First Takes on US News

I've been absurdly--and I do mean absurdly--busy of late.   But US News is out and the feeding frenzy's begun.  (More than 1100 comments to this post at abovethelaw.com!  Now that's a feeding frenzy.)  Here are some initial takes on the tier one schools (N= 104).  (I had some other quick takes last year over at propertyprof.)  As Brian Leiter has suggested, I focus on reputation assessments.

The peer assessment scores:
maximum    4.8
median    2.80
minimum    2.1
Mean = 3.05
SD = 0.71
N = 104

The lawyer/judge assessment scores:
maximum    4.8
median    3.20
minimum    2.4
Mean = 3.35
SD = 0.61
N = 104

The correlation between the two assessments is very high (.96), but the 0.30 mean difference between assessments is statistically significant (t = 14.55, df = 103, p < .0001). Assessments of lawyers and judges are higher than those of academic peers.

Difference between assessments
maximum     0.8
median     0.30
minimum    -0.2
Mean = 0.30
SD = 0.21
N = 104

Basically, the lawyers and judges are more generous in their assessments than are law profs! 

So let's start looking at the 2008 and 2009 peer assessment scores for the 104 schools that are in Tier 1 for 2009.

Peer assessment 2009 (minus) Peer assessment 2008
maximum     0.2
median     0.10
minimum    -0.1
Mean = 0.06
SD = 0.06
N = 104

Thus, the 2008 and 2009 Peer assessments of these schools differed by no more than 0.2.  They're famously static, though law faculty are getting a little more generous.  That is, peer assessment scores are increasing, even if ever so slightly.  I think this is positive and an indication that schools are getting better.

Now let's compare the 2008 and 2009 Lawyer/Judge assessments for the 104 schools that are in Tier 1 for 2009.

Lawyer/Judge assessment 2009 (minus) Lawyer/Judge assessment 2008
maximum     0.4
median     0.00
minimum    -0.4
Mean = -0.02
SD = 0.16
N = 104

Some links to tables listing schools that are up and down in the peer and lawyer/judge assessments are below the fold....

You may also be interested this file , which lists schools whose Lawyer/Judge assessments are 0.5+ points larger than their Peer assessments.  (Only two of the 104 top-ranked schools, UCLA and USC, have Peer assessments larger than their Lawyer/Judge assessments. They are shown in the first two lines of the table.)

Here are two other tables that list schools whose 2008 and 2009 lawyer/judge assessments differ by .3 or more.  Five schools fell .3 or more; 7 schools climbed .3 or more.

Alfred Brophy

Comments

[Bradford Hardin]

Thanks for the info. If my memory serves me correctly, one of your data points means, together with a comparison of Alabama's 2008 and 2009 peer assessment scores, that that fine institution raised its peer assessment score as much as any school in the last year (.2).
I know it is fashionable to lambast these rankings, but in the case we use particular data points the surveys provide (as Leiter suggested), and particularly in the case of the peer assessment data (which had a 70% response rate) I think there is something to be learned. Like, for example, that Alabama is making substantial improvements in overall faculty quality--something I agree with from my internal perspective.