Top Law Schools: Business Law

Top Law Schools: Business Law, preLaw, Vol. 23, No. 2, Fall 2019, at 41:

preLaw magazine graded law schools based on the breadth of their curricular offerings. The scores were weighted as follows: 30% for a concentration, 24% for a clinic, 12% for a center, 12% for an externship, 9% for a journal, 8% for a student group, 5% for a certificate and added value for other offerings.

13 schools [got] an A+ in our roundup of Top Schools for Business Law. Many schools were honored for exceptional offerings in this area. Thirty-two schools earned an A grade, while another 41 earned an A-. That is more than any other specialty.

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July 2019 New York Bar Exam Results: Columbia #1

The July 2019 New York bar passage rates by law school are out. Here are the results for first time test takers for the 15 New York ABA-approved law schools, along with each school's U.S. News ranking (New York and overall).

Bar Pass Rank (Rate)	School	US News Rank NY (Overall)
1 (96.9%)	Columbia	1 (5)
2 (95.8%)	NYU	2 (6)
3 (93.8%)	Cornell	3 (13)
4 (91.0%)	Fordham	4 (39)
5 (88.9%)	St. John's	7 (77)
6 (87.7%)	Syracuse	8 (91)
7 (86.4%)	Cardozo	5 (52)
86.0%	Statewide Average
8 (81.5%)	Brooklyn	6 (71)
9 (78.5%)	New York Law School	13 (117)
10 (75.5%)	Albany	12 (115)
11 (74.8%)	CUNY	11 (108)
12 (73.4%)	Pace	14 (122)
13 (72.5%)	SUNY-Buffalo	10 (104)
14 (65.3%)	Hofstra	9 (100)
15 (63.4%)	Touro	15 (Tier 2)

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Top Law Schools: Tax Law

Following up on my previous post, 2020 U.S. News Tax Rankings (175 Law Schools):  Top Law Schools: Tax Law, preLaw, Vol. 23, No. 2, Fall 2019, at 44:

preLaw magazine graded law schools based on the breadth of their curricular offerings. The scores were weighted as follows: 30% for a concentration, 24% for a clinic, 12% for a center, 12% for an externship, 9% for a journal, 8% for a student group, 5% for a certificate and added value for other offerings.

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U.S. News Pulls Five College From Rankings For Misreporting Data

Robert Morse (Chief Data Strategist, U.S. News) & Eric Brooks (Senior Data Strategist, U.S. News), U.S. News Withdraws Five Schools' 2019 Best Online Rankings:

Five Institutions notified U.S. News they misreported data used to calculate their rankings for the 2019 edition of Best Online Programs. They are Western Colorado University (one program unranked), Missouri University of Science & Technology (one program), Auburn University (two programs), Ohio University (three programs) and the University of Dallas (one program). [See details here.]

The misreporting by each program resulted in their numerical ranks being higher than they otherwise would have been. Because of the discrepancies, U.S. News now lists these programs as "Unranked," meaning they no longer have numerical ranks. Each school's profile page has been updated with the Unranked status, and U.S. News deleted the incorrect data on their profiles. All rankings of other schools are unchanged.

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Crawford: SSRN And The (Arbitrary) Determination Of 'Scholarly' Merit

Bridget J. Crawford (Pace), SSRN and the (Arbitrary) Determination of 'Scholarly' Merit, 22 Green Bag 2d 201 (2019):

This article, published in the Green Bag, investigates and critiques SSRN’s (lack of clear) criteria for classification of material as a “scholarly paper” or “other paper.” In the former category appear to be “scholarly research papers,” bibliographies, briefs filed before some courts, some (but not all) teaching materials, and some (but not all) articles published in the Green Bag, for example. In the latter category are data tables, summary book reviews, opinion pieces, advocacy and satirical papers. “Other papers” are internet-searchable but are not displayed on the author’s SSRN page. Downloads of “other papers” are not included for purposes of SSRN’s various rankings.

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Chilton & Masur: What Should Law School Rankings Measure And How Should We Measure it — A Comment On Heald & Sichelman's Rankings

Adam S. Chilton (Chicago) & Jonathan S. Masur (Chicago), What Should Law School Rankings Measure and How Should We Measure it: A Comment on Heald & Sichelman's Rankings, 60 Jurimetrics J. ___ (2019) (reviewing Paul J. Heald (Illinois) & Ted M. Sichelman (San Diego), Ranking the Academic Impact of 100 American Law Schools, 60 Jurimetrics J. ___ (2019)):

There are obvious benefits to ranking academic departments based on objective measures of faculty research output. However, there are considerable difficulties associated with producing reliable and accurate rankings. In this short comment, we offer an evaluation of Heald & Sichelman's recent foray into the project of ranking law schools. Heald & Sichelman are to be commended for the transparency and rigor of their rankings effort. At the same time, it is important to note that their rankings involve a series of contestable discretionary choices and could give rise to potential counter-productive gaming by law schools seeking to improve their place in the rankings. In particular, Heald & Sichelman's system places a thumb on the scale on behalf of more senior faculty who publish in traditional law reviews and write in popular substantive areas like constitutional law.

