Northwestern Law Adjusts Super Lawyers Rankings and Is Pleased with Itself
A couple of days ago, we mentioned the new Super Lawyers Law School Rankings. The list ranks law schools by their number of Super Lawyer alumni. At the time, we noted that a potential flaw with the magazine’s methodology was that it is just looking at raw numbers. The rankings aren’t adjusted for class size.
Northwestern Law placed #18 on the list. That’s not too bad if you care about things like rankings. The school placed higher than other traditional Top-14 law schools like Stanford, Duke, and Cornell.
But Northwestern Law Dean David E. Van Zandt does care about rankings. He cares about them a great deal. And while #18 is certainly respectable, it wasn’t quite enough for Dean Van Zandt. Here’s part of his email to Northwestern law students:
As you know, I am a proponent of rankings in general and believe they provide a useful source of consumer information for applicants as well as employers. While their methodology needs improving, I applaud Super Lawyers Magazine for developing a ranking that is based on career performance outputs.
So — in a brilliant exercise of Descartian rationale — Dean Van Zandt changed the list. He (or somebody that works for him) went and changed the methodology to make Northwestern look even more awesome.
Let’s check out Super Lawyers according to Van Zandt after the jump.
Dean Van Zandt did what any autonomous human being has the right to do. He decided to look at a reality entirely of his own making:
This initial ranking, based on a simple count of “Super Lawyers” from each law school does not take the size of a school into account. Naturally, as a result, these rankings correlate closely with student body enrollment. Further information about the ranking methodology can be found here.Although we rank 18th (11th among the top 14 law schools as ranked by US News & World report and ahead of Cornell, Duke, and Stanford), the result is much more positive when factoring in law school size. For example, in most cases, each “Super Lawyer” graduated from law school at least 10 years ago. When converting the results to a per-capita basis based on total law school enrollment in 1999, we rank 8th among the top 14 law schools, ahead of Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, NYU, and Penn.
I love it! Essentially Van Zandt is saying: “This list doesn’t put us in the best possible light, so I did it myself. I am a rock. I am an island.”
In Van Zandt’s reality, Super Lawyers needs to be adjusted for class size, but only the traditional Top-14 (as ranked by U.S. News) matter.
So, on the Super Van Zandt law school rankings Northwestern ranks #8:
Per Capita Ranking of the Top 14 Law Schools1. Harvard
2. Michigan
3. Yale
4. Chicago
5. Virginia
6. Stanford
7. Berkeley
8. Northwestern
9. Columbia
10. Cornell
11. Pennsylvania
12. Duke
13. NYU
14. Georgetown
To be clear, I think Van Zandt is doing exactly the right thing here. There was an obvious flaw with the Super Lawyers list which hurt Van Zandt’s school, so he fixed it. He could have done it for all schools instead of just the Top-14 based on somebody else’s rankings, but whatever. Nobody is stopping Boston College from getting in on this game. Remember, we’re dealing with the laws of law school rankings, not the immutable laws of physics. Van Zandt didn’t cross the streams, he just changed a list.
Why doesn’t everybody do this? And not just with the Super Lawyers list, but with the U.S. News list as well? For God’s sake, Thomas M. Cooley Law School found a way to abuse math and reason and place itself #12 on a list of law schools. If Cooley can do it, what the hell is Georgetown waiting for?
Can we live in a world where every single law school is ranked in the top-ten on somebody’s list? Yes we can!
Earlier: Super Law School Rankings
Cooley Law School Develops More Useless Than Normal Law School Rankings
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Ichiban
"A couple of days ago, we mentionED ..."
Can anyone confirm whether or not Northwestern Law is ABA-accredited?
They're #1 in the rankings of two-year programs.
TTT
Northwestern's my first choice school. That's good to hear.
As others have pointed out, the SuperLawyers ranking has serious problems other than the failure to adjust for law-school size, in particular the manner in which lawers are designated as SuperLawyers. SuperLawyers is really an advertising system and does not employ a screening and selection process designed to identify the best lawyers.
Damn, Elie, you are tearing it up this week. Keep up the good work.
-Not Elie
Really, why bother adjusting the rankings? You're not even the best school in your own city. That has to be depressing.
Is there not a methodology by which every law school is #1 at something? Is there anybody who is going to change their choice of school in response to this self-serving adjustment? More importantly, are the college graduates who decided that law is a field in deep decline going to change their minds and decide to go to law school after all?
I rank myself # 1 in all the world.
Holy hell. He seriously emailed the entire school? What an... interesting decision.
The funny thing is that there was once a spirited debate on Wikipedia whether the "top 14" was really a legitimate group. Wikipedia's editors decided it was not. But clearly it is a legitimate group, since top law school deans think it's the only relevant group!
My question: Can two divorced men share an apartment without driving each other crazy?"
I think Partner Emeritus really left. Please stop publishing the murder novel.
