The Belfry

Counter Offers and Prospect Theory

2011-12-10T19:48:00.000-08:00

One of the things you hear in law teaching is how salary increases are the result of counter offers. A faculty member gets an offer from another school and then asks her dean to match or beat it or she will leave. (I am not sure the dean's response is really a "counter offer" unless it's viewed as a response to an offer made by the the threatening faculty but that is for contracts teachers to

A Degree of Practical Wisdom: The Ratio of Educational Debt to Income as a Basic Measurement of Law School Graduates’ Economic Viability

2011-12-01T16:47:00.000-08:00

Jim Chen, A Degree of Practical Wisdom: The Ratio of Educational Debt to Income as a Basic Measurement of Law School Graduates’ Economic Viability, 38 Wm. Mitchell L. Rev. (forthcoming 2012):This article evaluates the economic viability of a student’s decision to borrow money in order to attend law school. For individuals, firms, and entire nations, the ratio of debt to income serves as a

David Segal's critiques of legal education and the academy's reaction

2011-11-28T03:44:00.000-08:00

David Segal of the New York Times has spent the better part of 2011 skewering American legal education. Academic reaction, though never favorable, reached a nadir when Segal assailed legal scholarship and the process for hiring law professors. This post is intended primarily as a way of documenting the Segal critique and some (though by no means all) of the academy's reaction to it.Segal's

Practical advice for new law professors: Grading on a curve

2011-11-25T19:10:00.000-08:00

Around this time of year, American law schools begin issuing offers for entry-level, tenure-track teaching positions. The typical new recruit has more experience with scholarship than with teaching, grading, or lesson-planning. MoneyLaw will offer some practical advice to some of these new law professors. I will start by explaining standard scoring, more colloquially known as grading on a

The Skills Thing

2011-11-21T15:23:00.000-08:00

Jim has provided an excerpt from Sunday's NYT front page article on Law Schools. The article make some good points on the topic of legal scholarship. On the other hand, the article's whining about preparing students to practice law made me consider getting off the "more skills" bandwagon.I was struck by a collective law firm sense of entitlement. This sense of entitlement seems to equate the

Everything I needed to practice law, I didn't learn in law school

2011-11-20T07:31:00.000-08:00

" target=_blank>In his ongoing series of searing critiques of legal education, David Segal takes aim again at the excesses and shortcomings of American law schools. He describes this scene from "a crash course in legal training":[T]he three people taking notes are not students. They are associates at a law firm called Drinker Biddle & Reath, hired to handle corporate transactions. And they have

Listening to belfry definition

2011-11-10T09:25:00.000-08:00

So did many, many years a priest of Polvorosa Manganeses of Castile and Leon, Spain had a miraculous goat. The priest and his goat to travel across the country, visiting the towns, the power of the locals, a lot of people, with only their own goat milk. Did I say miraculous goat? Well, one day, as goats are wont to do, the miraculous animal wandered around and was able to reach a church steeple.

"belfry"Think of a clock tower on top

2011-11-10T09:19:00.000-08:00

The clock goes back to the thirteenth century. One of the first to be popular was the clock tower. Think of a clock tower on top. These were made crudely buildings on the basis of the blacksmith labor for unskilled labor. Add to that the experience of a watchmaker and the project was ready to begin. When finished, which could take up to one year, the team dissolved. Eventually it was discovered

Legal education and the heir of Slytherin

2011-11-07T07:49:00.000-08:00

That was then. This is now.In my own lifetime, fiction for young adults has moved from S.E. Hinton to J.K. Rowling. Gritty stories about rumbling gangsters at an Oklahoma high school have given way to soaring fantasies about dueling sorcerers at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. At heart, though, I still believe what John Steinbeck said in East of Eden: There is one story in the

dennis-his-belfry

2011-10-18T04:54:00.001-07:00

dennis-his-belfry

The Least Ethical?

2011-09-29T11:05:00.000-07:00

In what my wife calls my not real world life I typically come into contact with attorneys, law professors, students, and expert witnesses. Within each group I observe a great range of ethical standards although the pressures are always downward. Nevertheless like four racehorses, I think of the groups as racing to the bottom. In terms of shameless lying, expert witnesses are still in the lead.

