MoneyLaw

2010 Princeton Review Law School Rankings

2009-10-21T11:14:00.003-04:00

Over on TaxProf Blog, I have published a series of rankings based on data extracted from the individual profiles of the 172 law schools in the 2010 edition of the Princeton Review's Best 172 Law Schools (with the University of Cincinnati College of Law on the cover). The rankings are based on a survey of 18,000 students at the 172 law schools, along with school statistics provided by administrators.

Blind Salarying

2009-10-10T11:20:00.014-04:00

It annoys me when people create new verbs like the radio ad we have down here announcing the dealership is "clearancing." But now I have my own -- salarying, which means making decisions about salaries.

At my school we blind grade which does not mean we cannot see the papers but that we do not know whose they are. The idea is that you might be inclined -- consciously or unconsciously to grade some agreeable people higher and others lower. And then there is the halo effect that may influence the grade you give someone who was really great in class but did not do so well on the exam.

If you think law school Deans are unaffected by personal views and halo effects, you are asking too much and I have some swamp land for sale in Forida. Thus, shouldn't law schools consider blind salarying? There is a difference, though, between deans and graders. Deans are closer to elected officials than most other professionals I know of. For elected officials the first priority is to do what is necessary to keep the job or, in deanspeak, not have a "failed deanship." In the "what is necessary" department I have seen some doozies including the world record one that was in this very sentence until my better judgment, in one of its rare appearances, said "Don't do it."

Blind salarying would mean salaries would be based on an objective assessment of productivity. I don't think that could be achieved by blotting off the names on yearly reports because Deans -- unlike faculty grading papers -- will know who did what. So, the blind grading should be done by a third party -- say a special committee of the AALS that analyzes faculty performance from each school each year and files a report -- almost like a big arbitration but there are are no "sides."

I fear some readers may not know that I realize this is unworkable. In the last AALS listing that included a category for Objective Law Professors there were only 27 entries and that was in 1955. Can you imagine what would happen today with blind salarying. The quality of work would depend largely on whether the reviewer agreed (as it probably did in 1955).

Aside from the objectivity matter, how would we define productivity? Here this a little more hope because we could at least agree on what it is not. There would be no correlation between salary and:

1. Unquestioning loyalty to the dean whether in the form of formal membership in the administration or cheer leading.

2. Threats to leave when one has tried and can not scare up an offer.

3. Threats to leave that the dean feels would make him or her look bad. This is very different from a departure that would actually damage the law school.

4. Never having uttered a public word in opposition to the dean.

5. Whining, butt-kissing and office visits to the dean. In fact salaries would be inversely related to the amount of time in the dean's office or on the phone with the dean.

6. Ingratiating efforts in the form of "advising" the dean on what is really going on with the faculty that she should know about not because she needs to know but because you want her to know you are on her side. Yes, I am talking about the self-appointed confidants.

7. Complaining about how overworked you are. On this I have a story. One semester a few first year teachers were asked to teach two 4 credit sections of the same course in the same semester. So, 8 hours in the semester. I did it and and I have to confess it was the easiest teaching load I ever hand. Eight of my 9 hour yearly teaching load (actually 10 that year) was taken care of with one preparation that I had done for years. The howling in the halls from others was deafening and you can bet the Dean was reminded every week of how they were going beyond what is expected. Of course, maybe they were craftier than I think and they were pulling the old "briar patch" trick.

8. Race, gender or sexual preference.

Maybe I have this all wrong and what we need is not blind salarying but X ray salarying. Here the dean would be required not simply to assess what the faculty member does that is obvious but what good and bad things actually go on. Is the faculty member a constant source of stress by virtue of gossip, exaggerations, and unwanted office visits? Very often the ingratiator is also a stress producer because he is so self absorbed he is not content to let the teaching and writing speak for itself.

Are We Worse than Thieves? What Rents are Law Professors and Law Schools Seeking?

2009-09-18T16:18:00.010-04:00

In his classic 1967 article on rent-seeking (which does not actually use the term because it had not been coined at that time) Gordon Tullock explained that the cost of theft was not that one person's property was taken by another. In fact, that transaction in isolation may increase welfare. The social costs were the reactions of those attempting to avoid theft and those refining their skills. Richard Posner extended the analysis when he wrote about the costs of monopoly. Again, it was not that some became richer at the expense of others but that enormous sums were invested in bringing about the redistribution. In neither case do the rent seeking, social-cost-producing efforts create new wealth.

Still, in the case of Tullock and Posner the social costs were at least about something. There was a "there" there in the form of a chunk of wealth to bicker over. But now we come to law professors and law schools.

Law professor efforts to self-promote have exploded. Included are repeated visits to the Dean asking for one thing or another, resume padding, massive mailings of reprints, posting SSRN download rankings, or, even better, emailing 200 friends asking them to download a recently posted article, churning out small symposia articles because deans often want to see lines on resumes as opposed to substance, playing the law review placement game, and just plain old smoozing ranging from name dropping to butt kissing. Very little of this seems designed to produce new wealth. If fact, think of the actual welfare-producing activities that could be undertaken with the same levels of energy -- smaller classes, more sections of needed courses, possibly even research into areas that are risky in terms of self promotion but could pay off big if something new or insightful were discovered or said. But this is the part that puzzles me. Whether the thief in Tullock's case or monopolist in Posner's, the prize is clear. What is the prize for law professors? Are these social costs expended to acquire rents that really do not exist or are only imagined? What are the rents law professors seek?