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Sisk: Citations — 'A Valid, If Imperfect, Proxy For Faculty Scholarly Impact On A National Scale'

Gregory C. Sisk (St. Thomas-Minnesota), Measuring Law Faculty Scholarly Impact by Citations: Reliable and Valid for Collective Faculty Ranking, 60 Jurimetrics J. ___ (2019) (reviewing Paul J. Heald (Illinois) & Ted M. Sichelman (San Diego), Ranking the Academic Impact of 100 American Law Schools, 60 Jurimetrics J. ___ (2019)):

No single metric of faculty scholarly activity can fully capture every individual contribution. For that reason, evaluating a single professor’s scholarly work requires a nuanced, multifaceted, and individually focused assessment. However, for a contemporary sketch of the collective scholarly impact of a law school faculty, citation measurements in the legal literature are both reliable and valid.

The new Heald-Sichelman study of citations in the HeinOnline database confirms the reliability of the multiyear results of the Leiter-Sisk Scholarly Impact Ranking based on the Westlaw journals database. Despite using a different law journal database, counting citations differently, including pre-tenure faculty, and even adding download statistics into the mix, the Heald-Sichelman ranking correlates powerfully at 0.88 with the most recent Leiter-Sisk ranking. An objective citation measurement is time-sensitive and corresponds to informed awareness of law school faculty developments around the country. A citation-based ranking thus is a valid, if imperfect, proxy for faculty scholarly impact on a national scale.

With appropriate qualifications and necessary adjustments, a citation-based ranking should be considered in any evaluation of the overall quality of a law school faculty. For the U.S. News ranking of American law schools, an up-to-date, citation-based ranking would have considerable merit as an objective forward-directed control to the subjective past-looking academic reputation survey. ...

In an ideal world of infinitely elastic resources, the eternity of time, and omniscient observers, every individual law professor and every law school’s faculty would be fully known, sensitively understood, and thoroughly evaluated based on complete, detailed, and nuanced information. A dean or faculty committee conducting an annual evaluation of an individual faculty member may conduct a more focused individualized assessment. Similarly, a candidate for a faculty position at a particular law school may have the opportunity for a more targeted exploration of the scholarly culture and activity and arrive at a more specified assessment of that school’s progress as a scholarly community.

When comparing large numbers of law faculties across the country, however, a generalized assessment approach has considerable merit and the imperfections of a robust proxy for scholarly accomplishment will wash out at the macro level. That is no reason to be insensitive to flaws in a particular method or to resist adjustments that improve the accuracy and meaning of the results, even if at the margins. And honesty demands acknowledging the limitations of any single approach, allowing the reader to avoid ascribing perfect confidence.

With those qualifications in mind, a citation-based measurement of law faculty scholarly impact has proven to be a reliable method and should be recognized as a valid if imperfect proxy for faculty scholarly achievement. Citation ranking has established itself as a worthwhile factor in comparative assessment of law faculty scholarly impact.

Heald & Sichelman: The Top 100 Law School Faculties In Citations (Hein) And Impact (SSRN Downloads)

Paul J. Heald (Illinois) & Ted M. Sichelman (San Diego), Ranking the Academic Impact of 100 American Law Schools, 60 Jurimetrics J. ___ (2019):

U.S. News & World Report and rankings-minded scholars have constructed several measures of faculty impact at U.S. law schools, but each has been limited in a variety of ways. For instance, the U.S. News “peer assessment” rankings rely on the qualitative opinions of a small group of professors and administrators and largely mirror the overall rankings (correlations of 0.96 in 2016). While the scholarly rankings improve upon U.S. News by using the quantitative measure of citation counts, they have relied on the Westlaw database, which has notable limitations. Additionally, these rankings have failed to capture the component of scholarly impact on the broader legal community. We overcome these limitations by offering citation-based rankings using the more comprehensive Hein database and impact rankings based on Social Science Research Network (SSRN) download counts, as well as a combination of the two metrics.

Notably, we find a high correlation with the previous scholarly rankings (about 0.88), but a significantly lower correlation with the U.S. News peer assessment rankings (about 0.63). Specifically, we find that many law schools in dense urban areas with large numbers of other law schools that are highly ranked in the U.S. News survey are underrated in the U.S. News peer assessment rankings relative to our faculty impact metrics. Given the relatively low correlation between our rankings and the U.S. News peer assessment rankings—and the fact the U.S. News peer assessment rankings largely track its overall rankings—we strongly support U.S. News’s plans to rank schools on the basis of citation counts and recommend that U.S. News adopt a quantitative-based metric as a faculty reputation component of its overall rankings. ...