Just a perfect reflection

2011-08-21T20:52:00.000-07:00

Guster, Fa FaAs economic fortunes fall anew and fear runs rampant, legal education is experiencing another season of regret. Recent graduates and even some students have come to regret their decision to attend law school. They're hardly alone.Regret is nothing more than fermented wisdom, and I am a very wise man. There are moments when I fervently wish I could take my own academic advice,

Is Villanova Evil or Just Efficient?

2011-08-16T06:45:00.000-07:00

This story has been bouncing around for months but, as so often happens, I am the last to know. As I understand it, Villanova, to put it bluntly, lied.I am wondering just how bad that is. Compare an alternative. A School adopts new and expensive programs because it will help in the rankings game. But for the rankings these programs would not be adopted. It hires its own grads, introduces bar prep

Taken for a ride

2011-08-10T20:13:00.000-07:00

AM Radio, Taken for a RideI can no longer ignore that, for a very large proportion of my students, law school has become something very much like a scam. . . . When people say 'law school is a scam,' what that really means, at the level of actual moral responsibility, is that law professors are scamming their students.So laments the introductory post to Inside the Law School Scam, a confessional

Matasar criticizes the "inordinate scrutiny" given to law schools

2011-08-08T18:00:00.000-07:00

In the first segment of a two-part interview responding to David Segal's critique of law school economics, Richard Matasar says that law schools receive "inordinate scrutiny."

The economics of law school admissions

2011-07-17T15:56:00.000-07:00

It is now officially a muckraking crusade.Three times this calendar year, David Segal of the New York Times has commanded the front page of the Sunday business section with an exposé of the business of law schools. First, he assailed the economic rationality of anyone electing to study law. Then came his attack on the use of deceptive scholarship awards to attract students and boost rankings.

Which side are you on?

2011-06-17T22:54:00.000-07:00

In academia, this old question of labor-management relations has an especially odd twist.Stanley Fish recounts a recent dispute over the reorganization of Idaho State University from seven to five colleges:The story is a familiar and dispiriting one: the administration is accused of imposing its will in the face of strong opposition from the faculty, and the faculty is accused by the

Fidelity in transition

2011-06-17T22:47:00.000-07:00

» With apologies and an admiring nod to Lawrence Lessig, Fidelity in Translation, 71 Tex. L. Rev. 1165 (1993). «Bureaucracy is the bane of modern life, in all of its organizational manifestations. From this reality academia offer no escape. But there are lessons to be learned from things that universities, governments, and for-profit businesses have in common.Academia, government, and private

Tenure in disfavor among college presidents

2011-05-23T03:24:00.000-07:00

A majority of college and university presidents surveyed by the Pew Research Center and the Chronicle of Higher Education effectively oppose tenure:Less than a quarter of those surveyed said they would prefer full-time, tenured professors, while a whopping 69 percent reported to prefer that a majority — if not the entirety — of faculty work under annual or long-term contracts. . . .Mark C. Taylor

Is there academic freedom in this controversy?

2011-05-17T15:19:00.000-07:00

Stanley Fish warrants frequent mention on MoneyLaw for his wisdom on academic freedom. In a recent New York Times blog post, Fish helps us filter legitimate claims of academic freedom from a noisy backdrop in which that principle is too readily invoked and thereby too easily cheapened. Fish cites more comprehensive works — especially Matthew W. Finkin & Robert C. Post, For the Common Good:

U.S. Supreme Court Prediction Market

2011-04-30T09:33:00.000-07:00

Recently posted to SSRN: FantasySCOTUS: Crowdsourcing a Prediction Market for the Supreme Court, a draft paper by Josh Blackman, Adam Aft, & Corey Carpenter assessing the accuracy of the Harlan Institute's U.S. Supreme Court prediction market, FantasySCOTUS.org. The paper compares and contrasts the accuracy of FantasySCOTUS, which relied on a "wisdom of the crowd" approach, with the Supreme