Law schools make the professors look like small potatoes when it comes to social costs. Aside from hiring their own graduates to up the employment level, they all employ squads of people whose jobs are to create social costs (of course, most lawyers do the same thing), produce huge glossy magazines that go straight to the trash, weasel around with who is a first year student as opposed to a transfer student or a part time student, select students with an eye to increasing one rating or another, and obsess over which stone is yet unturned in an effort to move up a notch. I don't need to go through the whole list but the point is that there is no production -- nothing socially beneficial happens. That's fine. The same is true of Tullock's thief and Posner's monopolist. But again, and here is the rub. What is the rent the law schools seek? Where is the pie that they are less interested in making bigger than in just assuring they get the biggest slice possible? What is it made of?

At least thieves and monopolists fight over something that exists. And they often internalize the cost of that effort. Law professors and law schools, on the other hand, may be worse. They do not know what the prize actually is; they just know they should want more; and the costs are internalized by others.

Huh?

2009-09-18T09:12:00.006-04:00

This is more properly a comment but since Moneylaw is close to dormant I decided to upgrade to an actual post. I read with interest the most recent posts about tax faculty rankings. I did this even though I have complained about drawing any inferences from the rankings other than SSRN may be pretty good at counting.

Beyond my usual concerns about the emails we all get that we have made the top 10 in one of SSRN's zillions of categories and its use of our works to sell advertising, I am also concerned about what those who post the lists believe they are communicating. I do not mean to pick just on the most recent tax listings because I have seen this with other listings.

I see two problems but maybe I am misunderstanding. As I understand it, a tax professor with, say, 10,000 downloads may have written a couple of tax articles that were moderately downloaded and then have 8000 downloads in other areas. In effect, the number of downloads, if it means anything, does not mean how widely downloaded (much less read or relied on) that author was as a tax professor. If you doubt this take a look at the downloads for the top two tax professors and see how many of the articles are actually tax articles. It would be possible to write one article on tax that was downloaded once and be ranking as at the top and, in fact, pull the entire tax department with you. I seems to me that any school wishing to move up could just ask its most downloaded scholar in any field to allow him or herself to be listed as a tax professor and added as a coauthor to one article. Am I wrong on this? By the way this is the charitable interpretation because I cannot tell whether to be considered one has to be a self-professed tax professor and have uploaded a tax article in the past year or just pass one of these tests. If it is the latter, any inferences to be drawn are even more sketchy.

The second problem is with the totals for schools. Isn't this somehow influenced by the size of the school and the number of people there who teach tax? Why not take the downloads of actual tax articles and divide by the number of tax faculty. And, of course, even this leaves out other types of works.

My sense is that if these SSRN rankings were subject to some kind of truth in advertising standards they would be found to be misleading because they seem to have so little to do with the actual tax productivity of a tax faculty or even the interest others have in that faculty's output. And, if the thought that goes into these postings were found in a scholarly article I doubt it would be publishable. In fact, the only place I have seen a similar willingness to stray from what would be acceptable care as a scholar is when academics perform as expert witnesses.

New Tax Faculty Rankings

2009-09-17T10:01:00.002-04:00

Graduate Tax Faculty Rankings (Michigan is #1)
Tax Professor Rankings (Louis Kaplow & Reuven Avi-Yonah are #1)
Tax Faculty Rankings (Michigan is #1)
Tax Faculty Metropolitan Area Rankings (Los Angeles is #1)

66% of the Time, Every Time

2009-09-07T13:50:00.011-04:00

When I began teaching economics something struck me during the first week. I knew a fair amount about economics -- much less than I thought -- but I had received not even a minute's worth of instruction on teaching. All I could think to do was read the book, more or less explain it in my own words using examples not in the book, and answer questions. There were no war stories for a first year teacher of microeconomic theory. One thing that gradually occurred to me is that a knowledge of economics, and then later of law, only accounted for about 66% of what I did as a teacher. And it also occurred me that while students see the professor while he or she is teaching, they only witness about 66% of what goes into teaching.

Other courses, common sense, and day to day experiences inform teaching yet their importance remains behind the scenes. One of the most useful courses I took was a required freshman level course in logic. I am not sure it is required or even offered any more but it did mean that I do not confuse causation and correlation. It also meant that I do my best to correct students who reason like this: "The professor does not need to take role because I attend regularly" Bizarre, right? But I have heard the very same "reasoning" from law professors. For example, "There is no need to have a rule requiring professors to take role because I already take role." I assume professors finding this acceptable also find it acceptable in class.

And then there was statistics. There I learned the difference between reliability and validity. Reliability means the tool you are using when applied to the same data gives you the same result. Validity means the tool is actually testing what you are intending to test. If you've got a tape measure that has been stretched it may consistently measure your waist at 32 inches even though is is 36 inches around. It's just not a valid test of your girth, although can surely be a source of great happiness.

The meaning of a normal distribution also came up and can be understood in the context of reasoning I have heard twice lately: "My method of testing is valid because it produced a normal distribution." I most recently heard this from someone administering a law exam to people with widely varying knowledge of English. The normal distribution means nothing about the validity of the test. My guess is that what she was testing was the ability to understand English. The normal distribution fixation is particularly odd. If the students in the class are normally distributed then, hopefully, the test result will reflect that. On the other hand, getting a normal distribution does not mean the same is true of the class itself. In fact, a normal distribution could just as easily cause concern about the test. Normal distributions are, however, convenient when grades must be assigned.

