"The National Jurist contains a law school ranking alternative to U.S. News & World Report..."

"... using the following methodology:"

Post-Graduate Success:  50%
Employment Rate:  22.5%
Super Lawyers:  12.5%
Partners in NLJ 200:  10%
Bar Passage:  5%

Student Satisfaction:  35%
RateMyProfessors.com:  20%
Princeton Review:  15%

Affordability and Diversity:  15%
Debt:  10%
Diversity:  5%

Some of those factors are incredibly lame/immensely manipulable, but I suppose I should like it because my school does well on it.

Massive support for Romney among lawprofs.

"Law Profs back President Obama over Mitt Romney 72% to 19%..."

19%! That's huge! I'm stunned!

Actually, it's not a very scientific poll, just a blog poll put up by lawprof Brian Leiter. Why would only lawprofs vote? I'm sure Leiter has non-lawprof readers. But what's most important is that Leiter's readers — lawprof or non-lawprof — probably skew left, even more than the usual group of lawprofs.

In which case: 19%! Wow! Huge!

We'll see what kind of "lawprof" result is achieved through a poll at lawprof Althouse's blog site:

Who's your choice for President?
	Gary Johnson
	Barack Obama
	Mitt Romney
	Jill Stein
pollcode.com free polls

Romney gave 30% of his 2011 income to charity — and declined to take the full charitable deduction they were entitled to.

Paul Caron reviews the Romneys' newly released tax return.

The Romneys’ generous charitable donations in 2011 would have significantly reduced their tax obligation for the year. The Romneys thus limited their deduction of charitable contributions to conform to the Governor's statement in August, based upon the January estimate of income, that he paid at least 13% in income taxes in each of the last 10 years.

So Romney voluntarily forked over more money to the federal government than he needed to because he didn't want the percentage to look too bad.

ADDED: Sorry for the typo in the headline. It's 30%, not 40%. He's not that generous.

"Tax Court Rejects Geithner/Turbo Tax Defense."

Notes TaxProf.

"The U.S. News Law School Rankings Are Out!"

"There’s a surprising amount of movement among the top law schools. And there are some interesting tidbits from elsewhere within the rankings," says David Lat.

Here's a list showing the various gains and losses in rank. (My school, Wisconsin, stays at the same place, #35, but we suffered a loss last year.) The University of Washington went up 10 spots to #20, Arizona [State] soared 14 places to 26. Meanwhile, Illinois plummeted to 35 (to join UW). There is pain in Austin, Texas (falling 3), and cheer in Georgetown, which climbed over Cornell.

Biggest loss in the top 10 is Michigan, falling 3 places to #10. Biggest top 10 gain is Berkeley, up 2 spots to 7. The coveted 2d and 3d places switch hands with Stanford popping up over Harvard.

At Wisconsin, we like to single out the "peer reputation ranking," and Paul Caron has broken out that list. We're #24 on that scale, which, we like to think, extracts the wealth factor.  If only we had more money to bulk up our other numbers, that's where we'd be overall. And: If only we'd go all hardcore on LSAT and GPA admissions instead of the soft factors, we'd be — who knows where? — up there with Texas. But why should we change? Let those other schools stop taking advantage of those factors!

Blah blah blah. If you're not a law school person, you're going to tell me how meaningless this all is. Why am I bothering you with this. If you are a law school person, you know this is our lifeblood. Our hated lifeblood. But our lifeblood nonetheless. It's a marketplace, and the currency is U.S. News ranking.

"[L]aw school is a very risky (and expensive) investment..."

"... it should not be entered into lightly."

That doesn't mean you shouldn't enter into it heavily.

#1.

Lawprof blog rankings.

(Blogs without Site Meter aren't counted. That's why there's no Instapundit. Otherwise, Instapundit would be #1 by a wide margin.)

"Anonymous Law Prof Behind Law School Scam Blog Outs Himself: Paul Campos."

Ha.

Paul is one of the bloggers at that blog I stopped linking to after they deleted all Meade's comments (Lawyers, Guns & Money). Here's what I wrote about the Anonymous Law Professor blog. I thought it was a student, because it had some bad writing and simplistic thinking.

Is the Anonymous Law Professor blog more important now that we know who it is? (Assuming you ever cared at all.)

IN THE COMMENTS:  somefeller said:

It was dumb for him to try to write anonymously/pseudonymously, because he already was a fairly well-known blogger who writes under his own name. That really added nothing to the conversation and if anything detracted from his points by creating a biographical whodunit...

