Roger Williams Law School Updates and Expands Its Study of Scholarly Productivity

The new data is here.  This time they looked at scholarly productivity over a 15-year period of all the law schools outside the U.S. News "top 50."  Not too surprisingly--at least to anyone familiar with my rankings--the top three 'most productive' faculties not in the U.S. News top 50 were San Diego, Cardozo, and Florida State.  Because Roger Williams also wanted to assess how their faculty's productivity compared with schools in their Northeast region, they also studied the law faculties at Yale, Harvard, and BU, among others.  Yale's per capita productivity yielded a score of 18.46, Harvard a score of 14.32 and BU a score of 8.77.  That means, according to the Roger Williams data, that Harvard was only slightly more productive than San Diego, while USD, Cardozo, Florida State, Richmond, and Pittsburgh all had higher per capita productivity than  BU.  (I am told, however, that the Pittsburgh score would be lower now that Richard Delgado has moved to Seattle.)

For those on the law teaching market, this study is not a bad tool for gauging which more regional law schools have serious scholarly cultures.

Comments or questions about the study should be directed to Professor Yelnosky at Roger Williams, who oversaw the project.