And now back to logic. Remember your high school math classes. Some teachers said to show your work and then gave you credit if you got everything thing right except, say, the final step. Others just machine graded.The problem is this. In most complex math problems there are many ways to get a wrong answer. Some reveal that the test taker did not have a clue. Some reveal that the test taker forgot to carry the one on the last step. The machine grader gives them the same credit although their knowledge and understanding are quite different. The teacher who requires the student to show his or her work makes a distinction because there is a distinction. Of course, the same is true in law where the issues are not simply complex but more nuanced.

This also relates to the point that students see only about 66% of what goes into teaching. Suppose you give a machine graded exam and there are 10 reasons that could explain a wrong answer. If most of the students are getting it wrong for the same reason, it suggests an opportunity to improve one's teaching the next term. (Unless, of course, the goal is not really to teach but to get a good distribution.) I assume the machine graded test givers just plow along without pin pointing the problem which may reflect their teaching as much as student diligence.

The all time prize for irrational testing actually goes to essay test givers who say something like "Answer 3 of the next 5 questions." There are many combinations of 3 out of 5 and each one represents a different test. In addition, a student could get an 80 of 100 on all five and do worse than a student who scores and 85 on three but would have scored a 60 on the other two. Pretty simple, right? This is, however, popular with the students and you know where that can lead.

I would not want to confuse causation and correlation but there is pattern. All of the reasoning that, at least to me, seems in error does make the lives of those making the errors easier. Could it be that reasoning is driven by convenience and self-interest?

How Top-Ranked Law Schools Got That Way, Pt. 3

2009-08-31T02:30:00.001-04:00

Part one and part two of this series focused on the top law schools in U.S. News and World Report's 2010 rankings, offering graphs and analysis to explain why those schools did so well. This part rounds out the series by way of contrast. Here, we focus on the law schools that ranked 41-51 in the most recent USN&WR rankings, those that ranked 94-100, and the eight schools that filled out the bottom of the rankings.

The above chart shows the weighted and itemized z-scores of law schools about 1/3rd of the way from the top of the 2010 USN&WR rankings. Note the sharp downward jog at Over$/Stu—a residual effect, perhaps, of the stupendously large Over$/Stu numbers we earlier saw among the very top schools. Note, too, that three schools here—GMU, BYU, and American U.—buck the prevailing trend by earning lower scores under PeerRep than under BarRep (GMU's line hides behind BYU's). As you work down from the top of the rankings, GMU offers the first instance of that sort of inversion; all of the more highly ranked schools have larger itemized z-scores for PeerRep than for BarRep. It raises an interesting question; Why did lawyers and judges rank those schools so much more highly than fellow academics did?

The above chart shows the weighted, itemized z-scores of the law schools ranked 94-100 in the 2010 USN&WR rankings—about the middle of all of the 182 schools in the rankings. As we might have expected, the lines bounce around more wildly on the left, where they trace the impact of the more heavily weighted z-scores, than on the right, where z-scores matter relatively little, pro or con. Beyond that, however, no one pattern characterizes schools in this range.

The above chart shows the weighted and itemized z-scores of law schools that probably did the worst in the 2010 USN&WR rankings. I say, "probably," because USN&WR does not reveal the scores of schools in the bottom two tiers of its rankings; these eight schools did the worst in my model of the rankings. Given that uncertainty, as well as for reasons explained elsewhere, I decline to name these schools.

Here, as with the schools at the very top of the rankings, we see a relatively uniform set of lines. All of the lines trend upward, of course. These schools did badly in the rankings exactly because they earned strongly negative z-scores in the most heavily weighted categories, displayed to the left. Several of these schools did very badly on the Emp9 measure, and one had a materially poor BarPass score. Another of them did surprisingly well on Over$/Stu, perhaps demonstrating that, while the very top schools boasted very high Over$/Stu scores, no amount of expenditures-per-student can salvage otherwise dismal z-scores.

[Crossposted at Agoraphilia, MoneyLaw.]

Best Value Law Schools

2009-08-27T09:35:00.001-04:00

The National Jurist has released its ranking of the Best Value Law Schools in the September 2009 issue:

The National Jurist identified 65 law schools that carry a low price tag and are able to prepare their students incredibly well for today's competitive job market. In determining what makes a law school a "best value," we first looked at tuition, considering only public schools with an in-state tuition less than $25,000, and private schools with an annual tuition that comes in under $30,000. We then narrowed the playing field again by including only schools that had an employment rate of at least 85% and a school bar psasage rate that was higher than their state average. We then ranked schools, giving greatest weight to tuition, followed closely by employment statistics.

For a chart of the Top 25 Value Law Schools, and a chart of the Top 65 Value Law Schools with their corresponding U.S. News rank, see here.

"Annual" Multiple Choice Testing Post

2009-08-26T16:15:00.005-04:00

It's been nearly two years since my "annual" post opposing multiple choice examinations for law students. The last one generated some good comments and can be found here. I still find the question intriguing. Before going on a bit, some basics. First, I am writing about machine graded exams; not multiple choice or true/false with explanation questions which are actually short essays that focus the students on specific topics. Second, I am not really writing about the mixed exam in which some "objective" (what a crazy thing to call them) questions are included with the essays. Third, I sincerely want the multiple choice machine graded (MCMG) supporters to be right. I hate grading more than anything else associated with my job. Finally, I think the whole matter presents a wonderful opportunity to examine self governance. More specifically, has anyone actually studied the effects of MCMG exams as opposed to essay exams or is the trend toward MCMG exams strictly a matter of convenience?