I disagree. He got attention with the "Anonymous" tease, with an Inside Higher Ed article and lots of links and discussion. If it had just been Paul Campos's next diatribe, who would have cared? Maybe by the time he'd worked the whole thing into a book, with an impressive publisher — like his "Jurismania: The Madness of American Law," published by Oxford University Press — everyone would take the trouble to read and talk about it. But this way, he got lots of publicity for his project, right at the outset. He even got the eminent lawprofcrank Brian Leiter bellyaching about it. That was pretty rich. I'd say Paul Campos is doing just fine. He should keep up the graphomania, hook Oxford University Press again, and grasp the fame and money that comes from writing a pithy polemic that hits right in the zone as people question the value of a legal education.

"Anonymous Law Prof: 'Law Professors Are Scamming Their Students.'"

Paul Caron draws attention to a new blog, purportedly written by a law professor "at a Tier One school."

Sorry, I don't think this is a law professor. I think it's a law student. Why do I think this? Well, I remember the "Anonymous Lawyer" who was supposedly a partner at a big law firm. The blogger liked to talk about how contemptuously he treated underlings. It turned out the blogger was a law student with experience being one of those underlings as a summer associate in a law firm.

This new blog has the same feeling to me. The blog tries to take the perspective of the professor as he mistreats the students. It sounds like a student uncharitably projecting thoughts onto the professor:

Now I’m sure there are certain paragons of pedagogic virtue who conscientiously keep up with the latest legislative and judicial developments in the classes they teach – who spend countless hours pouring over new statutes and opinions and law review articles, to make sure that their knowledge of adverse possession or promissory estoppel or the felony murder rule is well and truly up to date. I don’t know too many law professors like that. The typical professor teaches the same classes year after year. Not only that -- he uses the same materials year after year. I’m not going to bother to count – this is law school after all, and we don’t do empirical research -- but I bet that more than half the cases I teach in my required first-year course were cases I first read as a 1L 25 years ago. After all I use the same casebook my professor used. I even repeat some of his better jokes (thanks Bill). And, with very few exceptions, I know nothing about the formal legal material that I haven’t gleaned from reading the casebook and the teaching manual. This is how much preparation I’m doing this summer for the classes I’ll teach this coming academic year: None. And that, I guarantee you, is the median amount of time law professors have spent over the past three months preparing for the classes they’re about to start teaching again.

First of all, I don't think a real law professor at a good school would write "pouring" for "poring."  But what also rings false is the lawprof's seeming knowledge of how all the other professors are preparing for class. I've never heard any lawprof admit he just reads the casebook and the teacher's manual. Asserting that as if he knows makes me suspect that he's faking a lot.

Now, let's see what some of the other blogs are saying? Do they suspect fakery? Orin Kerr says:

Some of the author’s posts are interesting, but then a lot of the claims are pretty hyperbolic. Plus, the idea of law professors blogging truthfully about being law professors is a large part of what law professor blogs have always been about, so I don’t quite get the “speaking truth to power” tone.

David Lat says:

Is it possible that LawProf isn’t really a law prof, but just a bitter and unemployed law grad masquerading as an academic? People have been known to misrepresent their identities on the internet. For example, I pretended to be a judge-obsessed woman working at a law firm, while blogging as Article III Groupie of Underneath Their Robes, when in reality I was a judge-obsessed man working as a federal prosecutor.

With respect to Inside the Law School Scam, it appears that this is not the case. First, the site has the ring of truth to it; there’s enough behind-the-scenes and historical knowledge about legal academia to suggest the author truly is a law professor. (If not a law prof, the writer has gone to an awful lot of trouble to sound like one.)

Yeah, too much trouble. A real lawprof blogging doesn't strain to sound like a lawprof.

(And, yes, I did see that Inside Higher Ed says: "He agreed to reveal his identity to Inside Higher Ed, and his description is accurate.")

UPDATE: Anonymous Law Prof outs himself as Paul Campos.

#1.

On the lawprof blogs ranking.

(Check out some of those other blogs, especially ones that are acquiring new readers. They might be kind of good.)

"[E]very state but Wisconsin and Nebraska (plus Washington, D.C.) is producing many more lawyers than it needs..."

Fascinating, but there's something about Wisconsin that the NYT doesn't know! And it's not that we've (apparently) gone crazy. It's that in Wisconsin, if you graduate from a Wisconsin law school — i.e., the University of Wisconsin or Marquette — you can have the "diploma privilege," which means you can join the bar without the pesky step of taking the bar exam. So if you're going to estimate the number of lawyers entering the Wisconsin bar by looking at the number of people who passed the bar, you're going to be ludicrously off!

Lawprof blog traffic rankings.

TaxProf keeps score.

Not all lawprofs display their Site Meter statistics. Everyone knows Instapundit is really #1. But I still enjoy looking like #1. I'm like Harvard, if Yale refused to play the U.S. News game.

ADDED: Professor Jacobson says: "I will continue to highlight blog rankings which show me in a good light. I will vigorously expose as complete frauds any blog rankings which do not meet that objective standard."

"Law Schools Award Merit Scholarships to Goose U.S. News Ranking, Then Take Them Away With Rigid Grading Curves."