Pants Down Part 2

2011-04-12T09:20:00.000-07:00

http://classbias.blogspot.com/2011/04/ncaa-and-law-schools.html

Pants Up

2011-04-01T12:43:00.000-07:00

I am sincerely sorry if the last post on this blog somehow spelled the end of any contributions. To try and make up for it, I want to try to get those pants pulled back up. The problem is that it is probably only a wishful thinking pants up. One of the things that stood out in the US News and World Report rankings this year was the decline of the University of Missouri Law School. I have tried

Pants Down

2011-01-16T11:54:00.000-08:00

I guess I did not see it when it came out but now I have come across the Leiter ranking (or is an effort to allow others to rank) of the top 40 law schools. As I understand it, 331 respondents ranked 57 law school that are arguably in the top 40. The eventual ranking was then determined by taking each school and seeing how it did in head to head combat with each other school. The most wins gets

Class Participation: How and Why?

2011-01-12T10:11:00.000-08:00

I have been rethinking my approach to class participation, and invite your suggestions about how to grade that aspect of student performance, if at all.Last semester, in Property I, I based 10% of the students' grades on class participation. They won points for class participation in a variety of ways, including serving on review teams, filling out short ungraded quizzes, and signing an "on

Z-Scores in Model of 2011 USN&WR Law School Rankings

2010-12-16T11:21:00.000-08:00

As I have for each of the past several years, I this year again built a model of the most recent U.S. News and World Report ("USN&WR") law school rankings. This year's model matched the publishing rankings very nicely; comparing the model's scores with the published ones generated an r-squared of .997 (where 1 would indicate perfect correspondence). At the request of my readers, I here offer

Can Empiricism Go to Law School?

2010-11-24T06:58:00.000-08:00

Most readers know the cautionary "Be careful what you wish for . . . ." There is a comparable concern for those doing empirical research -- you may not find what you are looking for. By "what you are looking for" I do no mean that you will find no answer but that you may not confirm what you hoped to confirm. For example, you might believe that positive student evaluations are correlated with

So You Want to Go to Law School: The Series

2010-10-31T20:31:00.000-07:00

So You Want to Go to Law School, a viral video classic on the foibles of legal education and its relationship vel non to the practice of law, has become a full-blown series. David W. Kazzie, the author of the original video, will trace the adventures of Carrie-Ann Fox, an idealistic would-be lawyer, as she makes her way through law school. The first post-pilot installment introduces Will Graham

Three Kinds of Diversity

2010-10-27T13:47:00.000-07:00

Diversity comes in many flavors. I here compare three types—diversity of skin color and sex, cultural diversity, and ideological diversity—and offer some observations about the distinctive costs and benefits of each. I conclude that, holding all else equal, a group of people having diverse colors and sexes will enjoy modest institutional gains at low cost, while a group touting ideological

Outsourcing Legal Education?

2010-10-27T09:35:00.000-07:00

The other day a pile of new course proposals by adjunct and non tenure track employees was delivered to the members of the curriculum committee. It made me wonder: How much of our curriculum is taught by people who did not go through a search process, have no role in faculty governance, or were not hired to be teachers. The number was high and growing. I doubt that makes us different from any

Encouragement For The Less Than Highly Motivated

2010-10-21T09:50:00.000-07:00

I'm not as big a fan as Jim of animations, but feel that it's time that some concern be shown for those who might struggle to stare down the cynics. Remember, not everybody raises their hand in class.

So you want to go to law school?

2010-10-19T16:12:00.000-07:00

So you want to go to law school? Watch:Congratulations to Wahoo Corner, the apparent origin of a video that is sure to become a viral classic for prelaw advisors, law students, lawyers, and even full-time legal academics. Hat tip to Donald Anton, Eric Fink, and Shubha Ghosh via Facebook.

Where Partners Come From: Finding the Brass Ring

2010-10-14T16:04:00.000-07:00

The ABA has become increasingly interested in outcome measures. US News uses relative bar pass rates and questionable at-grad and 9-month employment rates. Bill Henderson has looked at per capita NLJ first-year-associate hiring rates.This post reports preliminary results of a study examining what many law students view as the ultimate outcome measure: partnership in a big firm. Specifically, it

Point Counter-Point

2010-10-01T15:55:00.000-07:00

Since I received this in my email I suppose most other law professors did as well. It's about scholarly impact. I think an excellent and thoughtful reponse is this by Brian Tamanaha. Brian pretty much covers all the bases as far as the problems of counting as a way to assess scholarship.