Here, pursuant to our suggested weighting discussed earlier, we combine the SSRN and Hein scores equally. Because SSRN download counts are substantially higher than Hein citation counts, we determine the number of standard deviations (z-score) from each school’s score from the mean for that metric, then average the SSRN and Hein z-scores together for a final score.

Table 3. Ranking by SSRN Download and Hein Citation Metrics

Combined Ranking	School	Total SSRN Score	Hein Total Score	SSRN Z-score	Hein Z-score	Average Z-score
1	Yale	18,753	5223	2.56	5.25	3.91
2	Harvard	23,608	3856	3.60	3.53	3.56
3	Columbia	17,820	3075	2.36	2.55	2.45
4	Chicago	19,103	2414	2.64	1.71	2.17
5	Vanderbilt	21,124	1995	3.07	1.19	2.13
6	Penn	18,340	2364	2.47	1.65	2.06
7	NYU	12,569	3114	1.24	2.60	1.92
8	Stanford	11,336	2837	0.97	2.25	1.61
9	UC-Irvine	15,786	2027	1.93	1.23	1.58
10	Duke	12,194	2029	1.16	1.23	1.19
11	GW	14,037	1617	1.55	0.71	1.13
12	Northwestern	11,648	1939	1.04	1.12	1.08
13	Cornell	10,942	1970	0.89	1.15	1.02
14	UCLA	11,956	1782	1.11	0.92	1.01
15	G. Mason	15,120	1150	1.78	0.12	0.95
16	Georgetown	9906	1758	0.67	0.89	0.78
17	Virginia	9325	1702	0.54	0.82	0.68
18	UC-Berkeley	9781	1609	0.64	0.70	0.67
19	Michigan	10,305	1519	0.75	0.59	0.67
20	Minnesota	10,315	1462	0.75	0.52	0.63
21	St. Thomas	11,487	1155	1.00	0.13	0.57
22	Illinois	10,927	1159	0.88	0.13	0.51
23	Texas	6611	1873	-0.04	1.03	0.50
24	UC-Davis	10,805	1098	0.86	0.06	0.46
25	Arizona	9696	1058	0.62	0.01	0.31

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Princeton Review's Best 167 Law Schools (2020 Edition)

The Princeton Review has published the 2020 edition of The Best 167 Law Schools (press release) (FAQs) (methodology):

The ranking lists, reported in 14 categories, each name the top 10 law schools. The education services company tallied the lists based on its surveys of 19,000 students attending 167 law schools [an average of 114 per school] in the U.S., and of administrators at those schools. The Princeton Review's 80-question student survey for this project asked students to rate their law schools on dozens of topics and report on their school experiences. The survey of law school administrators, which numbered more than 200 questions, covered topics from academic offerings and admission requirements to data about currently enrolled students as well as graduates' employment. Six of the 14 ranking lists were tallied using both student and administrator-reported data, five solely from student data, and three solely from administrator data.

Best Professors:  Based on student answers to survey questions concerning how good their professors are as teachers and how accessible they are outside the classroom.

1. Virginia
2. Duke
3. Chicago
4. Washington & Lee
5. Stanford
6. Notre Dame
7. Boston College
8. Boston University
9. Michigan
10. Northwestern

Best Quality of Life:  Based on student answers to survey questions on: whether there is a strong sense of community at the school, whether differing opinions are tolerated in the classroom, the location of the school, the quality of social life at the school, the school's research resources (library, computer and database resources).

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Clinical Legal Education Association Statement On The U.S. News Clinical Program Rankings

Statement on U.S. News and World Report Rankings for Clinical Programs:

The Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA) recognizes that many who receive U.S. News & World Report ballots in their capacity as clinical program directors find this ranking process uncomfortable. There are a number of problems with the ranking of clinical programs. First, it places us in competition with each other, when we as a group see ourselves in a shared struggle for social justice, equality, and improved legal education. Second, there are no articulated factors for ranking clinical programs, so the voting can be arbitrary to a degree. Third, some schools may unfairly suffer because they do not have the budget or the support of their administration to market their program or send their clinical faculty to annual conferences.

While we might wish the rankings did not exist or hope to solve the collective action problem that bedevils creative responses, the USNWR rankings have remained a feature of our collective landscape. So, since rankings presently exist, what can we do now as faculty who teach clinics?