Says Instapundit, linking (indirectly) to a NYT article, which I read, but chose not to link to because I couldn't think of anything that spiffy to say.

IN THE COMMENTS: John said:

That hed is actually the work of TaxProf, whom Instapundit links to.

Oops. There were no quotes around it, but Glenn does that a lot. If it's a hot link, it somehow counts as quotation marks. I notice it, because he does that to me too. Apologies to TaxProf.

Professor makes professor look woefully abused by leaving out the key phrase "on her hands."

Lawprof Paul Caron stirs us up with this:

Professor Arrested for Shutting Student's Laptop in Class

Frank J. Rybicki, an assistant professor of mass media at Valdosta State University, was arrested by campus police last week on a charge of battery after shutting the laptop of a student who was web surfing in class.

I click on one of the links and find this:

An assistant professor of mass media at Valdosta State University, in Georgia, was arrested last week on charges of battery after a confrontation with a student over extracurricular Web surfing during class led him allegedly to close the lid of the student’s laptop computer on her hands....

On her hands.

2010 Law Prof Blog Rankings.

Results are in for the full 12-month competition to be the most popular lawprof/set of lawprofs in all the land... with a publicly available Site Meter.

Firing a tenured law professor because he used the dean's name in hypotheticals?

It's hard to guess what the full story is here. (Via Taxprof.) The professor, Lawrence Connell, has, according to this report, authorized his lawyer, Thomas Neuberger, to talk to the press, and the school, Widener, has a confidentiality policy in personnel matters, so we're seeing Connell's version for the most part.

Lawprofs use hypotheticals all the time, and Connell put the name of the dean, Linda Ammons, in "at least 10" hypotheticals depicting her getting shot. Supposedly, "at least two students filed complaints with administrators, calling it violent, racist and sexist." Connell is white; Ammons is black. A letter from the vice dean refers to "an 'outgoing pattern' of misconduct,"* including "cursing and coarse behavior, 'racist and sexist statements' and 'violent, personal scenarios that demean and threaten your colleagues.'"

The linked article has this quote from Gregory F. Scholtz, associate secretary and director of the American Association of University Professors:

"Education is all about pushing the boundaries, and it's all about controversial ideas, but the question always is when does it cross the line... Given our modern culture and the violence that exists, you're really asking for trouble when you talk about killing people."

It looks like Scholtz is channeling some of the unscientific blather that surrounded the Tucson massacre: There's bad speech out there and then bad people do bad things and that's bad.

Look, if you're teaching criminal law, you use hypos that have people doing criminal things. Putting real names in the hypos might be funny or attention-getting or just stupid, but let's not get hysterical. Was the professor advocating that somebody shoot the dean? Obviously, not. Are the students so confused they don't get that? Impossible.

But I can understand how law school bureaucrats feel compelled to make a showing of caring deeply when students — even only 2 students — complain that a professor seems racist. I have seen that happen. It can be hard for the administration to negotiate its way through the maze of academic freedom and student opinion even when it is trying to do everything right and cares only about the appropriate values like intellectual excellence and a favorable "climate" for learning. But who knows what is really going on here? Are the students oversensitive, vindictive, or pursuing an ideological agenda? Is there some distorted notion that any criticism or making fun of the dean is a racial matter?

Neuberger said Kelly and Ammons offered to allow Connell to return to campus if he recanted statements students found offensive and underwent psychiatric evaluation.

That reminds me of the fallout over NPR's firing of Juan Williams — after he said something that made sensitive people feel he might be insufficiently tolerant. Maybe he should talk to his psychiatrist, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller said. It's a distancing move, undercutting serious inquiry into the statements that are being questioned. The statements are no longer anything to engage with, but evidence of the speaker's mental disorder. There are insiders and outsiders, and suddenly the speaker is the outsider, to be talked about, not talked with.

As for "recant[ing] statements students found offensive" — how do you recant a hypothetical? I know how I would recant a hypothetical: with great sarcasm. You know, these little stories I tell in class — vignettes, if you will — they are inventions — sheer flights of fancy. I like to call them hy-po-THET-ick-uhls... 

But Connell refused to recant, "believing it would amount to admitting racism, among other things." This is what happens. It's such a big deal to be accused of racism that it forces a hard-line denial. There's also a political angle here. Connell's lawyer is saying that Dean Ammons "wanted to get rid of a conservative professor." And now the story is out in the legal blogosphere. Instapundit says:

PROFESSOR MAY LOSE TENURE FOR “A pattern of inappropriate speech and behavior.” Wait, I thought that was what tenure was supposed to protect. Of course, it’s at Widener. But with tenure already under attack from education reformers, an object case that it doesn’t actually protect controversial speech would seem to be either valuable, or a dreadful mistake, depending on your perspective.

