Law Reviews, Law Schools

Ranking The Top Law Reviews

A new ranking system endeavors to resolve the eternal question: whose law review reigns supreme!

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Library partyWe have rankings for everything from the top firms by profits, to the best places to work to “Top Transactional Firm By Law School Pedigree.” Yet it’s always the law school rankings — both the U.S. News list and the ATL Top 50 (and for all those asking, yes, the ATL Top 50 will be out as soon as we receive the most recent data and enter it into the algorithm) — that generate the most excitement.

So while we’re busy ranking the relative worth of the law schools, how about a new omnibus ranking of the top law journals?

Over at PrawfsBlawg (h/t TaxProf), Bryce Clayton Newell endeavors to divine the best law review out there:

So, to get to the point, I decided to create a meta-ranking of the possible contenders for gauging the relative importance of journals and offers: US News Overall Ranking (averaged from 2010-2017), US News Peer Reputation Ranking (also averaged from 2010-2017), W&L Combined Ranking (at default weighting; 2007-2014), and Google Scholar Metrics law journal rankings (averaging the h-index and h-median of each journal, as proposed here by Robert Anderson). I’ve ranked each journal within each ranking system, averaged these four ranks using a 25% weighting for each, and computed and ranked the final scores. I think this approach benefits from incorporating a couple different forms of impact evaluation (W&L + Google) while not disregarding the general sentiment that law school “prestige” (USN combined rank + peer reputation rank, each averaged over an 8-year period) is an important factor in law review placement decisions.

The full post is worth a read to see how some journals stepped up (or sank like a stone) vs. last year’s rankings. In the meantime, here’s the top 10. For professors, these are the journals that you want to publish your work. For students, these are the journals you want to get on if you want to painstakingly cite check only the most prestigious work:

1. Harvard Law Review
2. The Yale Law Journal
3. Stanford Law Review
4. Columbia Law Review
5. University of Pennsylvania Law Review
6. Michigan Law Review
7. California Law Review
8. New York University Law Review
8. Virginia Law Review
10. The Georgetown Law Journal

Congratulations to Harvard on sticking it to their rivals.

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2016 Meta-Ranking of Flagship US Law Reviews [PrawfsBlawg]

Earlier: The 2015 Am Law 100: Revenues Rising, Profits Popping, And A New #1 Firm
https://abovethelaw.com/2016/03/which-biglaw-firms-are-the-best-places-to-work/”>Which Biglaw Firms Are The Best Places To Work
Top Transactional Firm By Law School Pedigree
The OFFICIAL 2017 U.S. News Law School Rankings Are Here!
ATL Top 50 2015

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