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Society For Empirical Legal Studies Urges U.S. News To Use Google Scholar Rather Than HeinOnline In Scholarly Impact Rankings

Following up on my recent posts on the U.S. News Faculty Scholarly Impact Rankings (links below): Kevin Cope (Virginia) passed along this five page letter to Robert C. Morse (Chief Data Strategist, U.S. News & Woirld Report) from the Society for Empirical Legal Studies (SELS) Board of Directors (David S. Abrams (Pennsylvania), David Bjerk (Claremont McKenna College), Dawn Chutkow (Cornell), Christoph Engel (Max Planck), Michael Frakes (Duke), Andrew Green (Toronto), James Greiner (Harvard), Eric Helland (Claremont McKenna), James Hines (Michigan), Daniel Ho (Stanford), William Hubbard (Chicago), Daniel Krauss (Claremont McKenna College), Anthony Niblett (Toronto), J.J. Prescott (Michigan), Paige Skiba (Vanderbilt), Sonja Starr (Michigan), Eric Talley (Columbia), Albert Yoon (Toronto) & Kathryn Zeiler (Boston University)):

We write on behalf of the Society for Empirical Legal Studies (SELS) to express our concern about U.S. News’ plan to create a law school “scholarly impact” ranking based on HeinOnline data. We appreciate your willingness to consider input from the legal academic community, and particularly your May 2, 2019, statement that “neither the methodology nor the metrics for the proposed new rankings have been finalized.” We were further reassured to read that — contrary to other recent reports — you “do not have any current plans to incorporate scholarly impact rankings . . . in [your] Best Law Schools rankings.” We hope those plans do not change; for the reasons explained below, incorporating the HeinOnline data into Best Law Schools would introduce statistical biases that could do serious damage to U.S. legal education.

Although no ranking system is perfect, one strength of the existing ranking approach — as U.S. News officials themselves have argued — is that it provides several accurate metrics for consumers to evaluate for themselves. Unlike other indicators like graduation rate and bar-passage rate, however, HeinOnline’s current citation system does not appear to accurately capture what it represents to. HeinOnline’s metric would purportedly measure a faculty member’s “scholarly impact.” But the method suffers from a variety of systemic measurement flaws so significant that they undermine its validity as a measure of scholarly impact — and with it, the validity of any metric incorporating it. Making the HeinOnline data part of the Best Law Schools ranking would therefore deviate from your longstanding practice of offering readers accurate information.

HeinOnline’s present citation-measurement system has three principal problems: (1) it is biased against interdisciplinary legal scholarship; (2) it omits all book manuscripts and chapters; and (3) it systematically undervalues the academic contributions of junior scholars, which would inhibit law schools from recruiting diverse faculties. We elaborate on each of these problems below and suggest an alternative for measuring scholarly influence. ...

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July 2019 Pennsylvania Bar Exam: Pittsburgh #1

Here are the results of the July 2019 Pennsylvania Bar Exam for first-time test-takers by law school, along with each school's U.S. News ranking:

Bar Pass Rank (Rate)	School	US News Rank PA (Overall)
1 (91.4%)	Pittsburgh	6 (77)
2 (88.5%)	Penn State - Dickinson	4 (71)
3 (88.2%)	Pennsylvania	1 (1)
4 (87.9%)	Duquesne	8 (122)
5 (86.9%)	Villanova	4 (71)
6 (85.4%)	Temple	2 (48)
7 (81.8%)	Penn State - University Park	3 (64)
80.6%	Statewide Average
8 (78.5%)	Drexel	7 (100)
9 (66.7%)	Rutgers	(77)
10 (66.1%)	Widener - Pennsylvania	9 (Tier 2)
11 (63.2%)	Widener - Delaware	(Tier 2)

The Problems Of Measuring Scholarly Impact (‘Stuff’)

Following up on last week's post, The U.S. News Citation Ranking Is A 'Rigged Metrics Game' That 'Imperils Legal Academia':  LawProfBlawg (Anonymous Professor, Top 100 Law School), The Problems Of Measuring Scholarly Impact (‘Stuff’):

If we’re seeking to adopt some measure to assess scholarly impact, there are serious caveats that need to be addressed before we begin.

Professor Robert Anderson at Pepperdine Law School (place from which I wouldn’t mind a job offer — HINT) [How can we make you an offer (or measure your scholarly impact or teaching effectiveness) if we don't know who you are?] asked me a series of questions on Twitter, all of which are important.

If you don’t know Professor Anderson, you should.  His Twitter feed is a discussion of scholarly impact, and things related to problems of measurement and hierarchies in academia.  I’ve found his tweets cause me to think.  I blame him for this blog post.

His tweet that got me to thinking was this one:  “My pal @lawprofblawg has got some points here, but I think at some point s/he has got to get a little more concrete with an alternative. Is the status quo working? Why would citation-based metrics be worse? Should law schools evaluate scholarship at all? How should hiring work?”

All good questions.  There was some discussion in that thread about the fact that we ought to have some measure of stuff.  In fact, we already do when we hire people to join the faculty, when they go up for tenure, and even (to varying degrees of noneffectiveness) when we review them post-tenure.  They are imperfect, filled with biases, and are often deployed in an arbitrary fashion.  Sometimes they are hardly metrics at all.

