There’s a lot of talk about law school rank these days (I guess there always is)… however, one thing that caught my eye was David Bernstein’s post over at The Volokh Conspiracy. Law Dork and Divine Angst both had some interesting comments as well.
So, in the spirit of procrastination for a brief I’m working on, I did a “mini” survey. I looked at the “rankings” for the schools attended by some law professors who blog:

Blogging Professors
Number Surveyed	47
Average Rank	7
Top 10	37/47
Percentage Top 10	79%

Since I’m all about the City of Chicago, I also decided to take a look at all the law schools in the Chicago area. Here they are, presented in order of school rank:

Chicago	Rank: 6
Number Surveyed	58
Average Rank	6
Top 10	54/58
Percentage Top 10	93%

Northwestern	Rank: 10
Number Surveyed	88
Average Rank	16
Top 10	66/88
Percentage Top 10	75%

Chicago-Kent	Rank: 63
Number Surveyed	69
Average Rank	23
Top 10	35/69
Percentage Top 10	51%

Loyola	Rank: 67
Number Surveyed	47
Average Rank	37
Top 10	22/47
Percentage Top 10	47%

DePaul	Rank: 103
Number Surveyed	62
Average Rank	41
Top 10	24/62
Percentage Top 10	39%

John Marshall	Rank: 138
Number Surveyed	61
Average Rank	47
Top 10	23/61
Percentage Top 10	38%

Note: This was a very cursory survey, based on faculty listings on the school’s websites. I also threw out professors who had degrees from places like “Tokyo University” because I didn’t have a ranking guide handy for them. The other ranks are all based on the latest U.S. News ranking, since that seems to be the de facto standard–for better or worse.
If you want to see the full results–including a break-down by individual faculty members, I’ve put it here in an Excel sheet.
Apparently, there is some hope for those who would like to pursue a career in academics, but don’t have the Top 10 cred.
Would anyone be interested if I expanded this into a full survey/paper?

I’m just curious (I’m having issues with my school’s computing support). How many of your schools offer:

1. Wired network access in the classroom?
2. Wireless network access?
3. If they offer wireless network access, how do you authenticate? (If you know.)

Thanks!

Jeremy Richey is encouraging everyone to donate their Lexis Points for tsunami relief (via the Red Cross). Just sign into your Lexis account and “shop”… you should see a link to donate to the Red Cross Tsunami relief.

C’mon people! Pony up the points! What the hell were you going to use them for anyway?! Spend the points on something useful!

One of the many reason’s lawyers have such incredibly low career satisfaction, and one reason I don’t want to go Big Law: The Truth About the Billable Hour
[Via The Prejudicial Effect]

I wrote a Guest Post today for Evan over at Notes from the (Legal) Underground. It was in response to this post from last week by Prof. Childs.

Go on over and check them out, if you are so inclined.

I realize that I am not at a “Tier One” school where the focus is academic research. However, my school aggressively touted their legal writing program as a selling point and I bought it.

But now that I’ve been through a semester of it and I’m deep into the first assignment of the second semester. It’s become clear: this is not about writing; it’s about job training.

I don’t actually have a problem with that. But I do wish it had been billed that way. I understand the need to teach us how to structure memorandum, complaints, motions, memorandum in support of motions, briefs, etc. But the bulk of our time is spent going over rote procedural points that could, I think, easily been gleaned out of a text book or by example.

We don’t spend any time in class analyzing our thought processes, our word choice, the logical structure of our arguments. That’s sloughed off with the “Neumann Paradigm” which is to be committed to memory, and serve as the boiler plate for all of our writing moving forward. Fine. That’s all fine. It’s just a let-down.

But the kicker, the thing that actually bothers me is the constant, “the first assignment you’ll get when you join a firm.” Or, “this is how the partner you’re working for is going to want this.” Or, “the first few years at your firm are going to be spent doing this.”

God forbid any of us should want to start a solo practice. Or work for the state.

Or go into public service. Or consult. Or any number of things we could accomplish with our training.

This assumption that we’re all automatons gearing up to practice BIGLAW, go the traditional wage slave, er, associate route is *so* 1950. I know law is slow to change, but really, this is 2005. There are probably as many different reasons for being here as there are students. And a significant portion of us probably don’t want to practice BIGLAW. So fine, teach the course like we’re all going to end up the Anonymous Lawyer, but c’mon throw the rest of us a bone every now and then with an assignment that might actually pique our interest. And stop ramming the, “this is the way it will be” down our throat.