More on UF Rent Boy Kerfluffle

2010-09-29T10:03:00.000-07:00

Over yonder.

Tenure, Academic Freedom, Broadcasting, and Bill Inserts

2010-09-24T19:48:00.000-07:00

You do not hear much about academic freedom from law professors because they rarely say anything controversial that anyone hears about. In fact, wouldn't it be far more interesting if someone were listening to us? It may seem odd that there is so little controversy given the iron clad protection we have. The reasons for the quiet, I think, can be traced to the fact that straying ideologically or

Shameless self-promotion.

2010-09-10T10:03:00.000-07:00

See here.

Elite Relief

2010-09-10T08:13:00.000-07:00

If there is way to open doors for elites while closing them to others, law schools will find a way. And in the process they make some really questionable decisions from a economic perspective.Take a recent policy adopted by UF. We now have a program of hiring people with "outstanding academic credentials" and with little or no scholarly record or teaching experience." (Yes it sounds like every

New school

2010-08-26T14:53:00.000-07:00

The double entendre is very much intended, because the New School's new president is anything but old school.The New York Times article announcing the appointment of Northwestern Law School dean David Van Zandt as president of the New School offers this delicious observation from soon-to-be President Van Zandt:People want to know what the facts are, and through a lot of discussion, people can

The Soccer Plan for Law Professors

2010-08-22T11:52:00.000-07:00

The best soccer book I have read is Joe McGinniss' The Miracle of Castel di Sangro. Tim Parks' A Season with Verona is also good as is Hornsby's Fever Pitch. As soccer fans know, in the leagues within countries there are multiple levels. When a team finishes low in their level they are "relegated" to a lower level and teams who did well at the lower level are raised to play in a higher level.

Public Law School Faculty Salaries

2010-07-12T09:18:00.000-07:00

See here for a list of law faculty salaries at Arizona State, Florida, George Mason, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri (Columbia), North Carolina, Ohio State, Rutgers (Camden & Newark), SUNY (Buffalo), Texas, UC-Berkeley, UC-Davis, UC-Irvine, UCLA, Virginia, William & Mary, and Wisconsin.

Making the Grades

2010-06-22T11:22:00.000-07:00

The New York Times reports that at least ten law schools have raised their grade curves in the last two years. The new rationale for this timeworn response is that students need a competitive edge in a tight job market and higher gpa, however contrived, is just the thing. Ironically, by outing the culprit law schools, the New York Times has probably reversed any advantage their students might

Do Law Schools Golf?

2010-06-10T09:19:00.000-07:00

I used to ask my students whether they would be golfers or football players when they graduated. The distinction I was trying to make was between golf, a sport in which players observe the rules and actually report themselves with they violate them, and football, where there are also rules but the idea is to bend them and disregard them and hope not to be caught. So, a lineman holds a charging

Collateral Damage

2010-06-01T08:42:00.000-07:00

Law schools have now engaged in the USN&WR battle for several years and the collateral damages is mounting. I used to rail against my law school's participation in the war but now wish the Dean would go nuclear, whatever that means.Most of the collateral damage is known to most of us. The biggest is huge publicity machines that turn out glossy magazine as schools fight for something comparable

Shameless self-promotion, part n.

2010-05-26T21:21:00.000-07:00

See here. Our book came out in print today.

U.S. News: Less Transparency = More Fairness

2010-05-20T14:28:00.000-07:00

Robert Morse today announced that, in response to evidence that law schools had been gaming its rankings, U.S. News would change the way it estimates the "Employment at 9 Months" measure for schools that decline to report that figure. Paul Caron offers some background here. Said Morse: "U.S. News is planning to significantly change its estimate for the at-graduation rate employment for

Over 100 Law School Commencement Speakers

2010-05-19T19:02:00.000-07:00

Here.

Did 16 Law Schools Commit Rankings Malpractice?

2010-05-11T06:59:00.000-07:00

Here.

U.S. News Law School Rankings: Judicial Clerkships

2010-05-07T05:21:00.000-07:00

Here.