Here is what I like to know: If you use MCMG aren't you teaching a different course than if you use essay exams. I am not saying the teacher is doing anything differently but aren't the students "hearing" and making note of different things? Which course should be taught?

Do teachers at the fancy schools use MCMG exams? If so, does that mean the today's law schools are hiring people who are good at MCMG exams? If so, is that reflected in their teaching, testing and ultimately their evaluation of today's students?

What does it mean when someone defends MCMG by saying it produced a "great curve" or a "normal distribution." Does that mean the students were tested on the right things, whatever they are? I suppose you would get a normal distribution if you used a soft-ball throwing contest.

What does it mean when someone defends MCMG by saying the same students do well on both types of tests. What is the connection between that and what they are learning and teaching effectiveness?

Has anyone using MCMG exams actually studied how to write "good" multiple choice questions?
As a comment to my last post on this, Nancy Rappaport had some interesting views.

If you use MCMG exams, how do you perform the diagnostic element of teaching and testing? By that I mean the process of identifying individual and group weaknesses in reasoning and expression so you can adjust your teaching the next time around.

Having said all this and revealed my distrust if MCMG exams, I realize that some of the same questions could be asked about essay exams. What is the connection between good essay exam writing and a student's potential as an attorney, judge or law professor? I think I have a better chance of spotting the ones with great potential when they are forced to reveal themselves in an essay. But, that too has not been tested. In effect, our testing needs to be tested.

At one level what worries me the most is the thought that if essay exams could be graded even faster than MCMG exams, a fair number of law professors would switch back and then defend the new position as consistent with good teaching and evaluation.

How Top-Ranked Law Schools Got That Way, Pt. 2

2009-08-23T14:56:00.003-04:00

In the first post in this series, I discussed the mysterious distribution of maximum z-scores in the top two tiers of law schools in U.S. News & World Report's 2010 rankings, and focused on the top-12 schools to solve that mystery. In brief, among the very top schools, employment nine months after graduation" ("Emp9") varies too little to make much of a difference in the schools' overall scores, whereas overhead expenditures/student ("Over$/Stu") varies so greatly as to almost swamp the impact of the other factors that USN&WR uses in its rankings. Here, in part two, I focus on the top 22 law schools in USN&WR's 2010 rankings. In addition to the Emp9 and Over$/Stu effects observed earlier, this wider study uncovers some other interesting patterns.

The above graph, "Weighted & Itemized Z-Scores, 2010 Model, Top-22 Schools," offers a snapshot comparison of how a wide swath of the top schools performed in the most recent USN&WR rankings. It reveals that the same effects we observed earlier, among just the top-12 schools, reach at least another ten schools down in the rankings. With the exception of Emory and Georgetown, Emp9 scores (indicated by the dark blue band) barely change from one top-22 school to another. Over$/Stu scores, in contrast (indicated by the middle green hue), vary widely; compare Yale's extraordinary performance on that measure with, for instance, Boston University's.

This graph also reveals some other interesting effects. Like the Emp9 measure, the Emp0 measure (for "Employment at Graduation," indicated in yellow-green) varies little from school to school. Indeed, it varies even less than the Emp9 measure does. Why so? Because all of these top schools reported such high employment rates. All but Minnesota reported Emp0 rates above 90%, and all but Georgetown, USC, and Washington U. reported rates above 95%.

These top 22 schools also reported very similar LSATs. Their weighted z-scores for that measure, indicated here in light blue, range from only.20 to .15. The weighed z-scores for GPA, in contrast, marked in dark green, range from .24 to .06.

As the graph indicates, the measures worth 3% or less of a school's overall score—student/faculty ratio, acceptance rate, Bar exam pass rate, financial aid expenditures/student, and library volumes and equivalents—in general make very little difference in the ranking of these schools. One exception to that rule pops up in the BarPass scores (in dark orange) of the California schools, which benefit from a quirk in the way that USN&WR measures Bar Pass rates. Another interesting exception appears in Harvard's Lib score (in white)—only thanks to its vastly larger law library does Harvard edge out Stanford in this ranking.

To best understand how a few law schools made it to the top of USN&WR's rankings, we should contrast their performances with those of the many schools that did not do as well. I'll thus sample the statistics of the law schools that ranked 41-51 in the most recent USN&WR rankings, those that ranked 94-100, and the eight schools that filled out the bottom of the rankings. Please look for that in the next post.

[Crossposted at Agoraphilia, MoneyLaw.]

How Top-Ranked Law Schools Got That Way, Pt. 1

2009-08-20T14:27:00.002-04:00

How do law schools make it to the top of the U.S. News & World Report rankings? USN&WR ranks law schools based on 12 factors, each of which counts for a certain percentage of a school's total score. Peer Reputation counts for 25% of each law school's overall score, for instance, whereas Bar Passage Rate counts for only 2%. More precisely, USN&WR calculates z-scores (dimensionless statistical measures of relative performance) for each of the 12 factors for each school, multiplies those z-scores by various percentages, and sums each school's weighted, itemized z-scores to generate an overall score the school. USN&WR then rescales the scores to run from 100 to zero and ranks law schools accordingly.

