Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

NYU Arts & Sciences Faculty Threatening "No Confidence" Vote in NYU President Sexton

Story here.  There is a curious quote from Martin Lipton, head of the NYU Board of Trustees (and a longtime backer of Sexton since he was Dean of the law school) lauding him as a recognized "international leader" in higher education.  That's a bit of hyperbole worthy of Sexton!  In my travels overseas, I've never actually met anyone who had ever heard of him!  Apart from the Law School and the Department of Philosophy, the two units that have benefitted most from Sexton's leadership, the faculty opposition to his Presidency is remarkably widespread.  (It includes several other departments, like Economics and Politics, that have flourished during Sexton's Presidency.)

More video self-promotion by law schools: John Marshall in Chicago

It's the "I'm ready" series.  (More here.)  It's less clear the job market is "ready" for many of the recent graduates, alas.

From "Law Porn" to "Law Spam"

Stephen Bainbridge (UCLA) comments.

Law School (Homepage) Ranking Fever

Is this really the best use of a serious law school's promotional machinery?  

-- Dan Filler

Is Northwestern Dean Van Zandt the First Adult to Refer to "the top 14" in Public?

Quite possibly!  Various readers have sent me e-mails marvelling at the fact that a legal educator, a Dean no less, actually used the category "top 14" in public and without irony.  (As one colleague quipped:  "Didn't Van Zandt notice that according to U.S. News, Northwestern's reputation is no longer "top 14"!")   The category, purportedly based on the overall U.S. News rank of schools, is meant to draw a line between schools at the bottom of the elite law schools (like Northwestern, Cornell, Duke, and Georgetown) and schools with which, in reality, they frequently compete for faculty and students, notably Texas and UCLA (but also often Vanderbilt and USC).  Yet, as we noted before, 

It's hard to quarrel with the fact that the same 14 schools have been ranked in the top 14 by U.S. News since circa 1994.  The question one might have expected someone to ask is:  so what?  The "top 14" by this measure correlates with nothing of any interest to anyone:  it does not correlate with faculty quality, quality of student body, job placement, placement in law teaching, or Supreme Court clerkships.  In other words, "top 14" correlates with nothing that would matter to anyone informed about legal education and the legal profession. 

And it doesn't even correlate with the same fourteen schools based on reputation as measured by U.S. News!

So far, to my knowledge, Duke, Cornell, and Georgetown have avoided trying to imply that they compete on a different level from UCLA and Texas by appeal to this silly concept whose provenance is discussion boards for college students.  (If I've missed others pulling the same stunt, please e-mail me.)    The Super Lawyer ranking of law schools was already silly enough without then re-doing it, as the Northwestern Dean did, to exclude schools with far higher per capita representation on the grounds that they weren't in the U.S. News 'top 14.'  No doubt UCLA Interim Dean Yeazell and Texas Dean Sager are impressed!

I used to run examples of ludicrous hyperbole by law schools and law school deans; perhaps we need a new category for "can a law school or dean sink any lower in self-promotion"? 

Misleading or Informing with Data about Graduates in Law Teaching?

We noticed a couple of weeks ago Michigan's surprising claims about alumni in law teaching, and now another reader has pointed out this from Columbia Law School:

Columbia Law School ranks third among law schools in the number of it's [sic] J.D. alumni in teaching positions at American law schools.

This is particularly striking, since after I called attention to Michigan's puffery, they revised the page to read:

Michigan ranks in the top 4 for the number of alumni teaching in U.S. law schools, and in the top 3 for tenure- and tenure-track positions.

Assuming both schools are using the same database (supplied by the AALS), then what it means is that if one looks at all those listed in the AALS directory--meaning clinical professors, legal writing instructors, various deans without academic positions, lecturers of various kinds, as well as emeritus faculty and regular tenure-stream academic faculty--Columbia has the third highest number of alumni listed, and Michigan has the fourth highest.  (Harvard is #1, and Yale is #2.)  When you look only at tenured and tenure-track faculty, then Michigan is #3 in total number of tenured and tenure-track faculty, while Harvard remains #1 and Yale #2.  This, of course, reflects those who graduated law schools from the 1940s onwards.

These results aren't surprising when one remembers that for much of the post-WWII period, Columbia was one of the top three law schools (up until the late 1960s, roughly), while Michigan was one of the top five (up until the 1980s, roughly).  Stanford emerged as a powerhouse in the 1960s (in part through raids on Columbia), while Chicago, long one of the top five or six, moved into the super elite ranks with the rise of law and economics, in which it played the pivotal role, in the 1970s. 