Nonetheless, Professor Anderson is correct: I am in favor of having some metrics.  However, the current metrics aren’t working.   My coauthor and I have explained the biases and entry barriers facing certain potential entrants into legal academia.  Eric Segall and Adam Feldman have explained that there is severe concentration in the legal academy, focused on only a handful of schools that produce the bulk of law professors.  While in the academy, barriers block advancement.  And those barriers are reflected, in my opinion, in current citation and scholarly impact measurements seeking to measure stuff.

But if we’re seeking to adopt some measure, whether it is a global standard that could ultimately replace U.S. News or just a standard at one’s own law school, I think there are serious caveats that need to be addressed before we begin to measure stuff.  When I have seen these issues raised before, I have seen them too quickly dismissed.  So let’s try again.

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Minnesota Law School Enrolls Largest 1L Class Since 2011 As Part Of Plan To Eliminate Multi-Million Dollar Deficit By 2021 While Defending Its Top 20 Ranking

Following up on my previous posts (links below):  Minnesota Daily, UMN Law School Sees Largest First-Year Class in Almost a Decade:

This fall, the University of Minnesota Law School saw its largest entering juris doctorate class in eight years. The school is recovering after a decline in enrollment following the 2008 recession.

Reasons why enrollment is bouncing back at the law school range from a strong economy, the school’s high ranking and the current political climate, according to students and those in the industry.

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The U.S. News Citation Ranking Is A 'Rigged Metrics Game' That 'Imperils Legal Academia'

Following up on my previous posts (links below):  LawProfBlawg (Anonymous Professor, Top 100 Law School), The Taylorism Of Legal Academia: Another Rigged Metrics Game, and It Imperils Legal Academia:

The legal academy is on a precipice.  As people seek to figure out exactly the mystery of what academics do, they want to come up with more metrics to determine which academics are good, and which academics are not.  It’s like if Santa Claus were a management consultant with a basic understanding of stats.

To some degree, academia has endured measurement in terms of student evaluations.  The good professors are the ones with good evaluations, and the bad ones are the ones who lack them.  It’s only recently that people have discovered that which many have known for decades: Student evaluations are rigged, and you can pretty much guess the direction of the biases.  Despite that, we still use them, apparently because measuring something poorly is way better than not measuring it at all.

Now, professors and university administrators are becoming more focused on measuring the impact of scholars.  The term “scholarly impact” describes the complicated system of measuring whose work makes a difference, at least according to whatever metrics are used.  In the old days, it was SSRN.  Now, with U.S. News teaming with Heinonline, a new king of the metric is in town.  And you’d be kidding yourself if you think it won’t be used to target some untenured professors and chide some tenured professors who think scholarly impact might be measured in a more meaningful way (or not at all).  My coauthor and I have said our peace about these measures of “quality” here.

But universities are starting to measure faculty productivity.  The alleged goal is quality, but I’m thinking the real goal is to produce “more stuff.” ...

Making the world a better place might mean spending more time working with students, or writing something not counted in the “stuff” measure that targets the general population.  In short, I fear that instead of focusing on making the world a better place, measuring “stuff” will lead to a more conformist academy (if that’s possible) and one whose direction has been handed over to university administrators and external data miners.

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Law School Trial Team Rankings: Stetson Is #1

Trial Competition Performance Rankings:

The Trial Competition Performance Ranking (TCPR) is an objective snapshot of achievement in interscholastic law school trial competitions.

Fordham University School of Law
Brendan Moore Trial Advocacy Center

2018 - 2019 Academic Year			Fall 2016 - Present
1	Stetson	21 points	1	Stetson	43 points
2	Loyola Chicago	17 points	2	Drexel	29 points
3	UCLA	15 points	3	Fordham	26 points
4	South Carolina	14 points		St. Johns	26 points
5	Akron	12 points		Wake Forest	26 points
	Campbell	12 points	6	Baylor	25 points
7	American	11 points		Campbell	25 points
	UC-Berkeley	11 points		Cumberland	25 points
9	Emory	10 points		Loyola Chicago	25 points
10	Baylor	9 points	10	American	24 points
	Brooklyn	9 points		South Carolina	24 points
	Cumberland	9 points		UC-Hastings	24 Points
	William & Mary	9 points	13	Georgetown	23 points
14	Catholic	8 points	14	Chicago-Kent	22 points
	Loyola-L.A.	8 points		Northwestern	22 points
	SMU	8 points		UCLA	22 points
	Temple	8 points	17	Akron	21 points
18	Drexel	7 points		Loyola-L.A.	21 points
	Harvard	7 points	19	Florida	20 points
	John Marshall Chicago	7 points		Maryland	20 points
	St. Thomas	7 points	21	UC-Berkeley	19 points
22	Faulkner	6 points	22	NYU	18 points
	Fordham	6 points	23	Brooklyn	17 points
	Georgetown	6 points		Harvard	17 points
	NYU	6 points		Temple	17 points
	McGeorge	6 points
	Syracuse	6 points

 

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University Of Florida Law School Continues Its Rise In Student Quality And Rankings

The University of Florida Levin College of Law continues its extraordinary rise in student quality and rankings:

	Median LSAT	Median UGPA	US News Rank
Fall 2015	157	3.50	48
Fall 2016	160	3.60	41
Fall 2017	161	3.69	41
Fall 2018	163	3.72	31
Fall 2019	164	3.80	?