In earlier posts I described my model of the most recent U.S. News & World Report law school rankings (the "2010 Rankings"), quantified its accuracy, and published itemized z-scores for the top two tiers of schools. (Separately, I also suggested some reforms that might improve the rankings.) Studying those z-scores reveals a great deal about how the top-ranked law schools got that way. The lessons hardly jump out from the table of numbers, though, so allow me to here offer some illustrative graphs.

The above graph, "Weighted & Itemized Z-Scores of Top 100 Law Schools in Model of 2010 USN&WR Rankings," reveals an interesting phenomenon. The items on the left of the graph count for more of each school's overall score, whereas the items on right count for less. We would thus expect the line tracing the maximum weighted z-scores for each item to drop from a high, at PeerRep (a measure of a school's reputation, worth 25% of its overall score), to a low, at Lib (a measure of library volumes and equivalents, worth only .75%). Instead, however, the maximum line droops at Emp9 (employment nine months after graduation) and soars at Over$/Stu (overhead expenditures per student). The next graph helps to explain that mystery.

The above graph, "Weighted & Itemized Z-Scores, 2010 Model, Top-12 Schools," reveals two notable phenomena. First, the Emp9 z-scores, despite potentially counting for 14% of each school's overall score, lie so close together that they do little to distinguish one school from another. In practice, then, the Emp9 factor does not really affect 14% of these law schools' overall scores in the USN&WR rankings. (Much the same holds true of top schools outside of these 12, too.)

Second, the Over$/Stu z-scores range quite widely, with Yale having more than double the score of all but two schools, Harvard and Stanford, which themselves manage less than two-thirds Yale's Over$/Stu score. That wide spread gives the Over$/Stu score an especially powerful influence on Yale's overall score, making it almost as important as Yale's PeerRep score and much more important than any of the school's remaining 10 z-scores. In effect, Yale's extraordinary expenditures per student buy it a tenured slot at number one. (I observed a similar effect in last year's rankings.)

Other interesting patterns appear in "Weighted & Itemized Z-Scores, 2010 Model, Top-12 Schools." Note, for instance, that Virginia manages to remain in the top-12 despite an unusually low Over$/Stu score. The school's strong performance in other areas makes up the difference. Though it is not easy to discern from the graph, Virginia's reputation and GPA scores fall in the middle of these top-12 schools' scores. Northwestern offers something of a mirror image on that count, as it remains close to the bottom of the top-12 despite a disproportionately strong Over$/Stu score. The school's comparatively low PeerRep and BarRep scores (the lowest of those in the top-12) and GPA (nearly tied for the lowest) score pull it down; Northwestern's Over$/Stu score saves it.

[Since I find I'm running on a bit, I'll offer some other graphs and commentary in a later post or posts.]

[Crossposted at Agoraphilia, MoneyLaw.]

Transfer Fees

2009-08-17T11:31:00.003-04:00

I have not read Why England Lose: and other Curious Football Phenomena Explained by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski but this excerpt of a review of the book in the August 13th issue of the Economist caught my eye:

"A third myth is that clubs cannot buy success. They can, so long as they spend on players’ wages rather than on transfers. Almost 90% of the variation in the positions of leading English teams is explained by wage bills. Transfer fees contribute little. New managers hoping to make their mark often waste money. Stars of recent World Cups or European championships are overrated. So are older players. So, curiously, are Brazilians and blonds."

I guess the best example of this in baseball is the Red Sox and Dice-K. But I wondered if there are transfer fees in law teaching and could the same phenomena be at work. I could only think of one transfer and and one that is like a transfer fee.

At my School, if you take a sabbatical you must come back for at least a year. If not, as I understand it, either the person leaving or, more likely the destination school must provide compensation. To me that is very similar to a transfer fee but certainly not of the magnitude of those you read about in soccer.

Another practice that has the same effect is the treatment of a trailing spouse. The trailing spouse matter usually involves privileged people who have come to believe that, unlike the lower classes, they should not be put to life's hard choices. At my University for a time (and maybe even now) there was a plan. If one department wanted to hire a person who had a trailing spouse, that department would pitch in 1/3 of the trailer's salary. The department hiring the trailer would pay 1/3 and the central administration would pay 1/3.

So, suppose a department found a good candidate and offered $100,000. The the trailing spouse matter is then raised and plan is put into action. The trailer's salary will be $90,ooo. Listing it as the trailer's salary is a nice way to let the trailer save face but in every reality, the new faculty member is being paid at least $130,000, not $100,000.

Is this a tranfer fee? Obviously it is not because ultimately it becomes, indirectly, part of the wage of the new hire. On the other hand, the first department had a budget to spend on the "player" of $100,000. If it had known that it really had a budget of $130,000 it could have shopped at a different and more productive level. Put differently, if the school had considered what it was actually paying for its new hire, it could have hired someone better. As with the transfer fee, for the total amount paid, a better decision could be made.

Are there other academic hiring transfer fees? Not sure.

Reforms Suggested by Modeling the Law School Rankings

2009-08-04T19:41:00.002-04:00

As I recently observed, the close fit between law schools' scores in U.S. News & World Report's rankings and the scores of those same schools in my model of the ranking "suggests that law schools did not try game the rankings by telling USN&WR one thing and the ABA . . . another." Since both Robert Morse, Director of Data Research for USN&WR, and the ABA Journal saw fit to comment on that observation, perhaps I should clarify a few points.