And now, we'll all talk about it. That link on "Widener" is important, as Glenn connects some dots and puts the school's larger reputation on the line. There aren't too many conservative law professors, but they've got very well-connected power on the internet. Deal fairly with them.

*ADDED: What's an "outgoing pattern"? I've heard of ongoing patterns. Was Connell perky and sociable and racist and sexist all at the same time?

Crowdsourced Law School Rankings v. U.S. News Peer Rankings.

Paul Caron identifies the law schools that most over-perform in the crowdsourced ranking: Michigan State, Baylor, Syracuse, South Carolina, Duquesne, Gonzaga...

Who knows why? I think people are just reacting to names. "Gonzaga"... that sounds cool. I'll pick Gonzaga.

Speaking of law school names, all the law schools have "School of Law" or "Law School" as part of their name. (Well, there's also "College of Law.") I've long thought "Law School" was better. It's spiffier. Omit needless words. I was a student at one of the "of law" law schools (NYU), and I teach at one of the "law school" law schools (Wisconsin), and I don't think my preference is any sort of home-team loyalty. It's all about style. For a long time, I thought my style preference was just picking the less verbose format — to be more sleek and modern. The "of law" business sounded a little pretentious and faux lofty.

Then yesterday, after all these years, I noticed the homophones. School of Law sounds like School o' Flaw. And Law School sounds like Law's Cool. It's funny. Why don't people hear what they are saying. When you're branding a product (or an institution), you need to listen to yourself. Look and listen.

By the way, Gonzaga's law school is officially called Gonzago University School of Law. See? They tried to go all fancy. It should just be Gonzaga Law School. On the other hand, does crowdsourcing lie? Yes, of course, but probably not with respect to the psychological impact of the name.

How did Althouse get to be #1 on the ranking of law prof blogs?

(Here are the rankings.)

So, then, how did this happen? Instapundit would unquestionably be #1, but Glenn had to take his public Site Meter down because it was interfering with ads. If you look at my Site Meter, Instapundit boosts my traffic. The other thing is that the first chart ranks by the number of page views, but if you scroll down, there is a second ranking by the number of visitors. On that second chart, I'm second (to The Volokh Conspiracy ). That has something to do with clicking into the comments threads. Not that the comments at Volokh aren't good, but there's a bit more action in the comments here, so a special thanks to the commenters here — along with all the readers who don't comment. You make blogging great fun for me.

"Will the new Forbes Law School Rankings reduce the influence of the U.S. News rankings?"

Asks Instapundit, linking here, and what's a harried law school applicant to think? Forget Harvard! I'm aiming for Williams Law School. And if I can't get into Williams, here's hoping for Princeton Law School — good old Princeton Law School. It's always been so well thought of! *

Now, I can see that way down at the bottom of his post — the one headed "Forbes Law School Rankings" and displaying a list of 50 schools that are not law schools — TaxProf gets around to saying:

Forbes reportedly is at work on its first law school rankings, based in part on an alumni survey and salary information (immediately after graduation and five years out), which Forbes will use to produce a "return on investment."

An interesting calculation. I can already hear the lawprofs' complaints about penalizing schools that support students going into public service. Ah, but here at Wisconsin, the tuition is relatively low. Let's see how we rank, relative to our U.S. News ranking, before we snipe at Forbes. That was my first thought, and I'll bet it's the way most lawprofs think.

***

* That sent me looking for a quote I remember about how well the nonexistent Princeton Law School would rank in any survey of the reputation of law schools. Ah, here it is: a 1998 NYT article by Jan Hoffman — I love Jan Hoffman! — about the problems with the U.S. News rankings:

The deans said that law schools should not be ranked at all.... They protested the reputation questionnaires, which ask respondents their opinion of all the law schools in the country.

''If they were asked about Princeton Law School, it would appear on the top 20 -- but it doesn't exist,'' said John Sexton, dean of New York University's law school.

***

ADDED: A propos of my anticipated criticism of the Forbes ranking, I feel I must reference this oft-referenced Michelle Obama speech:

And I went from college to law school to a big ol' fancy law firm where I was making more money than both of my parents combined. I thought I had arrived....

.... and I had to ask myself whether, if I died tomorrow, would I want this to be my legacy, working in a corporate firm, working for big companies? And when I asked myself the question, the resounding answer was, absolutely not. This isn't what I want to leave behind, this isn't why I went to Princeton and Harvard, this isn't why I was doing what I was doing. I thought I had more to give.

So people were quite surprised when I told them at the firm that I was going to leave this big lucrative paycheck behind and a promising career, and go on to do something more service-oriented....

Also, there's Lionel Hutz...



... he went to Princeton Law School.

The new lawprof blog rankings.

Check out the current standings in the endless struggle for dominance (or at least for the treasured rank of #2) and find some new links to click on.