The Hand Rule

2010-04-27T11:12:00.000-07:00

Judge Learned Hand famously opined that if the burdens of preventing an accident outweigh its cost multiplied by its probability, it does not constitute carelessness to avoid those burdens. Doesn't that little gem make you want to break out in song? I've got just the thing: The Hand Rule, a little ditty I recently composed and played for some students at Chapman Law School. Though I've yet to

2011 U.S News Peer Reputation Rankings & Overall Rankings

2010-04-16T05:52:00.000-07:00

Full list here.

Chapman Dean Search--No Kidding!

2010-04-01T12:58:00.000-07:00

We here in the sober and serious groves of academe have no time for foolishness, April 1st or not. So while you may think I jest in claiming that some very lucky person will soon get to become the new Dean of Chapman University School of Law, I assure you that I jest not. This good news comes straight from Chapman's Dean Search Committee (on which I happen to serve).Please consider this call

Size doesn't matter. Really.

2010-03-15T22:49:00.000-07:00

Once again it's tournament time. The NCAA men's basketball tournament always seems to bring MoneyLaw themes to the fore. This year is no exception.Consider this statistical study (.pdf download) by Scout.com of the factors that let talented players elude the major college teams of the six power conferences and slip down, so to speak, to the midmajors:Perhaps the most telling analysis in the

Just Go to This Cite

2010-03-15T08:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLC7Q3DTzi4

Well orchestrated

2010-02-28T13:12:00.000-08:00

From a former student's touching tribute to her violin teacher:Mr. K. pushed us harder than our parents, harder than our other teachers, and through sheer force of will made us better than we had any right to be. He scared the daylight out of us.I doubt any of us realized how much we loved him for it.

Power and Entitlement

2010-01-28T20:43:00.000-08:00

Nearly 5 years ago I wrote an article, "Law Faculty Ethics: Shirking, Capture and “The Matrix,”" 82 DETROIT MERCY LAW REVIEW 397 (2005), in which I identified the many ways I felt law professors were shirkers. I analogized it to regulatory capture in the sense that faculty who were supposed to govern law schools for the benefit of shareholders -- students, taxpayers, donors -- actually governed

My Favorite Motions

2010-01-05T21:15:00.000-08:00

Faculty meetings may have their charms, but efficiency does not rank among them. Many a time I have looked around a room full of my colleagues, long minutes into a winding discussion of what was supposed to take only a few moments to resolve, considered the full agenda still stretching before us, and bemoaned the deadweight social costs of law school governance. Allow me, then, to share a

Moneyball, Volleyball, and Faculty Productivity

2009-12-09T06:26:00.000-08:00

Here.

"Exploding Offers"

2009-12-09T05:55:00.000-08:00

Complaints about offers with deadlines perceived as short often ignore the realities facing non-top-tier schools and candidates.Early in the hiring season, top-tier candidates begin getting offers from mid- to upper-level schools. Often, such schools have a ranked list of candidates to whom their deans are authorized to make offers. If a school's faculty has authorized the dean to make offers to,

Hey Harvard

2009-12-04T05:59:00.000-08:00

I read that Harvard has abandoned its program that waived tuition in the third year for students committing to five years of public interest work.I appears that economic hardship required the change but the Harvard President is also quoted as saying they did not know how easy it would be to get Harvard students to go into public interest work.On the other hand the Harvard Crimson reports:"This

Big Law in Los Angeles

2009-12-02T11:26:00.000-08:00

Top 20 Suppliers of Partners to theTen Largest Law Firms in Los AngelesOver the Most Recent 25 and 10 Year Periods Most Recent 25 Years Most Recent 10 Years Loyola-L.A. 51 9UCLA 51 7Harvard 48 8USC

Paging Billy Beane: Scholarly Productivity Lowers Reputation But Raises Salary

2009-11-30T11:58:00.000-08:00

Details here.

Bill Belichick, Moneyball Savant?

2009-11-18T19:14:00.000-08:00

Here.