First, I have no way of knowing whether or not law schools misstated the facts, by accident or otherwise, to both the ABA and USN&WR. The fit between USN&WR's scores and my model's scores indicates only that law schools reported, or misreported, the same facts to each party.

Second, this sort of consistency test speaks only to those measures USN&WR uses in its rankings, that it does not publish with its rankings, and that the ABA collects from law schools: median LSAT, median GPA, overhead expenditures/student, financial aid/student, and library size. Measures that USN&WR uses and publishes—reputation among peers and at the Bar, employment nine months after graduation, employment at graduation, student/faculty ratio, acceptance rate, and Bar exam performance—go straight into my model, so I do not have occasion to test their consistency against ABA data. In some cases—the reputation scores and the employment at graduation measure, the ABA does not collect the data at all. This proves especially troubling with regard to the latter. We have little assurance that USN&WR double-checks what schools report under the heading of "Employment at Graduation," and no easy way to double-check that data ourselves.

Third, and consequently, USN&WR could improve the reliability of its rankings by implementing some simple reforms. I suggested three such reforms some time ago. USN&WR has largely implemented two of them by making its questionnaire more closely mirror the ABA's and by publishing corrections and explanations when it discovers errors in its rankings. (I claim no credit for that development, however; I assume that USN&WR acted of its own volition and in its own interest.)

Another of my suggested reforms remains as yet unrealized, however, so allow me to repeat it, here: USN&WR should publish all of the data that it uses in ranking law schools. It could easily make that data available on its website, if not in the print edition of its rankings. Doing so would both provide law students with useful information and allow others to help USN&WR double-check its figures.

To that, I now add this proposed reform: USN&WR should either convince the ABA to collect data on law school graduates' employment rates at graduation or discontinue using that data in its law school rankings. That data largely duplicates the more trustworthy (but still notoriously suspect) "Employment at Nine Months" data collected by the ABA and used by USN&WR in its rankings. And, unlike that data, law schools do not report "Employment at Graduation" numbers under the threat of ABA sanctions. We cannot trust the employment at graduation figures and USN&WR does not need them.

Among the reforms I suggested some two years ago I also included one directed at the ABA, calling on it to publish online, in an easily accessible format, all of the data that it collects from law schools and that USN&WR uses in its rankings. I fear that, in contrast to USN&WR, the ABA moved retrograde on that front. I leave that cause for another day, however; here I wanted to focus on what my model can tell us about USN&WR's rankings.

[Crossposted at Agoraphilia, MoneyLaw.]

MoneyBall MoneyLaw

2009-07-29T08:40:00.002-04:00

When I heard they were making a movie based on MoneyBall I could not sleep just thinking about who would play the key roles in the obvious sequel, MoneyLaw. Would some of us have bit parts? Alas, the MoneyBall movie has been deeply back burnered and, I think this means the MoneyLaw movie is similarly delayed but probably only for a millennium or two.

With respect to the actual Oakland A's there is good news and bad. They are in last place. But among last place teams they have or are tied for the best record. Somehow, if this were all switched to law schools and those who play the USN&WR game (and who doesn't?), I think we could show just how commendable this is. We would just create a category -- really awful law schools. Then rank within that category and in the decanal glossy it would read "A's Law School Ranked Tops in Field." Another possibility is just to be better but that is so much trouble.

Z-Scores in Model of 2010 USN&WR Law School Rankings

2009-07-23T15:23:00.002-04:00

If you want to know how U.S. News & World Report's law school rankings work, you'll want to know about z-scores. In very brief, z-scores measure how well each school performed relative to its peers, thereby establishing its rank. (See here for a fuller explanation.) My model of the rankings aims to recreate those z-scores, and thus the rankings themselves, by duplicating both the data and the methodology that USN&WR uses. Here are the results for the law schools most recently ranked in the top 100:

For cross-year comparisons, please see the similar reports I offered in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008. This year, in response to a reader's request, I've added various diagnostic measures, such as the mean, median, and standard deviation of each itemized category of data. As I did last year, I again provided weighted z-scores, meaning simply that I've multiplied the z-scores in each category of data by the percentage that category influences a school's overall score. That method of presenting z-scores has the virtue of highlighting which scores matter the most.

Unsurprisingly, you'll generally find the largest numbers in the upper, left-hand corner of the chart. There lie the most heavily-weighted z-scores of the law schools that scored the highest in USN&WR's rankings. Consider, for instance, the .71 weighted z-scores enjoyed by Yale and Harvard under the "PeerRep" category; those numbers nearly swamp the effect of other measures of those schools' performances, and have twice the impact of the peer reputation scores of schools ranked as close as 20th from the top.

This presentation of the data also shows how very little influence many of the things that USN&WR measures have on its rankings. The weighted z-scores for Bar pass rates, for instance, vary between only .07 and -.02, with a whole lot of zeros filling that span. Bar passage rates evidently do not matter much to any school's USN&WR score.

Rankings geeks will doubtless find close study of this table rewarding. I'm especially interested in the surprising impact of the top schools' overhead expenditures/student—a phenomenon that I discussed in some detail last year. Perhaps I'll return to that topic, and raise some new ones, in later posts. In the meantime, I welcome your own observations.

