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Thursday, July 02, 2015
Playing With Al Brophy's Alternative Law School Rankings - Student Centered vs. Student/Scholarship Centered Results
I have all sorts of analytic issues with law school rankings - e.g., reputation means a lot, but it really is based on feedback loops and is really, really sticky; linear rankings by number hide the fact that it's a bell curve on things like reputation, and linear differences in the middle of the pack don't mean much). But it's still interesting navel gazing, and makes a big difference (I think) in professional and academic careers.
Yesterday, Al Brophy (UNC) posted an update to his alternative to USNWR, Ranking Law Schools, 2015: Student Aptitude, Employment Outcome, Law Review Citations. He uses three variables, entering median LSAT score, employment outcomes (JD required; no school-funded jobs; no solo practitioners), and citations to the school's main law review. That latter one is interesting because it doesn't measure the scholarly influence of the school's faculty, but instead the school's brand for purposes of law professors placing their articles.
Al did two analyses, one using only the student variables (LSAT and employment - the "2 var" rank) and one using all three (the "3 var rank"). His Table 2 shows the relative 2 var and 3 var rank for each school, but his comparison are all as against USNWR. I was interested in "law review lift" versus "law review drag." So I made a list from Al's Table 2, arbitrarily taking a difference of ten or more as the cutoff.
After the jump, you can see a list of schools whose ranking with their law reviews improves by ten spots or more (law review lift) or whose ranking drops by ten spots or more when the law review gets included (law review drag). I'll leave it to you to theorize about meaning, if any.
Law review stats enhance student stats ten spots or morePosted by Jeff Lipshaw on July 2, 2015 at 08:11 AM in Article Spotlight, Law Review Review, Life of Law Schools, Lipshaw | Permalink
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