I believe that #10 is actually second at best.
Unless any of these law schools can demonstrate that any of their graduates can fly with nothing but a f*ing CAPE, then I don't want to hear anything about these so called Superlawyers!
An an NU 2l, let me say Northwestern has the douchiest school population I've ever seen. A bunch of "cool" fratty guys and sorority girls looking for their Mrs..
Think I'm kidding? Look at this thousand word pic from our most recent fall ball, moussed male hair and fake women in all their glory: http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/400/45137997.jpg
ELIE!
students have seized a building at UCLA. get on it.
georgeTTTown
"Descartian" should be "cartesian."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian
Law students or regular, non-super, students?
They're bitching about a $2,500 increase, on a base tuition of $10,000.
Crimea River.
If they don't want a $40,000 undergraduate education, they can go be a waitress at Red Lobster.
I was on the SuperLawyers ranking committee. We decided not to use class size in differentiating rankings because every school, in isolation, has a perfectly good oppurtunity to increase its class size. Further, in concert with the ABA, we feel strongly that we need more lawyers, so we have provided an incentive to increase class size to some of the smaller schools out there. Of course, there was one member of the board who disagreed with our decision. He got quite angry in his arguments, and began ranting his mantras over and over..."we don't need more lawyers" etc. etc. We collectivly began to tune him out. This only made him more angry, and he decided to single me out, and questioned whether I really cared. I began by requesting that he look at me when I talk to you boy! I gave fucking 22 years of my life to this country! I saw boys blown out of the sky over the pacific, their guts strewn out over rice paddies in Vietnam! So believe me when I say I give a shit!
Elie is balling like Jordan in '96.
Excellent string of posts.
-- Not Elie or 7.
The funny thing is that I'm sure schools outside of the top 14 do better than Northwestern in the gerrymandered rankings, and thats why Van Zandt didn't include them. It's well known that regional schools' grads get great marks in regional markets.
What's wrong with pleasing yourself?
"A bunch of "cool" fratty guys and sorority girls looking for their Mrs."
False.
No one here is attractive or socially competent enough for that scenario to work.
-NU 1L
More schticks please.
That sounds like something the dean of Northeastern law school would do not Northwestern. Basing your law school ranking on a publication that ranks lawyers based upon how much ad space they buy is Super Silly. Actually caring about said rankings is even sillier.
That sounds like something the dean of Northeastern law school would do not Northwestern. Basing your law school ranking on a publication that ranks lawyers based upon how much ad space they buy is Super Silly. Actually caring about said rankings is even sillier.
My dean owns your dean. Ha!
Good old David. On the ball as usual.
"A bunch of "cool" fratty guys and sorority girls looking for their Mrs."
False.
No one here is attractive or socially competent enough for that scenario to work.
-NU 1L
I am a Pennslyvania SuperLawyer and proud of it.
SuperLawyer Secured
as DVZ points out, the superlawyers graduated at least 10 years ago, which makes this the most trailing of all trailing indicators. so wouldn't the appropriate response be 'who cares?' as 'consumer information,' this would be relevant for consumers of law school education in the 1980s and 1990s, but hardly relevant now. DVZ makes us look so ridiculous sometimes. and by sometimes, i mean all of the time.
22 ftw.
Northwester, you just lost yourself an oil refinery!
Doug Masters, F-16 Pilot and Fierce Lover
lulz, we're better than CORNELL! let's throw a party
Only an idiot academic would care about SuperLawyer rankings. All practitioners know that SuperLawyers is pay to play.
NU is WAYYY overrated as a law school.
Wow, so the Northwestern Dean found a way to move himself up 10 spots in the rankings by ... producing a ranking that didn't count 7 of the schools ranked above him. He could've just bumped himself to the top by only looking at law schools with both campuses in Chicago and with schools whose names begin with N.
Elie, this was a funny, clever, informative post largely free of distracting errors. I think you have thus earned the right to make two glaring typos without the standard savage personal attack against you personally and all black people everywhere in these comments.
To #20, you are like an ATL hyena---ugly, rapacious, without grace, but ultimately useful to the greater ecology of knowledge. It's better to be correct than incorrect.
18,
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The University of California is preparing to ask students to pay $2,500 more over two years, a plan that has drawn protest at two major campuses.
What a bunch of whiners just looking to protest. If you go to a school like UCLA you should be able to pay off the extra $2500 (over 2 years!). Jesus Christ people! I owe $150,000 for my education and I am not bitching.
it's cartesian, not descartian.
Why was my alma matter, Université de Poitiers, not considered for this list?
Why do black people always try to cut me with knives on the subway?
Jodie Foster
There is only one official ranking (usnwr) and two rankings worth considering (leiters and vault).
The rest are trying to break in and capture rankings cred much the same way Cooley is capturing cred away from Yale--it isn't.