UF Law Celebrates 110th Anniversary With New Culverhouse Challenge:

University of Florida Levin College of Law is pleased to announce its third annual Culverhouse Challenge in honor of the 110th anniversary of UF Law.

Hugh Culverhouse, from the UF Law Class of 1974, has committed to a 10:1 match of 1,000 donations of $110, for a total gift of $1.1 million to fund student scholarships. ...

In addition to his own generous gifts, Culverhouse has spurred several fundraising challenges at UF Law, generating millions of dollars in new student scholarship support.

In 2017, Culverhouse initiated a challenge to the UF Law community to raise $1.5 million to match his $1.5 million commitment. His gift was then matched by the university, resulting in $4.5 million in new scholarship support. In 2018, Culverhouse joined with UF Board of Trustees Chairman Mori Hosseini, who each committed $500,000 to match $1 million in donations from alumni and friends. Once again the university matched their gifts, resulting in $3 million in new scholarship support.

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The Top Law Schools For Human Rights

Top Law Schools: Human Rights Law, preLaw, Vol. 23, No. 1, 2019, at 40:

Assuring the Gift of Humanity
Protecting human rights is one of the world’s most vexing challenges. Name a nation that hasn’t seen struggles in doing so, including the United States, where migrants are enduring harsh conditions in over-crowded detention centers along our southern border. Helping to defend human rights has long been a vital mission of many law schools. A number of those schools have religious ties. ...

American University Washington College of Law is one of only four schools to get [an A+]. Another 14 schools earned A grades, which shows the emphasis that many schools place on this work.

Unfortunately, the need to defend and protect human rights seems unlikely to go away. Think of all the stresses on human rights, from wars to hostile regimes to poverty to discrimination. ... Many schools that focus on human rights work all around the globe. ... Much of the work takes place in Africe. ... But human rights issues occur in our backyard as well.

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Tax Prof Twitter Rankings

Following up on yesterday's post, Tax Prof Twitter Census (2019-20 Edition) (Updated): here are the 25 Tax Profs with the largest number of Twitter followers: 

1	@lilybatch (Lily Batchelder, NYU)	12,300
2	@andygrewal (Andy Grewal, Iowa)	7075
3	@JudithFreedman (Judith Freedman, Oxford)	5893
4	@SoCalTaxProf (Paul Caron, Pepperdine)	5449
5	@davidckamin (David Kamin, NYU)	5254
6	@DanielJHemel (Daniel Hemel, Chicago)	5239
7	@delaFeriaR (Rita de la Feria, Leeds)	3696
8	@EOTaxProf (Philip Hackney, Pittsburgh)	3318
9	@AusTaxProf (Miranda Stewart, Melbourne)	2784
10	@kbrooks_taxlaw (Kim Brooks, Dalhousie)	2553
11	@profchristians (Allison Christians, McGill)	2550
12	@vicfleischer (Victor Fleischer, UC-Irvine)	2523
13	@davidsgamage (David Gamage, Indiana-Maurer)	2508
14	@DanielShaviro (Daniel Shaviro, NYU)	2487
15	@ProfBank (Steven Bank, UCLA)	2200
16	@smbrnsn (Sam Brunson, Loyola-Chicago)	2170
17	@deathntaxesprof (Goldburn Maynard, Louisville)	1990
18	@profbcrawford (Bridget Crawford, Pace)	1950
19	@williambyrnes (William Byrnes, Texas A&M)	1950
20	@narfnampil (Francine Lipman, UNLV)	1855
21	@Omri_Marian (Omri Marian, UC-Irvine)	1834
22	@legalh4ck3r (Steve Black, Texas Tech)	1821
23	@DorothyABrown (Dorothy Brown, Emory)	1762
24	@Leandra2848 (Leandra Lederman, Indiana-Bloomington)	1414
25	@rebeccakysar (Rebecca Kysar, Fordham)	1241

July 2019 Florida Bar Exam Results: Florida International Is #1 For 5th Year In A Row

The July 2019 Florida bar passage rates by school are out. The overall pass rate for first-time takers is 73.9%, up 6.7 percentage points from last year. For the fifth year in a row, Florida International is #1. Here are the results for the 11 Florida law schools, along with each school's U.S. News ranking (Florida and overall):

