Law School Rankings, SSRN and Blogging
J. Robert Brown | Friday, June 20, 2008 at 11:00AM We are a corporate governance blog but sometimes can't help weighing in on the issue of law school rankings. I have written a paper on the subject that contends law blogging can help a law school's ranking: Of Empires, Independents, and Captives: Law Blogging, Law Scholarship, and law School Rankings.
In that regard, we note two interesting asides. The New York Times carried a piece on faculty rankings in the Social Science Research Network. This is a place where faculty can, for free, post papers and articles. Faculty are then ranked based upon the number of times their articles and papers are downloaded. It is a crude measure of influence, contains certain biases (certain legal areas seem to be downloaded more), and is generally bias in favor of the top ranked schools. All of this is spelled out in greater detail in my paper.
The article makes a couple of points worth repeating. First, "[b]loggers . . . tend to do well on the site, since they can promote their work and offer links to their articles." There is no doubt that a relationship can develop between downloads and blogging. We have run a number of posts on papers posted on SSRN and provided links to the papers. Particularly when providing posts over multiple days, the article always gets at least a modest increase in the number of downloads.
Second, the article rightfully notes that SSRN allows some scholars to circumvent the traditional gamekeepers for law scholarship.
- Time was that if you were a professor at a prestigious university you were, by definition, among the most read authors on a particular subject. And you would play a similar gatekeeper role through reviews of who else should be read on that subject. Compare that with the Social Science Research Network’s principles, as explained by Mr. Jensen. Anybody, anywhere in the world can put up a paper, he said.
It is certainly true that SSRN sidesteps some of the documented biases in current system of scholarship. In a system where the location or evaluation of relevant scholarship is an arduous task, most rely on sorting criteria to facilitate the process. Thus, it has long been recognized that law reviews at the top schools tend to select articles from faculty at top schools. In this way, law students who lack significant understanding of the subject matter of an article use the identity of the law school as a substitute for actually determining quality. As a result, faculty at lower ranked schools have trouble obtaining placements at top law reviews even when they right high quality articles.
SSRN eliminates barriers to entry by allowing almost any paper to be posted, without requiring a law student to screen the content. In that sense, it sidesteps some of the biases favoring top schools in the law review placement process. But SSRN has a different set of biases. As my paper indicates, almost all of the scholars ranked in the top 100 by downloads are from schools in the top 50, with most from schools in the top 20 (there are also a number of scholars in the top 100 associated with foreign universities). The data suggests that either the best work (based upon downloads) is performed by faculty at the top 50 law schools or that there is a top law school bias in SSRN as well. In my paper, I make the case that it is the latter. Top law schools, for example, typically have the resources to advertise new papers (emails to alumni, practicing attorneys) or develop centers that draw attention to the content of new papers. This impacts downloads.
As the NY Times article notes, one way to circumvent these biases is through blogging. Law blogging provides a cost effective way of advertising the existence of papers.
Reader Comments (1)
Larry Ribstein
June 22, 2008
The Third Year
On the third minute of the third hour of the third day God made the third year of law school. And God saw that it was good.
But then a heathen from the Northwestern part of the world looked upon the third year and banished it, or at least squeezed the three years into two. The Tribune spread the word across the land.
And the deacons of the faith, hearing of this horror, gaped in despair. "Irresponsible," cried one to the Tribune.
Perhaps the critics did not notice that the Northwestern heathen had actually added important content: Required courses in quantitative reasoning, covering accounting, finance and statistics, and teaching how to deliver legal services, including teaching teamwork, social networks, project management - all skills lawyers need.
Also, the program selects students with work experience for the program. This, plus the students' willingness to take on a more difficult task helps send a signal to future employers.
And even if the Northwestern heathen charges a full three years' tuition, the program reduces the effective cost of a legal education by enabling students to get a several-month head start on earning a lawyer's income.
So other voices could be heard in defense of the heathen. "Other schools are likely to follow," said GMU dean Dan Polsby to the Tribune. "I heartily endorse these changes. Well done, Northwestern!" cheered Gordon Smith.
Now some students will choose the traditional route, either because the two-year program is too hard, or because they don't want to miss the standard hiring cycle.
So this is simply an experiment. Will it work?
"What about relying on the market to answer this question?" asks Bill Henderson.
Amen.