts (links below):  Law.com, Culverhouse's Rift with Law School—Fomented by Abortion Law—Puts $27M Gift in Peril: 

The University of Alabama is poised to return more than $21 million given to the law school after a dispute seemingly touched off by the state’s new abortion law—a move that would strip the name Hugh Culverhouse from its law school. ...

Culverhouse on Wednesday called for students to boycott the University of Alabama in a bid to pressure state lawmakers to roll back the law, which bans abortion. But university officials responded that tensions between the law school and its namesake donor predate the abortion law and that they would not stand for donor meddling.

Culverhouse said in an interview Thursday that he has pushed law school dean Mark Brandon to increase the size of the student body and offer more scholarships to bring in students, but that the school has instead opted to maintain it class size in a bid to preserve its U.S. News & World Report ranking. (The school is currently ranked No. 25, up two spots from the previous year.) ...

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University Of Oklahoma Inflated Its Alumni Giving Data For 20 Years, U.S. News Strips Its #127 Ranking

U.S. News Rankings Updates:

University of Oklahoma: The school told U.S. News that it had inflated its alumni giving data since 1999, which affects its placement in the National Universities, Best Value Schools, Top Public Schools, Best Colleges for Veterans and A-Plus Schools for B Students rankings and lists. For the 2019 Best Colleges rankings, the University of Oklahoma originally reported its two-year alumni giving rate at 14 percent. The school informed U.S. News the correct value is 9.7 percent. The average alumni giving rate has a weight of 5 percent in the Best Colleges ranking methodology.

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The Best LL.M. Programs

The Best LL.M. Programs, The International Jurist (2019):

To identify the best LL.M. programs, we looked to see which schools place a premium on four key areas: the law school experience; career assistance; value; and academics. We asked the more than 150 schools with LL.M. programs for foreign attorneys to respond to a survey to offer insight into their offerings. ...

The Law School Experience.  This category looks at several factors, including whether students can work on law journals and participate in clinics, whether the school provides mentors, the number of extracurricular offerings, the level of involvement with U.S. students, networking opportunities, organized excursions and what the law school does to help LL.M. students adjust to the U.S. and the school. ...

Value. We assessed net cost, which is tuition and housing minus scholarships, and weighed that against the school’s performance in the Law School Experience category.

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The Best Law Schools For Practical Training

Best Schools For Practical Training (preLaw Spring 2019):

[W]e honor the Best Schools for Practical Training and outline what they are doing to make a difference in key, lifechanging areas. ... We used information from the schools’ ABA 509 Reports as part of our analysis. We looked at which schools provided the most clinical opportunities, externships and simulation classes. We also looked at their pro bono requirements and other offerings. ... While the 509 Reports are the bedrock of our rankings, we also ask schools to provide more information about pro bono programs and other offerings. ...

As we’ve done in the past, we gave the most weight — 38 percent — to clinical experience because of its effectiveness as a practical- training tool. Externships counted for 24 percent, while simulations counted for 21 percent. Both are considered valuable practical- training experiences, but they don’t quite rise to the level of clinical work. For clinics and simulations, we calculated the percentage of seats offered per enrollment. For externships, we looked at the number filled per enrollment. Responses from individual schools helped us determine the final 17 percent of the calculation.

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