2010 Princeton Review Law School Rankings

2009-10-21T08:14:00.000-07:00

Over on TaxProf Blog, I have published a series of rankings based on data extracted from the individual profiles of the 172 law schools in the 2010 edition of the Princeton Review's Best 172 Law Schools (with the University of Cincinnati College of Law on the cover). The rankings are based on a survey of 18,000 students at the 172 law schools, along with school statistics provided by

Blind Salarying

2009-10-10T08:20:00.000-07:00

It annoys me when people create new verbs like the radio ad we have down here announcing the dealership is "clearancing." But now I have my own -- salarying, which means making decisions about salaries.At my school we blind grade which does not mean we cannot see the papers but that we do not know whose they are. The idea is that you might be inclined -- consciously or unconsciously to

Are We Worse than Thieves? What Rents are Law Professors and Law Schools Seeking?

2009-09-18T13:18:00.000-07:00

In his classic 1967 article on rent-seeking (which does not actually use the term because it had not been coined at that time) Gordon Tullock explained that the cost of theft was not that one person's property was taken by another. In fact, that transaction in isolation may increase welfare. The social costs were the reactions of those attempting to avoid theft and those refining their skills.

Huh?

2009-09-18T06:12:00.000-07:00

This is more properly a comment but since Moneylaw is close to dormant I decided to upgrade to an actual post. I read with interest the most recent posts about tax faculty rankings. I did this even though I have complained about drawing any inferences from the rankings other than SSRN may be pretty good at counting. Beyond my usual concerns about the emails we all get that we have made the top 10

New Tax Faculty Rankings

2009-09-17T07:01:00.000-07:00

Graduate Tax Faculty Rankings (Michigan is #1)Tax Professor Rankings (Louis Kaplow & Reuven Avi-Yonah are #1)Tax Faculty Rankings (Michigan is #1)Tax Faculty Metropolitan Area Rankings (Los Angeles is #1)

66% of the Time, Every Time

2009-09-07T10:50:00.000-07:00

When I began teaching economics something struck me during the first week. I knew a fair amount about economics -- much less than I thought -- but I had received not even a minute's worth of instruction on teaching. All I could think to do was read the book, more or less explain it in my own words using examples not in the book, and answer questions. There were no war stories for a first year

How Top-Ranked Law Schools Got That Way, Pt. 3

2009-08-30T23:30:00.000-07:00

Part one and part two of this series focused on the top law schools in U.S. News and World Report's 2010 rankings, offering graphs and analysis to explain why those schools did so well. This part rounds out the series by way of contrast. Here, we focus on the law schools that ranked 41-51 in the most recent USN&WR rankings, those that ranked 94-100, and the eight schools that filled out the

Best Value Law Schools

2009-08-27T06:35:00.000-07:00

The National Jurist has released its ranking of the Best Value Law Schools in the September 2009 issue:The National Jurist identified 65 law schools that carry a low price tag and are able to prepare their students incredibly well for today's competitive job market. In determining what makes a law school a "best value," we first looked at tuition, considering only public schools with an in-state

"Annual" Multiple Choice Testing Post

2009-08-26T13:15:00.000-07:00

It's been nearly two years since my "annual" post opposing multiple choice examinations for law students. The last one generated some good comments and can be found here. I still find the question intriguing. Before going on a bit, some basics. First, I am writing about machine graded exams; not multiple choice or true/false with explanation questions which are actually short essays that focus

How Top-Ranked Law Schools Got That Way, Pt. 2

2009-08-23T11:56:00.000-07:00

In the first post in this series, I discussed the mysterious distribution of maximum z-scores in the top two tiers of law schools in U.S. News & World Report's 2010 rankings, and focused on the top-12 schools to solve that mystery. In brief, among the very top schools, employment nine months after graduation" ("Emp9") varies too little to make much of a difference in the schools' overall scores,

How Top-Ranked Law Schools Got That Way, Pt. 1

2009-08-20T11:27:00.000-07:00

How do law schools make it to the top of the U.S. News & World Report rankings? USN&WR ranks law schools based on 12 factors, each of which counts for a certain percentage of a school's total score. Peer Reputation counts for 25% of each law school's overall score, for instance, whereas Bar Passage Rate counts for only 2%. More precisely, USN&WR calculates z-scores (dimensionless statistical

