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Law_School
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Final exams to take? One.
On our class mailing list, a correspondent responded to the news of our decline in the rankings like this:
WTF. We have the 4th highest bar passage rate in California...
Bar passage rate doesn't really matter. In effect, all that matters is that your graduates are employed -- not that they can practice -- and that your name resonates with those answering surveys about 200 law schools spread throughout the country. (Wait and see. UC Irvine will have sky-high reputation rankings as soon as US News includes them, even though they will have little academic output and respondents will have little if any exposure to their grads.)
Bar passage rate is a minuscule part (2%) of the ranking index. What's more, the data that US News uses lags, so our numbers wouldn't be affected by last year's bar passage rate, which may have been anomalous, in any case. The largest component of the ranking index is the so-called "quality assessment," which is based on the surveys sent to law school deans, professors, judges, and practitioners. We don't do particularly well on that front, and that certainly impacts our ranking. I haven't seen the actual numbers, but I've read some reports that suggest our reputation score dropped, while Santa Clara's climbed, which explains why they jumped way up while we fell.
Unfortunately, the reputation numbers -- despite what US News claims -- appear to be readily swayed by marketing, the "law porn" that is sent out. After reputation, placement statistics come into play. We've had enough churn in the administrative side of the school that there are lots of things that can explain what happened, both in marketing and in collecting and reporting placement stats.
Fortunately, it doesn't really matter. Reputation informs the rankings in the short term, but the rankings are only going to inform reputation in the long term, as churn in the legal community from those obsessed by the rankings go into the world with their notions of who's good and who's bad. Whatever reputation we had yesterday is likely to be the reputation we'll have as we go off into the community. (Of course, it also makes it very difficult and expensive to increase reputation score.)
I don't know exactly. But it's clear -- it actually is very clear looking at the methodology -- that increasing bar passage rate isn't much help. Of the USF-competitive California schools, Santa Clara up, USD down but still T2, McGeorge up, and Pepperdine way up.
Leiter asks that bloggers not reveal actual rankings. Not hard to do when you're posting about a school that's unranked, as it fell back into T3.
See here.
There are many possible reasons for this to happen. When KU plunged several years ago, the fingers were pointed at the changing of the guard at career services; we've had similar changes at USF. However, it's really the reputation numbers that can be painful, and they're the most meaningful. After all, they reflect what drives employers to USF (or affect employers who post that, even with years of experience, you must come from a top-ranked law school.) And that just keeps cycling, as future reputation is driven both by those who enter the profession and the lingering shadows of past reputations.
Oh well.
I don't really know what to say about this:
Time and Space to Meditate at the Law School
Beginning on Wednesday, March 12th, the TV Lounge in Zief Law Library will be
reserved at regular times for meditation for members of the Law School community.
There will be Guided Meditation Instruction and Discussion on Wednesdays from
12:30 pm – 1:15 pm. The instructors are Professor Rhonda Magee, Professor
Judi Cohen and Professor Tim Iglesias.
The room will be reserved for Private (unguided) Meditation on Mondays, Wednesdays
and Fridays from 8:00am – 9:00am and on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5:00pm – 6:00pm.
All are welcome: beginners (even if you are just curious) and regular meditators.
Some meditation cushions will be available.
Sponsored by the Ad Hoc Committee on Contemplative Practices in Law.
Emphasis added to the name of the organization. I was visited by one of our recent bar takers a few months ago to ask if I'd seen the posters. I so wanted to blog about it, but words escaped me.
(To say the title properly, think of Seinfeld and "Those aren't buoys!")
And what am I doing to celebrate?
Well, it's coming up on 3 AM, and I haven't left the office yet.
I'm not sure if this a Chandler spring break or a Ross spring break.
Last time I checked, CALI (Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction) hadn't updated the CALI awards listing on their site. That seems to have changed.
For example, USF School of Law CALI Awards since 1999.
(I get probably a search hit a day on this, despite the fact that I've never posted lists of CALI winners.)
A bit of a surprise today... Don't need to go back.
The National Law Journal reports that the ABA is likely to approve the interpretation changes to rule 301(a) I previously wrote about:
Amid pressure from the U.S. Department of Education, the American Bar Association is poised to tighten a rule that requires law schools to show that they are graduating students who can pass the bar exam.
The ABA is expected to approve the controversial measure at its meeting in Los Angeles from Feb. 6 through Feb. 12, when its House of Delegates will consider a recommendation from the ABA's legal education section.
There have been no changes to the proposed interpretation, so far as I can tell. As a result, I post now only to update the table with 2007 numbers. Not much that is news here, other than to note Golden Gate University spent the year out of the danger zone.
| School | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 |
| CalWestern | 63.58% | 66.17% | 54.77% | 61.25% | 68.51% | 69.20% |
| Chapman | 64.58% | 58.82% | 62.22% | 60.48% | 60.13% | 69.94% |
| GGU | 51.61% | 39.00% | 30.34% | 43.50% | 55.17% | 68.40% |
| Hastings | 76.55% | 77.51% | 78.45% | 83.69% | 83.38% | 80.00% |
| Loyola | 67.62% | 68.87% | 66.21% | 72.32% | 73.73% | 77.63% |
| McGeorge | 67.63% | 67.91% | 68.16% | 63.36% | 73.12% | 72.76% |
| Pepperdine | 59.14% | 69.94% | 73.61% | 72.94% | 83.96% | 77.42% |
| SCU | 67.80% | 67.29% | 63.37% | 65.26% | 78.11% | 75.10% |
| Southwestern | 67.82% | 56.25% | 56.19% | 66.55% | 65.77% | 63.37% |
| Stanford | 85.44% | 92.00% | 89.80% | 88.51% | 87.85% | 94.44% |
| TJSL | 46.15% | 47.47% | 40.00% | 36.99% | 50.00% | 57.79% |
| UCB | 85.09% | 90.45% | 86.17% | 84.77% | 84.91% | 82.38% |
| UCD | 74.51% | 80.52% | 74.42% | 73.81% | 74.71% | 83.33% |
| UCLA | 91.82% | 89.08% | 86.41% | 87.45% | 85.66% | 85.11% |
| USC | 80.23% | 80.65% | 78.61% | 81.91% | 85.42% | 87.73% |
| USD | 72.94% | 81.10% | 68.12% | 79.92% | 78.20% | 76.79% |
| USF | 64.24% | 64.94% | 64.40% | 73.71% | 72.90% | 82.98% |
| Whittier | 41.18% | 29.65% | 38.13% | 38.89% | 55.51% | 50.85% |
| WSU | 43.33% | 44.34% | 45.54% | 26.32% | 28.87% | 37.78% |
| ABA Rate | 67.94% | 68.19% | 66.24% | 67.45% | 70.31% | 71.15% |
I've updated the bar passage by quintile table.
Curious detail. According to the CalBar statistics, there were 188 first-time takers from USF in 2007 (22 February and 166 July). There are only 165 in the table. Did 23 members of earlier classes wait to take the bar exam? In 2006, there were 214 (15 February and 199 July) first-time takers, and the school listed only 200. Are they only counting July takers?
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