Blogging and Law School Rankings

It is a bit afield from our usual subject matter but I have posted a paper on the importance of blogging to the reputational rankings of law schools. The paper is here and the abstract is below. With all law schools constantly struggling to improve their rankings, particularly in US News, the mother of all law school rankings, the piece provides some insight into the role that law blogs might play in that process. The paper is in draft so if there are comments, please share them.

Blogs, Law School Rankings, and the Race to the Bottom

J. ROBERT BROWN Jr. University of Denver Sturm College of Law July 26, 2007 U Denver Legal Studies Research Paper No. 07-33

Abstract: Blogs are changing legal scholarship. Although not a substitute for the detailed, often intricately researched analysis contained in law reviews and other scholarly publications, they fill an important gap in the scholarly continuum. Blog posts can generate ideas and discussion that can be transformed into more a systematic and thorough paper or scholarly article. At the same time, blogs provide a forum for testing ideas once they are published in more traditional venues. While over time, a blog presence will likely become de rigueur for top scholars and law reviews, top tier schools as a group have not yet targeted blogs as a necessary component of scholarly activity. In the short term, therefore, blogs provide unique opportunities for faculty and law schools outside the top tier to enhance their reputational rankings. Blogs can enhance reputation by allowing faculty to route around some of the biases in law review placements and SSRN rankings that favor those at the top tier schools. Blogs also represent a cost effective mechanism for advertising scholarly activity. The paper discusses the evidence that blogs enhance reputation and surveys the way that scholars at law schools outside the top tier are already harnessing blogs to enhance their reputations. The paper also discusses what it takes to create a successful blog, from the search for content to the benefits of advertising. The paper finishes with a brief history of The Race to the Bottom, a corporate governance blog.