[Crossposted at Agoraphilia, MoneyLaw.]

Accuracy of the Model of the 2010 USN&WR Law School Rankings

2009-07-22T14:57:00.002-04:00

I earlier offered a snapshot comparison of the scores generated by my model of the 2010 U.S. News & World Report law school rankings and the original. After Robert Morse, director of data research for USN&WR, asked me if I could quantify the fit between the two data sets, I realized that others might share his curiosity. Here, then, are the r-squared measures (more precisely, the squares of the Pearson product moment correlation coefficients) for each of the models I've done over the past few years:

2010 rankings: 0.999
2009 rankings: 0.999
2008 rankings: 0.999
2007 rankings: 0.997
2006 rankings: 0.995

What do those numbers mean? In brief, an r-squared closer to 1 (or –1) shows a closer fit between the two data sets. It might seem a bit absurd to report these results out to three decimals, but I wanted to make clear that the model has yet to obtain results absolutely identical to those reported by USN&WR. I daresay, though, that any r-squared above .99 shows a pretty strong correlation.

[Crossposted at Agoraphilia and MoneyLaw.]

A Model of the 2010 USN&WR Law School Rankings

2009-07-16T19:03:00.004-04:00

As in every year since 2005, I this year again built a model of the law school rankings published by the U.S. News & World Report ("USN&WR"). Figuring out the rankings—the "2010" rankings, as USN&WR's calls them—proved especially trying this time around. USN&WR changed several parts of its methodology this year and the ABA, which distributes statistical data on which my model depends, fell far behind its usual publication schedule. Finally, though, the model ended up generating scores gratifyingly close to those that USN&WR assigned law schools. Here's a snap-shot comparison of the results:

For details about how and why I modeled USN&WR's law school rankings, as well as for similar snap-shots, see these posts from 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008.

Perhaps in later posts I'll offer some reflections on what this year's model of the USN&WR rankings teaches. For now, I'll just offer this happy observation: The close fit between USN&WR's scores and the model's scores suggests that law schools did not try game the rankings by telling USN&WR one thing and the ABA (the source of much of the data used in my model) another. Even a skeptic of law school rankings can find something to like in that.

[Crossposted at Agoraphilia and MoneyLaw.]

A fresh take on rankings, redux

2009-07-04T14:03:00.002-04:00

I posted my latest thoughts on possible alternative rankings systems here. Would love your comments. Thanks, and happy 4th!

Moneyball: The Movie

2009-06-22T16:39:00.000-04:00

Details here.

Bill Gleason: Excellence within our means

2009-06-21T22:06:00.005-04:00

Bill Gleason of the University of Minnesota is the author of The Periodic Table and The Periodic Table, Too. He is an impassioned advocate for access, value, and integrity in higher education and — this must be said in the interest of full disclosure — an on-the-record fan of MoneyLaw. And again for the record, MoneyLaw is a big fan of Bill Gleason.

Bill addressed the University of Minnesota's Board of Regents at an open forum on June 17, 2009. UMN president Robert Bruininks was in the audience. His comments, styled as Excellence with our means, warrant close attention by anyone who cares about the academic and economic priorities of public universities in a time of retrenchment and recession. I am pleased to rebroadcast Bill's remarks and to republish a transcript of his remarks:

Click on the image of Bill Gleason to read the transcript of his remarks:

Thirty five years ago, as a new Minnesota Ph.D., I went down to Carleton to start my teaching career. The chemistry laboratory facilities were, at that time, much worse than those in the state's high schools. And yet Carleton, today, is widely acknowledged as one of the best institutions of its kind.

There is a lesson here that I have never forgotten: People, not buildings, are what makes an institution excellent.

An imperfect acknowledgment of this idea is our administration's use of the phrase “human capital.”

Along with reminding me of my old lesson about the primacy of people, this phrase reminds us all of the old caution to pay attention to what people do, much more than to what they say.

In the matter of the Bell Museum, the new biomedical research buildings, MoreU Park, and modification of the Regents scholarship program, the administration asks sacrifices of us. It also asks people to anticipate the possible loss of 1200 jobs. But while it asks others to make sacrifices, the administration doesn't make its own. A salary freeze at the level of $750K is not the same sort of sacrifice as that made by a person earning less than ten percent of this amount and ultimately losing his or her job.

We all wish the best for our university. But many of us disagree with the current priorities of the administration and have been saying so for quite some time. This administration has ignored those who do not subscribe to the goal of being one of the top three public research universities in the world.

People who think that we should be one of the best universities in the Big Ten have been called “doubters” by our president. This is disturbing.

The following words are addressed directly and respectfully to the Regents.

Your desire to support President Bruininks is admirable. But some things that I have witnessed at Board meetings over the past few years lead me to believe that more skepticism about the administration's priorities is in order. Signs of this skepticism have begun to emerge.

Last year some of the Regents dared suggest that perhaps there should be no alcohol in the stadium. I think they were right, but they were browbeaten by the stadium's strongest proponent.

One of the Regents has recently argued that cuts to employee tuition reimbursement are inappropriate.

Regent Larson pointed out last December that requesting a budgetary increase that included a new Bell Museum was a mistake in the current economic situation.

I hope the Regents will be sensitive to the charges of elitism or arrogance that can readily be made for inappropriate financial requests to the state legislature.