Bar Pass Rank (Rate)	School	US News Rank FL (Overall)
1 (95.7%)	Florida Int'l	4 (91)
2 (87.9%)	Florida	1 (31)
3 (86.8%)	Florida State	2 (48)
4 (80.8%)	Miami	3 (67)
5 (77.6%)	Stetson	5 (108)
6 (71.4%)	St. Thomas	Tier 2
7 (71.0%)	Florida Coastal	Tier 2
8 (65.9%)	Nova	Tier 2
9 (61.1%)	Florida A&M	Tier 2
10 (57.8%)	Barry	Tier 2
11 (52.6%)	Ave Maria	Tier 2

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Extending Leiter-Sisk Citation Counts To Interdisciplinary Scholarship

J. B. Ruhl, Michael P. Vandenbergh & Sarah Dunaway (Vanderbilt), Total Scholarly Impact: Law Professor Citations in Non-Law Journals:

This Article provides the first ranking of legal scholars and law faculties based on citations in non-law journals. Applying the methods, as much as possible, of the widely used Leiter-Sisk “Scholarly Impact Score,” which includes only citations in law publications, we calculate a “Interdisciplinary Scholarly Impact Score” from the non-law citations over a five-year period (2012-2018) to the work of tenured law faculty published in that period in non-law journals. We also provide the weighted scores for law faculty at the top 25 law schools as ranked by the US News rankings, a school-by-school ranking, and lists of the top five faculty by non-law citations at each school and of the top fifty scholars overall.

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Arizona State Business School Abandons Tuition-Free MBAs After Rankings Boost Fades

Wall Street Journal, A ‘Free’ M.B.A. Sometimes Isn’t Enough to Lure Students:

Arizona State University’s business school used a $50 million donation to bet on a future where its M.B.A. is free. Four years after slashing tuition costs for full-time students to zero, the dean says the cost is still too high for many people.

Turns out, luring talented graduate students to a two-year degree program in the current hot job market requires even more creative financing, says Amy Hillman, dean of ASU’s W.P. Carey School of Business. The sticker price of business school, which can add up to six figures, is just one of several factors that keep millennials from pursuing an M.B.A.

“We thought by announcing that everyone would be getting the same deal on a world-class education, we’d get a very different class,” she says. “We didn’t know how much scholarships were being used by our peer schools” to lure the same small pool of talent.

In 2015 when the university launched its novel experiment to draw a more diverse M.B.A. class, the news of free M.B.A.s for everybody accepted was met with a flood of interest. Admissions officers were inundated with a record number of applications for the inaugural class of fully funded business-school candidates.

The scholarship program successfully paved a path for many early-career workers in the nonprofit sector and education, Ms. Hillman says. But school leaders underestimated the fierceness of the competition from other M.B.A. programs.

Many universities have started to heavily subsidize the cost of a degree—which can top $200,000 with living expenses at highly ranked programs such as Harvard Business School and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania—by awarding millions of dollars in scholarships and financial aid each year. Ms. Hillman says schools like hers, regarded among the nation’s top 50 programs by academic-rankings publishers, attract thousands of candidates eager to pursue an M.B.A. at a fraction of the prices those elite schools charge.

Free tuition alone doesn’t provide a strong enough incentive to return to school for some prospects who might need two years’ worth of living expenses to attend full-time, she says. Other admitted applicants were turning down Carey’s offer for even richer scholarship packages at other business schools, the dean adds, highlighting the value of a more flexible financial-aid strategy.

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2020 Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education College Rankings

2020 Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education College Rankings (methodology):

Outcomes (40%):

• Graduation rate (11%)
• Value added to graduate salary (12%)
• Debt after graduation (7%)
• Academic reputation (10%)

Resources (30%):

• Finance per student (11%)
• Faculty per student (11%)
• Research papers per faculty (8%)

Engagement (20%):

• Student engagement (7%)
• Student recommendation (6%)
• Interaction with teachers and students (4%)
• Number of accredited programs (3%)

Environment (10%):

• Proportion of international students (2%)
• Student diversity (3%) 
• Student inclusion (2%)
• Staff diversity (3%)

The fourth annual WSJ/THE rankings list 801 schools. Here are the Top 10:

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The Top 100 Business Schools For Faculty Research

The University of Texas-Dallas Naveen Jindal School of Management has released its annual ranking of the Top 100 business schools based on faculty research published in the Top 24 journals. The current ranking is based on publications in the most recent five-year period (2014-2018). Here are the Top 10 in faculty publications, along with each school's in new SSRN download rankings and overall ranking in Poets & Quants (US News (35%), Forbes (25%), Financial Times (15%), Businessweek (15%), and The Economist (10%)):

Faculty Research		School	Overall
Publications	Downloads		Poets & Quants (US News, Forbes, Financial Times, Businessweek, The Economist)
1	4	Penn (Wharton)	2
2	1	NYU (Stern)	16
3	3	Harvard	1
4	38	Texas-Dallas (Jindal)	45
5	8	Columbia	7
6	13	USC (Marshall)	22
7	2	Chicago (Booth)	4
8	11	Michigan (Ross)	10
9	5	MIT (Sloan)	6
10	6	Stanford	3

The 30 Most Fun Law Schools

Online Paralegal Programs, 30 Law Schools With The Most To Do For Fun:

Law schools in the United States have long been considered among the world’s finest – and perhaps most well situated – offering top-class training amid exciting cities and stunning scenery. What’s more, although the 21st century has undoubtedly brought a wealth of online opportunities in legal and paralegal training, a more in-person experience that caters to students’ educational needs and personal interests can be especially rewarding. Finding the right school, however, may be a challenge.