Transfer Fees

2009-08-17T08:31:00.000-07:00

I have not read Why England Lose: and other Curious Football Phenomena Explained by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski but this excerpt of a review of the book in the August 13th issue of the Economist caught my eye:"A third myth is that clubs cannot buy success. They can, so long as they spend on players’ wages rather than on transfers. Almost 90% of the variation in the positions of leading

Reforms Suggested by Modeling the Law School Rankings

2009-08-04T16:41:00.000-07:00

As I recently observed, the close fit between law schools' scores in U.S. News & World Report's rankings and the scores of those same schools in my model of the ranking "suggests that law schools did not try game the rankings by telling USN&WR one thing and the ABA . . . another." Since both Robert Morse, Director of Data Research for USN&WR, and the ABA Journal saw fit to comment on that

MoneyBall MoneyLaw

2009-07-29T05:40:00.000-07:00

When I heard they were making a movie based on MoneyBall I could not sleep just thinking about who would play the key roles in the obvious sequel, MoneyLaw. Would some of us have bit parts? Alas, the MoneyBall movie has been deeply back burnered and, I think this means the MoneyLaw movie is similarly delayed but probably only for a millennium or two.With respect to the actual Oakland A's there

Z-Scores in Model of 2010 USN&WR Law School Rankings

2009-07-23T12:23:00.000-07:00

If you want to know how U.S. News & World Report's law school rankings work, you'll want to know about z-scores. In very brief, z-scores measure how well each school performed relative to its peers, thereby establishing its rank. (See here for a fuller explanation.) My model of the rankings aims to recreate those z-scores, and thus the rankings themselves, by duplicating both the data and the

Accuracy of the Model of the 2010 USN&WR Law School Rankings

2009-07-22T11:57:00.000-07:00

I earlier offered a snapshot comparison of the scores generated by my model of the 2010 U.S. News & World Report law school rankings and the original. After Robert Morse, director of data research for USN&WR, asked me if I could quantify the fit between the two data sets, I realized that others might share his curiosity. Here, then, are the r-squared measures (more precisely, the squares of the

A Model of the 2010 USN&WR Law School Rankings

2009-07-16T16:03:00.000-07:00

As in every year since 2005, I this year again built a model of the law school rankings published by the U.S. News & World Report ("USN&WR"). Figuring out the rankings—the "2010" rankings, as USN&WR's calls them—proved especially trying this time around. USN&WR changed several parts of its methodology this year and the ABA, which distributes statistical data on which my model depends, fell far

A fresh take on rankings, redux

2009-07-04T11:03:00.000-07:00

I posted my latest thoughts on possible alternative rankings systems here. Would love your comments. Thanks, and happy 4th!

Moneyball: The Movie

2009-06-22T13:39:00.000-07:00

Details here.

Bill Gleason: Excellence within our means

2009-06-21T19:06:00.000-07:00

Bill Gleason of the University of Minnesota is the author of The Periodic Table and The Periodic Table, Too. He is an impassioned advocate for access, value, and integrity in higher education and — this must be said in the interest of full disclosure — an on-the-record fan of MoneyLaw. And again for the record, MoneyLaw is a big fan of Bill Gleason.Bill addressed the University of Minnesota's

Least complicated

2009-06-08T17:43:00.000-07:00

Least complicatedSome long ago when we were taughtThat for whatever kind of puzzle you gotYou just stick the right formula inA solution for every fool— Indigo Girls, Least Complicated, Swamp Ophelia (1994)Yes, there is a connection to law. Read all about it in The Cardinal Lawyer.

Follow J.C. Redbird on Twitter

2009-06-05T14:21:00.000-07:00

» Adapted from The Cardinal Lawyer «Twitter is a lightweight online platform that blends blogging and social networking. Its users "tweet" by answering a simple question: "What are you doing?" All answers are limited to 140 characters — the length of an SMS text message, minus 20 characters. Twitter has become a powerful weapon for marketing consumer goods, documenting brain surgery, and

With medium power comes no responsibility

2009-06-03T10:05:00.000-07:00

In his celebrated New York Times Magazine piece, The case for working with your hands, Matthew Crawford makes observations about middle managers that apply with full force to those of us who live academia's so-called "life of the mind":Often as not, [craftsmen's workplace] crises do not end in redemption. Moments of elation are counterbalanced with failures, and these, too, are vivid, taking

Frank: "So Far So Good"

2009-05-23T10:21:00.000-07:00

Of the people reading this, no more than a handful will have heard of Frank McCoy. He was my faculty colleague who passed away last night. He had not been active in some years but until the last few months he reported daily to his small cubby of an office about ten feet from mine.The passing of Frank (who in the last few years always said "so far so good" when asked how he was doing) made me

Child of Moneyball

2009-05-19T14:03:00.000-07:00

See here.