In addition, of course, Columbia and Michigan are nearly twice the size of Chicago and Stanford, meaning that they have graduated nearly twice as many students.  (Harvard is more than twice the size of Yale.)  As soon as you take that into account, you get the more familiar picture noted previously, and confirmed in more recent studies, in which Yale dominates (relative to its size) the market for law teachers, followed by Harvard, Chicago, and Stanford, and then a drop-off before the next cluster of schools, namely, Columbia, Michigan, NYU, Berkeley, and Virginia. 

Given the history, and the size differentials, the stats that Columbia and Michigan emphasize are not at all surprising.  This data is not, in short, wrong, but it is, arguably, a bit misleading to prospective students who have a strong interest in teaching careers.

Ludicrous Hyperbole Watch: University of Michigan Law School

I haven't run one of these in awhile, but having recently gotten a solicitation for money from my law school alma mater, Michigan, I decided to peruse the Law School homepage, only to find this:

The University of Michigan Law School is the international center for interdisciplinary legal scholarship and teaching.

It's not entirely clear what this means, since most of the world's law schools don't value "interdisciplinary legal scholarship and teaching" as highly as elite U.S. law schools do.  But even with respect to the U.S., the claim seems slightly preposterous.  What does Michigan mean to imply about Yale, Harvard, Chicago, Stanford, NYU, Columbia, and Berkeley, several of which could justifiably make the same claim?  Law and economics, for example, is still the most influential and prestigious area of interdisciplinary legal scholarship, yet Michigan has a very limited presence there (having one excellent senior faculty member, Omri Ben-Shahar, plus promising junior faculty, does not a law and economics powerhouse make!).  Michigan is very strong, indeed, in legal history, law and philosophy, and law and social science (economics excluded), among other areas, but it is not dominant in any of those fields.

Also surprising was this claim:

Whether measured by contribution to the number of law faculty hired in a given year or by the number of graduates who pursue academia, Michigan ranks in the top 5 of law schools.

I can't comment on the second claim:  it may well be that Michigan is in the top five for the number of graduates who try to pursue academia.  And while it used to be true that Michigan was clearly in the top five for both the gross and per capita number of graduates hired into law teaching, the most recent data (including some that I will publish later this year) suggests that this is probably not true any longer (Michigan will still be in the top ten, of course).

Having now called out some website puffery, let me conclude on a more positive note:  under Dean Evan Caminker, Michigan has done excellent hiring the last few years, and has completely rejuvenated a faculty that took a beating in the 1990s.  The recent studies of scholarly impact certainly bear that out (esp. when compared to earlier studies).  So Michigan is in great shape, even without the puffery!

Did you vote for the "Best Law Blog" yet?

If not, don't bother, since it's a pretty silly affair.  Even though the Volokh bloggers have been begging their readers (of whom, based on their site counter, there must be 20,000+ per day) to vote almost every day for the last week, they are still trailing David Lat's gossip blog, Above the Law, and have mustered only about 4,000 votes (and bear in mind you can vote once every day!).  But, really, who cares?  For intellectual content, Balkinization is pretty obviously the best of the law blogs listed, and remarkably, some equally substantial blogs with law-related content aren't even in contention as a choice (Becker-Posner most obviously).

UPDATE:  Mr. Lat seems to have the matter in perspective!

Against "Law Porn"

Larry Ribstein (Illinois) comments.  Frankly, I'd rather read about faculty hires.

Ludicrous Hyperbole Watch: Why the University of Chicago Law School is NOT This Week's Winner

MOVING TO FRONT FROM 9/16/05, AS A COUPLE OF FOLKS HAVE NOMINATED THIS ONE LATELY.  I AM ALSO SWAMPED AT THE MOMENT, SO THIS IS EASIER THAN POSTING NEW MATERIAL!

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Several folks have suggesed the University of Chicago Law School based on this:

The faculty is, by a wide margin, the most productive, widely cited, and influential law faculty in the country and perhaps the world.

Strong claims, to be sure, but given that every study of scholarly productivity and impact as measured by citations (over the last decade at least) does show Chicago to be #1 in the U.S., these appear to be true strong claims, and thus not cases of ludicrous hyperbole.  "Perhaps the world" is perhaps overreaching (I know of no relevant data), but at least they put in a "perhaps"!

UPDATE:  Len Cleavlin writes:  "As Hall of Fame pitcher Dizzy Dean is supposed to have noted: 'It
ain't bragging if you can do it.'  And that's what gets Chicago off the hook."