Only one way to be "pre-eminent"?

I kept at my post in Room 3226 all day yesterday, serving as reporter for the curriculum discussion at the law school retreat. Gordon Smith was a discussion leader on the subject of how to be a "pre-eminent" law school. Here's his post, stating his view about what a law school needs to do to win the good opinion of outsiders: We need to publish a lot of articles in top law journals. Period!

No law school that I know of has become pre-eminent on the strength of teaching, clinics, community service, curricular innovation, specialty programs, etc. Each of these aspects of the law school product is important, to one degree or another, but they have very little impact on the wider reputation of a law school among law professors, judges, and practicing lawyers.

What about "non-traditional" scholarship, which may appear in obscure peer-reviewed journals or specialized monographs. This may be very valuable work to people who work in the specialized field, but the key issue when considering its effect on reputation is whether people outside the field notice. Does it connect with a broad range of legal scholars? If not, I suspect that it will have a negligable effect on the law school's reputation, at least as far as prospective students and many prospective faculty are concerned.

I wasn't in the "pre-eminent law school" room, so I lack information on how the Wisconsin Law School faculty actually responded, but, until I hear otherwise, I'm going to guess that Gordon's opinion was damned controversial.

Ours is a law school that prides itself on "non-traditional" scholarship. Hey! Does that include blogging?