When somebody says a school is "Top ____," nobody says, "Whoah, hang on, according to which ranking source!?!?"
Why do white women, after locking their children in a car and pushing the car into the water so that their children suffer a horrible, suffocating death, try to blame it on a black man by claiming they were carjacked?
-46 - LeQeefa, that you girl?
Sheronda
Change it to per capita rather than total graduates, quietly dump four or five schools because US News's equally arbitrary ranking drops those schools below Northwestern, and VOILA! We're #8!!! Right... Sorry, but the rest of us see right through this llaughable ittle ruse.
Just saying. I'm quite happy Cornell's position is appropriately recognized. Frankly, I'll hire CLS grads before others that allegedly rank "higher." It's sort of "the devil you know."
@ 46 WTF?
-- ET!
Not to rock the boat, but why was changing the criteria of a list for self-serving purposes Cartesian?
Wouldn't Egoism be a better fit?
NU law : law school rankings :: USC : college football rankings
I suppose that I should know the answer to this, but is Northwestern University Law School fully accredited by the American Bar Association and a member in good standing of the Association of American Law Schools?
I suppose that I should know the answer to this, but is Northwestern University Law School fully accredited by the American Bar Association and a member in good standing of the Association of American Law Schools?
Rankings without NorthwesTTTern's fudging.
http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2009/11/what-the-super-lawyer-ranking-of-law-schools-would-look-like.html
This article, along with the list discussed therein, ranks #2 on my list of Things Imbued with Total Superfluity. Blahmuh the Clown ranks #1.
I believe that the distinguished (if oddly coloured) editor had a valid point, at least as modified below.
Insofar as the learned dean of this North-Western University (the location of which, at least, is clear from its name) re-envisioned the list on the basis of appropriate intellectual deductions, rather than the unreliable basis of perception, his actions would have correctly been classified as Cartesian.
I am far to modest a man to allow for said learned editor's label to stand, however: the only thing appropriately described as Descartian, is myself.
Nice job Mystal. Very entertaining today.
@46 - because such an accusation is per se reasonable
@38: NU is WAYYY overrated as a law school.
You are correct, good sir (or ma'am), but not nearly as overrated as every school "ranked" above it on US News. At least Northwestern recruits a sizeable number of students who have actually done something with their lives after undergrad, rather than a bunch of "studies"-majored hacks who had a great attention span for three hours.
The hilarious thing about the Van Zandt approach to rankings, however, is that it is precisely how the US News (or Super Lawyer) ranking system works in practice. If the legal profession were based on merit, any unbiased law school ranking system would have Harvard, NYU, Yale, and Stanford far outside of the top 10. Their legal "education" is not worth the paper it is printed on, but their self-crowned superiority nonetheless is continued through overvaluing "pedigree"--an invented elitist term--over actual ability.
Any other type of study based upon that degree of hearsay, anecdote, and ipse dixit would be thrown out as completely unreliable. But since FTTs have stolen academia and the Am100--well, I guess then it's valid, because they say so.
@46 - Because as long as you are murdering your children, you might as well be a racist about it.
24 and 54, FTW!
NU's dean is pretty dishonest...jesus...
The REAL per capita rankings:
1. Harvard University (6.44)
2. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (5.89)
3. University of Texas, Austin (5.81)
4. Yale University (5.43)
5. University of California, Berkeley (5.25)
6. University of Virginia (5.20)
7. University of Chicago (4.83)
8. University of Minnesota (4.55)
9. Duke University (4.18)
9. Stanford University (4.18)
9. University of Pennsylvania (4.20)
12. Vanderbilt University (4.08)
13. Boston University (3.91)
13. University of California, Los Angeles (3.93)
15. University of Florida, Gainesville (3.81)
See http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2009/11/what-the-super-lawyer-ranking-of-law-schools-would-look-like.html
I think NU should hang its head in shame. Their dean is nothing but a lying scumbag.
Van Zandt is shameless. There's a Cooley-like aspect to his pathetic behavior. That's what you get when you hire a dean who thinks that business school is an appropriate model for law school.
@39 - Actually, Northwestern is the only top law school in Chicago. You must be thinking of that Hyde Park community college where social skills go to die.
You're welcome.
Thanks, 62!
The problem with the original Super Lawyers thing was not that it wasn't per-capita. Even when that's adjusted for, the results are absurd. (Minnesota better than Stanford?) It's that "Super Lawyer" is a meaningless term.
64,
Right on. NU's two-year program is much better than Chicago's.
- Not 39
Subtle UVA trolling.
Actually, if you take USNWR and Super Lawyer rankings, and adjust for both class size and douchieness, you get the most accurate rankings yet.
