Per Capita Productivity of Articles in Top Journals, 1993-2008
Law Schools Outside U.S. News Top 50

THE TOP 40 LAW SCHOOLS

1.Yale University (18.46)
2. Harvard University (14.32)
3. Boston University (8.77)
4. Roger Williams University (6.27)
5. Boston College (5.65)
6. University of Connecticut (4.21)

7. University of Maine (3.21)
8. Quinnipiac University (3.08)
9. Northeastern University (2.76)
10. New England School of Law (2.00)
11. Western New England College (1.73)
12. Suffolk University (1.38)
13. Vermont Law School (1.28)

Methodology

This study was conducted during the summer of 2008. The objective was to create a unique dataset – an inventory of the scholarly output in top law journals of the faculties at “non-elite” law schools. That  dataset provides objective information to assess the relative strength of the “non-elite” schools in one form of scholarly research. It is the basis for the ranking of “Per Capita Productivity of Articles in Top Journals, 1993-2008: Law Schools Outside the U.S. News Top 50.”  In that ranking we compare the scholarly output in selected journals of all law schools that are ABA-accredited, members of the Association of American Law Schools, and were ranked below the 50th spot in the U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT 2009 Rankings.  

In addition, we included in the dataset an identical inventory of the output of several faculties at law schools generally considered more “elite.” That information is included in the ranking of “Per Capita Productivity in Top Journals, 1993-2008: New England Law Schools.” In that ranking we compare the output of the faculties at all law schools in New England that are ABA-accredited and members of the Association of American Law Schools.

To build the dataset we employed the methodology used by Professor Brian Leiter in his study of per capita faculty productivity based on articles in top journals. Professor Leiter focused exclusively on schools he determined might likely rank in the top 50 nationally, see Brian Leiter, Measuring the Academic Distinction of Law Faculties, 29 J. LEGAL STUD. 451, 461-68 (2000)(describing the methodology and results); http://www.leiterrankings.com/faculty/2000faculty_product_journals.shtml (same), which created a void we hope our study will fill.

For each school we studied, we considered faculty listed in the 2007-2008 AALS DIRECTORY OF LAW TEACHERS, eliminating all emeritus faculty and all faculty members with library, clinical, or legal writing titles. The resulting faculty lists, like Professor Leiter’s, were intended to include all full-time tenured and tenure-track academic faculty in 2007-2008 who were expected to produce scholarship as a major part of their duties.

The names on each list were then searched in the Westlaw JLR database as AU (“Law Professor Name”).   In Professor Leiter’s study, qualifying articles were those that appeared in what he determined were the 20 leading law journals. For our study, in light of the reality of where faculty who are not at "elite" law schools publish their work, we modified his methodology.  We included the general law reviews published by the 54 schools receiving the highest peer assessment scores in the 2008 U.S. NEWS RANKINGS (47 schools had a peer assessment score of 2.9 or higher; 7 had a score of 2.8) and an additional 13 journals that appear in the top 50 of the Washington & Lee Law Journal Combined Rankings. An alphabetical listing of those journals can be found on this website, as can the U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT RANKINGS and Washington & Lee Law Journal Combined Rankings on which that list of 67 journals is based.

Qualifying articles were those published since 1993.  (Of course, forthcoming articles could not be included – if an article did not appear in Westlaw by August 1, 2008, it was not included in the study). For each qualifying article, we used Professor Leiter’s system: 0 points for articles under 6 pages; 1 point for articles 6-20 pages in length; 2 points for articles 21-50 pages in length; and 3 points for articles exceeding 50 pages. For articles appearing in a journal published by the faculty member’s home institution, the points assigned were reduced by one-half. The total number of points for all members of a faculty was divided by the number of faculty, yielding the institution’s per capita score.

In mid-August, we sent an e-mail to each dean and associate dean at the schools covered by the study, informing them of the study and inviting them to review the preliminary results for their faculty. We attached to the e-mail a spreadsheet with results for each faculty member at that school, total points, and the school's per capita score.  Schools were asked to inform us of any errors in the preliminary data by September 1st. Over half the 118 schools we studied responded, and we adjusted our preliminary findings accordingly. The final rankings were derived from the corrected dataset.