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March 2, 2005
Something is rank here, all right.
There's a lot of talk about law school rank these days (I guess there always is)... however, one thing that caught my eye was David Bernstein's post over at The Volokh Conspiracy. Law Dork and Divine Angst both had some interesting comments as well.
So, in the spirit of procrastination for a brief I'm working on, I did a "mini" survey. I looked at the "rankings" for the schools attended by some law professors who blog:
| Blogging Professors | |
| Number Surveyed | 47 |
| Average Rank | 7 |
| Top 10 | 37/47 |
| Percentage Top 10 | 79% |
Since I'm all about the City of Chicago, I also decided to take a look at all the law schools in the Chicago area. Here they are, presented in order of school rank:
| Chicago | Rank: 6 |
| Number Surveyed | 58 |
| Average Rank | 6 |
| Top 10 | 54/58 |
| Percentage Top 10 | 93% |
| Northwestern | Rank: 10 |
| Number Surveyed | 88 |
| Average Rank | 16 |
| Top 10 | 66/88 |
| Percentage Top 10 | 75% |
| Chicago-Kent | Rank: 63 |
| Number Surveyed | 69 |
| Average Rank | 23 |
| Top 10 | 35/69 |
| Percentage Top 10 | 51% |
| Loyola | Rank: 67 |
| Number Surveyed | 47 |
| Average Rank | 37 |
| Top 10 | 22/47 |
| Percentage Top 10 | 47% |
| DePaul | Rank: 103 |
| Number Surveyed | 62 |
| Average Rank | 41 |
| Top 10 | 24/62 |
| Percentage Top 10 | 39% |
| John Marshall | Rank: 138 |
| Number Surveyed | 61 |
| Average Rank | 47 |
| Top 10 | 23/61 |
| Percentage Top 10 | 38% |
Note: This was a very cursory survey, based on faculty listings on the school's websites. I also threw out professors who had degrees from places like "Tokyo University" because I didn't have a ranking guide handy for them. The other ranks are all based on the latest U.S. News ranking, since that seems to be the de facto standard--for better or worse.
If you want to see the full results--including a break-down by individual faculty members, I've put it here in an Excel sheet.
Apparently, there is some hope for those who would like to pursue a career in academics, but don't have the Top 10 cred.
Would anyone be interested if I expanded this into a full survey/paper?
Posted by Dave!
2 Comments
um, YEAH. i'd love to see some real research on this that's not leiter's list of who teaches at the top 18 schools.
that's the real problem—what data exists on this subject is invariably restricted to the top schools: either who went to them or who teaches at them. my personal ambition is less about teaching at a top school and more about teaching and being in academia period.
Dave, this is great. I am not planning to teach (although I'd certainly consider it if the opportunity presented itself) but I find this to be really interesting. Thanks so much for putting this together. As Kristine mentioned, I don't think I've ever seen this information presented objectively before.