Here are 30 law schools that meet all tastes, opening doors to everything from vibrant metropolises and college towns known for live music, sports and cuisine, to picturesque campuses within easy reach of the great outdoors. [See methodology here.] ...

The Top 10 are:

1. Colorado
2. San Diego
3. UC-Berkeley
4. Cornell
5. Georgia
6. Florida
7. Chicago
8. Northwestern
9. Pepperdine
10. Hawaii

Here is the description of #9 Pepperdine:

Located in an area that has what A Luxury Travel Blog calls “the most perfect weather on the planet,” Pepperdine University School of Law ought to appeal to those looking to complete their studies in one of California’s most spectacular beach communities. The school’s position on the university’s main Malibu campus affords tantalizing views of legendary surf spot First Point, while Pepperdine students also have easy access to the beautiful Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area and Malibu Lagoon State Beach. Meanwhile, fine dining and hip nightlife can be found amid Malibu’s affluent, celebrity-infused community of around 12,600 residents; the various beach bars and restaurants lining the Pacific Coast Highway are great starting points. According to U.S. News & World Report, the school itself boasts the top-ranked dispute resolution program in the country, and in addition it offers notable entertainment law teaching.

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Self-Citation And 'Citation Farms' Distort Citation Metrics

Science Alert, Some of The World's Most-Cited Scientists Have a Secret That's Just Been Exposed:

A new study has revealed an unsettling truth about the citation metrics that are commonly used to gauge scientists' level of impact and influence in their respective fields of research.

Citation metrics indicate how often a scientist's research output is formally referenced by colleagues in the footnotes of their own papers – but a comprehensive analysis of this web of linkage shows the system is compromised by a hidden pattern of behaviour that often goes unnoticed.

Specifically, among the 100,000 most cited scientists between 1996 to 2017, there's a stealthy pocket of researchers who represent "extreme self-citations and 'citation farms' (relatively small clusters of authors massively citing each other's papers)," explain the authors of the new study, led by physician turned meta-researcher John Ioannidis from Stanford University [A Standardized Citation Metrics Author Database Annotated For Scientific Field]. ...

One of those problems, Ioannidis says, is how self-citations compromise the reliability of citation metrics as a whole, especially at the hands of extreme self-citers and their associated clusters. "I think that self-citation farms are far more common than we believe," Ioannidis told Nature [Hundreds of Extreme Self-Citing Scientists Revealed in New Database]. "Those with greater than 25 percent self-citation are not necessarily engaging in unethical behaviour, but closer scrutiny may be needed." ...

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The 50 Most Impressive Law School Buildings In The World

Best Choice Schools, The 50 Most Impressive Law School Buildings in the World:

From stunning examples of Gothic revival to Brutalism’s giant box-like constructions, the world’s most impressive law school buildings span decades and even centuries. With modern marvels like Frank Gehry’s Loyola Law campus and the new University of Sydney Faculty of Law building, and traditional structures like Yale Law’s Sterling Law Building, these architectural giants were chosen for their ingenuity, aesthetic beauty, and commitment to creating an environment that honors the history and study of law. Many of these buildings house some of the world’s most prestigious and selective law programs, and a number of them set a precedent for green building standards and solutions.

Here are the Top 10:

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Applications Plunge At The Top 25 MBA Programs For Second Year In A Row; Expert Predicts 10%-20% Of Top 100 Will Close In Next Few Years

Poets & Quants, Apps To Major U.S. MBA Programs Plunge Again:

According to Poets&Quants’ study of preliminary Class of 2021 profile data, for the second consecutive year even the highest-ranked business schools in the U.S. are seeing significant declines in full-time MBA applications, with many MBA programs experiencing double-digit drops.

Last year, the top 10 business schools combined saw a drop of about 3,400 MBA applicants, a 5.9% falloff to 53,907 candidates for the 2017-2018 admissions cycle versus 57,311 a year earlier. ... This year, data from more than half of the schools in P&Q‘s top 25 (see table on following page) shows year-over-year declines in all but two schools, and declines across the board going back three cycles, to 2016-2017.

“For the second consecutive year, the top ten schools all saw significant declines in applications,” William Boulding, dean of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, tells P&Q. “I have been hearing that some schools in the top ten are in double-digit territory, so I think it is going to be worse than last year when all is said and done.”

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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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