U.S. News to Correct Data, Not Rankings, of Brooklyn, Hawaii, and Nebraska

2009-05-08T06:10:00.000-07:00

See here.

Did 23 Law Schools Commit Rankings Malpractice?

2009-05-04T05:10:00.000-07:00

See here.

2010 U.S. News Law School Rankings

2009-04-27T04:03:00.000-07:00

Academic Peer ReputationLawyer/Judge Reputation

Law Schools on Steroids

2009-04-26T08:37:00.000-07:00

The annual USN&WR rankings and the inevitable controversy that follows, steroid use by baseball players, and a recent article in the New Yorker ("Brain Gain," April 27, 2009) have made me realize that I am not sure what it means to cheat. It's not that I do not regard lying as cheating but things get very blurry after that.You could say that cheating means everything that creates a perception

The SSRN blog

2009-04-25T16:07:00.000-07:00

Not every coblogger at MoneyLaw necessarily agrees, but I do appreciate SSRN. And now we can follow the SSRN blog. According to SSRN's electronic press release:[T]he SSRN Blog will provide updates regarding SSRN's eLibrary and services, weekly "Top Five" lists, and announcements of new networks, conferences, and presentations. It will also explore and share our perspective on issues such as

Get a "Gift Certificate"

2009-04-23T18:55:00.000-07:00

My goodness! It is rating season already. This year the students at my School find that they are not at the tied-for-46th rated school but at the 51st. And since we are reducing the class size, next year's will likely find they are back in the 40s. In the meantime, the teaching is the same, the scholarship the same and, I suspect, job placement will not change. And no one seems to take seriously

Early Release of 2010 U.S. Law School Rankings

2009-04-20T08:10:00.000-07:00

Although the 2010 U.S. News Law School Rankings are scheduled for release on Thursday, April 23, the Internet is abuzz with early copies -- these scans of the Top 100 (via The Faculty Lounge) appear legitimate. TaxProf Blog lists the biggest moves among the Top 50 and 51-100.

Wilkins Micawber, dean and professor of law

2009-04-11T13:21:00.000-07:00

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.— Wilkins Micawber in Charles Dickens, David CopperfieldI've held the title "dean and professor of law" for nearly a thousand days, long enough to make me chuckle whenever I'm introduced as "the University of

That don't impress me much

2009-04-09T14:32:00.000-07:00

Chatting with a friend elsewhere in legal academia reminded me: Shania Twain, That Don't Impress Me Much, Come on Over (1997), is an anthem for all seasons. Enjoy!

The University of Louisville's law alumni magazine

2009-03-19T06:40:00.000-07:00

The vast majority of MoneyLaw's readers will never see the University of Louisville's law alumni magazine. I don't believe in law porn. Even if I did, I don't have the money to transmit any substantial amount of law porn in interstate commerce. But I am proud of the magazine and invite you to download the 2008-09 edition.

Sun deviled

2009-03-16T21:14:00.000-07:00

Arizona State University Research ParkArizona State University, under president Michael Crow, aspired to become the New American University. ASU would enroll 100,000 students by 2020. It would eliminate disciplinary boundaries, spur research, fuel the economy, and serve the deserving and the underserved. Then the bottom dropped out:[President Michael Crow] increas[ed] enrollment by nearly a

"The best and the brightest"

2009-03-15T20:21:00.000-07:00

AIG has gotten more than $170 billion in bailout money from the Treasury and the Federal Reserve. And now AIG has paid about $165 million in bonuses to the executives who brought the company to its knees.A more politically foolish use of 0.1 percent of available cash can scarcely be imagined.AIG chairman Edward G. Liddy's defense of these bonuses may be even more outlandish:We cannot attract and