1. Stanford
2. Northwestern
3. Yale
4. Chicago
4. Virginia
6. Michigan State
7. Berkeley
8. Harvard
8. Columbia
10. Cornell
11. Pennsylvania
12. Duke
13. NYU
14. Georgetown
So we're all in agreement:
Michigan Law is now the official #2 law school in the world. Forever.
+1 63. DVZ has been trying to make the school the Kellogg School of Law for several years, chasing away liberal faculty members and non-corporate-law-oriented classes in the process. None of that is wrong per se, but the school needs to be more up front about it.
I have it on strong authority (from a Michigan "Super Lawyer" no less) that you must pay for the privilege of being on the list of super lawyers.
Kind of puts the whole thing in perspective nicely, no?
69: LOL, yes. Michigan used to be a bona fide top 3 school, then a top 6 school, and now a middling middle of the road T14 school. It's clearly been on the decline for the last 30 years or so, and lagging indicators (even ones as dubious as SuperLawyers) will eventually show the change too, once all the older superstar Michigan lawyers retire, and the school is only represented by newer grads, who aren't the cream of the crop anymore.
And, Texas is only highly ranked because there's no other legit law school competition for the entire Texas region (and no, SMU doesn't really count). Also, the Texas market is very insular and doesn't go by eastern Ivy / brand name prestige as much as it does the top local school -- Texas. In any other region but the Texas area, Texas probably doesn't even register a blip.
Clearly the NU dean had reason to rely upon the ranking system to produce a favorable result for his school, since he considers it to be such a good school. When it produced an unfavorable result there was certainly a breach of implied contract. A restatement 90 claim should be looked into- the law is very clear on this.
Doesn't anyone else think that a ratings system based strictly on popularity/prestigue in the community also biases more towards smaller legal markets that have tended to be dominated more by state schools, such as Michigan? In other words, doesn't UM have an enormous advantage because the state has a large population and a large bar, but is not necessarily desireable for people who go to law schools on the east coast? too much bias?
this is like Obama-Pelosi healthcare cost accounting or non-gaap financial measures. Take the real numbers, then adjusted to get you where you want to be. Lets rank schools based on their USNWR rankings, but adjust downward for vicinity to an oceanic coast, and see where we get.
76: Not to mention the Obama stimulus "successes." What, there's no 86th Congressional District? What, with all that money, we only created 6 jobs, not 600,000?
70 - The school is up front about that. Or at least I thought so when I was applying for law schools.
res ipsa wouldn't understand prestige if it impregnated his mother, raised the bastard child on a diet of sushi and frosted flakes, and trained prestige, jr. to sit down with his half-brother every day from the hours of noon to 2 p.m. and try to explain why earning first rate education at a preeminent peer law school makes you not only a smarter and more talented attorney, but a better person in general.
die in a butt.
Go Blue!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
79--
That is, without question, the most incoherent critical comment I have ever received on this blog, and I've received quite a few. (It IS critical of me, right?)
As I am a fan of second-grade level hate from self-entitled FTT mental degenerates such as yourself, would you please rephrase it so that it actually makes sense?
How did NU not get further in that douche tournament?
79/81: I don't want to go on a rant, here, but 79 makes about as much sense as Beowulf having sex with Robert Fulton at the first battle of Antietam. I mean when a neo-conservative defenestrates it's like Raskolnikov filibuster deoxymonohydroxinate...
Pretty sad that this is the way the Dean of such a "prestigious school" spends his day. The Gators got them beat in every way!
82 - "farther"
-NU 3L
P.S. To answer your question, I'm not sure.
PING! @ 82:
Correcting grammer? Bad choice...
err....make that @85.
Plastic isn't the best material for sensitive equipment.
@73 You're an idiot and stating the obvious. Most law schools (including those at the top) are not going to make much of a blip outside of the legal markets they primarily serve. In case you didn't know, Texas is a big state and more than capable of absorbing UT grads, along with SMU, UH, etc... Having prestige in TX is enough to land on anyone's list.
How does the actions of DVZ make the students at Northwestern douches? Frankly, if that is the standard we are using the Michigan students are pervs that can't get sex unless they pay for it...since I seem to remember one of their teachers paying a student for sex.
Here's another review of Super Lawyer's faulty reasoning . . . using White's own baseball analogy to show him just how wrong he is. Fun read . . . Enjoy! ( http://www.admissionsdean.com/about/blog/post/super-lawyers-not-so-super-law-school-rankings )
DVZ's move to rank the T14 law schools is totally justified. I am just guessing, but I don't think anyone is looking at, say, University of Minnesota and thinking that it's one of Northwestern's peer schools (nothing against Minnesota -- I know it's considered the top dog in the region). The ranking just filters out the noise.
In certain critical respects Van Zandt's casuistry is even coarser (of its sleight of hand manipulation, if not its effect) than what the trick by which the Cooley Law School (a haven for morons, if ever there existed one) becomes the twelfth best law school in America. I wonder how much effort went into the house of cards he has erected.
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