We share a common goal — an excellent university. But our priorities should recognize the primary importance of people as fundamental to our land grant mission. Our fellow citizens must be convinced that this is so. Only then will we be able make our shared goal of excellence a reality.

Thank you for the opportunity to make this statement.

Least complicated

2009-06-08T20:43:00.004-04:00

Least complicated

Some long ago when we were taught
That for whatever kind of puzzle you got
You just stick the right formula in
A solution for every fool

— Indigo Girls, Least Complicated, Swamp Ophelia (1994)

Yes, there is a connection to law. Read all about it in The Cardinal Lawyer.

Follow J.C. Redbird on Twitter

2009-06-05T17:21:00.002-04:00

» Adapted from The Cardinal Lawyer «
Twitter is a lightweight online platform that blends blogging and social networking. Its users "tweet" by answering a simple question: "What are you doing?" All answers are limited to 140 characters — the length of an SMS text message, minus 20 characters. Twitter has become a powerful weapon for marketing consumer goods, documenting brain surgery, and coordinating political protests. When even the New York Times, the grandest of conventional media sources, offers tips on Tweeting, you know that Twitter's time has come. And though predictions and prescriptions do differ, it does seem that Twitter — or something else capturing its blend of social networking, linking, and real-time searching — is here to stay.

Follow J.C. Redbird on Twitter!

My Twitter handle is J.C. Redbird. I would be honored if you would follow my tweets. To make sure that I follow your Twitter account in return, send me a private message inside Twitter, and I will take care to add you to my Twitter reading list.

With medium power comes no responsibility

2009-06-03T13:05:00.002-04:00

In his celebrated New York Times Magazine piece, The case for working with your hands, Matthew Crawford makes observations about middle managers that apply with full force to those of us who live academia's so-called "life of the mind":

Often as not, [craftsmen's workplace] crises do not end in redemption. Moments of elation are counterbalanced with failures, and these, too, are vivid, taking place right before your eyes. With stakes that are often high and immediate, the manual trades elicit heedful absorption in work. They are punctuated by moments of pleasure that take place against a darker backdrop: a keen awareness of catastrophe as an always-present possibility. The core experience is one of individual responsibility, supported by face-to-face interactions between tradesman and customer.

Contrast the experience of being a middle manager. This is a stock figure of ridicule, but the sociologist Robert Jackall spent years inhabiting the world of corporate managers, conducting interviews, and he poignantly describes the “moral maze” they feel trapped in. Like the mechanic, the manager faces the possibility of disaster at any time. But in his case these disasters feel arbitrary; they are typically a result of corporate restructurings, not of physics. A manager has to make many decisions for which he is accountable. Unlike an entrepreneur with his own business, however, his decisions can be reversed at any time by someone higher up the food chain (and there is always someone higher up the food chain). It’s important for your career that these reversals not look like defeats, and more generally you have to spend a lot of time managing what others think of you. Survival depends on a crucial insight: you can’t back down from an argument that you initially made in straightforward language, with moral conviction, without seeming to lose your integrity. So managers learn the art of provisional thinking and feeling, expressed in corporate doublespeak, and cultivate a lack of commitment to their own actions. Nothing is set in concrete the way it is when you are, for example, pouring concrete.

Frank: "So Far So Good"

2009-05-23T13:21:00.005-04:00

Of the people reading this, no more than a handful will have heard of Frank McCoy. He was my faculty colleague who passed away last night. He had not been active in some years but until the last few months he reported daily to his small cubby of an office about ten feet from mine.

The passing of Frank (who in the last few years always said "so far so good" when asked how he was doing) made me think of what law schools are becoming without the likes of Frank. Frank was the purest intellectual I have known. I am not sure he wrote anything for publication but Frank was the type of guy who you could drop off at a library at 8 in the morning and pick up at 8 at night and (as long as he got lunch) there would be no complaints. Frank lived in the world of history, languages, and ideas. I am confident he never looked at an article to see if he was cited, bargained up a law review article, counted downloads, networked, or self-promoted. All of that would have gotten in the way of his intellectual curiosity.

On the other hand, Frank could talk knowledgeably about just about anything. You could mention a current topic and he might pipe up with, "Yes, well Napoleon tried that." As recently as a little over a year ago I could hear him with his Russian tutor. He had no plans to go to Russia as far as I know but probably wanted to read some things in the original language. A year before that we were chatting about a social/legal issue that had arisen in France. He said. "Yes, I wrote a poem about that last week." I asked to see it. The next day he produced a crumpled piece of notebook paper with the poem -- in French.

Frank's background was a mystery to me. Rumors are that he had a prior life in the CIA or one of its predecessors. I imagined him as George Smiley. I wondered what he was doing in China and Japan at critical times and mostly what he was doing in Madagascar. This was only revealed when he saw and old Zenith Transatlantic short wave radio in my office and mentioned that was like the one he used in Madagascar.

I have written before that some of the smartest, best educated, and helpful people on faculties I have been on do not write, send out reprints, fly to this conference or that, or do any of the other things that are expected of modern law professors. They are dying off, though, as fast as WW II veterans. I am not sure a law school betters itself by replacing them with someone who has excelled at the law professor's version of grade grubbing -- stacking up lines on a resume. In fact, I think law schools are poorer as a result of the passing of people like Frank.

Child of Moneyball

2009-05-19T17:03:00.000-04:00

See here.