boalt triumphs over chicago and pennsylvania

[petra pasternak]

Psst. Don’t tell anyone, but The Shark got its hands on a preview of the U.S. News & World Report’s rankings of law schools. We’ve heard its official publishing date is Friday.

One development is likely to make Boalt Hall students pee their pants: UC-Berkeley’s law school has muscled ahead of both the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania, bumping them to claim sixth place. We’ve heard that may be the highest ranking Boalt has ever had.

Here are the Top 10 (UPDATE 3/28: IT'S OFFICIAL)

1/ Yale University
2/ Harvard University, Stanford University
4/ Columbia University
5/ New York University
6/ University of California – Berkeley
7/ University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania
9/ Northwestern University, University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, University of Virginia

Four other California schools dropped down on the list compared to last year’s results.  UCLA fell from 15th place to 16th, sharing that spot with University of Texas — Austin this year.  USC also dropped, from 16th, to land on the 18th rung.  Hastings slid from 36th last year to share 38th place with three other schools this year.  And UC-Davis seems to have taken the biggest tumble, falling from 34th last year to 44th.

We lucked out when we heard from someone who’d bought a copy of the magazine already, apparently displayed ahead of schedule. Maybe you can run out and find a copy at a newsstand near you, too.

Thoughts on the changes, readers?

Comments

[Abony Holmes]

This is a pretty huge jump for Boalt...er Berkeley Law. I'm giving major props for the jump to Dean Edley, who I hope keeps his promise not to leave us.

[This is fake]

Dont believe it. No photos, and the photos that are up in discussion boards are doctored.

[Look real to me.]

it looks legit to me... also, there is a ton of other pictures with the same rankings.

[Dave]

I love it that this is posted by one Petra Pasternak, with an American Lawyer Media email account. Did the corporate sponsors decide that the readership needed a boost? Did the company pay for the scan or the mag?

[Abony Holmes]

Dave, if you want a job just say so.

[Cynthia Foster]

Dave,

I have an ALM email account too, and have been posting with it since the very beginning. This blog is affiliated with Cal Law, an ALM publication. Petra is a Cal Law reporter. If you'd like more details, there's always the "About us" page. No corporate sponsors were involved in the posting of this item.

What makes it more impressive is that Dean Edley has some how managed to get us to jump in rankings without compromising other things Boalt stands for: particularly diversity and not caring as much as LSAT scores. I'm sure that hurts us in the ranking calculation, but yet we still climb.

Go Dean Edley!

[Abony Holmes]

I don't want to come off as an Edley groupie, but I would like to second that Go Dean Edley comment.

Not caring about LSAT scores is the reason our bar passage rates and classroom discussions are embarrassing

[20082008]

"Not caring about LSAT scores is the reason our bar passage rates and classroom discussions are embarrassing."

Nice theory, jackass. What's embarrassing is that you forgot to check Boalt's bar passage rates against those of Stanford (who we beat by 0.5%) or UCLA (who has us by 0.8%). Hastings is about 4% behind these 3, USC 6%, and it's all downhill from there. How embarrassing. See you at BARBRI.

http://www.ilrg.com/rankings/law/index.php/1/desc/LSATLow/2008

[Dave]

No thanks... I have a job.

Call me crazy, But I think it is interesting that a reporter for ALM/Cal Law is suddenly posting leaked rankings on this site. I'd guess this site saw a huge leap in traffic in the past few days because of this. That suggests to me that the acquisition of this list may not be as clearcut as a friend simply passing along a copy of the magazine that they happened to mistakenly buy on the rack. I also think it implicates some of the complications of having a purportedly student-written blog that is also apparently an outlet for a major publisher's stories.

Now Law.com has a link on it's front page celebrating the fact that the Shark has the leaked rankings. Why didn't ALM just break this on the front page of Law.com, or in the Recorder, particularly if they are going to headline the fact that the Shark has it? Perhaps because they wanted to drive traffic to the site, or maybe because they felt that they did not want to sully their other pubs with the baggage of publishing questionable leaked rankings (now the other pubs can just report on the fact that the Shark published them). I dunno what the motiviations were. But it's hard to deny that having a reporter suddenly come through and post this here is question-raising, to say the least.

[crl8]

Anyone notice the fact that the purportedly "real" rankings have Wash.U's LSAT range as 163-167, yet Wash.U themselves lists it as a 162-167. I'm sure there are other errors like this one... thoughts?

http://law.wustl.edu/ataglance/

[Abony Holmes]

Petra has posted here before. Dave, you are quite the conspiracy theorist. What I want to know is why is any of these questions you raise are interesting to you? If a blog I write for is doing something sordid and sexy, I want in on why it's sordid and sexy.

[SadSeminole]

Not that anyone cares for a non-top 50 school, but I was surprised to see Utah make the move it did (to 51)-- that, along with two other schools moving up, knocked my school back to 55 (FSU). There goes my hopes of Breyer giving me a personal phone call to clerk! (No, but really, FSU has made significant strides in the last 5 years, and there has been a strong push from professors and students alike to move into top tier).

[Toney]

It's official: http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/grad/law/search

Also, Boalt is #1 in IP again!

[Not Dave]

Dave is just acting out because he now attends a third tier school.

I thought it then and I think it now - the annual rankings possess nominal significance and merely support notion that numbers can be manipulated. Current and future students, please exercise some brain cells and dig deeper into the methodology! For example, Assessment Score by Lawyers/Judges given .15 weight, but only @ 26% of those surveyed responded. Meanwhile, Median LSAT Scores given .125 weight and Median Undergrad GPA = .10
(and presumably % of info obtained for both stats much higher). Lastly, Library Resources given .0075 weight. Maybe it's just me but at this day and age, are total number of volumes/titles in a school's law library even relevant???