Legal Commentary

Or at least a copy from last year. Unfortunately, with Bob Morse out of the office last week, we had to go on what their website said, which was simply to judge the "quality" of each school's "program."

Here's what the question actually says: "Identify the law schools you are familiar with, and then rate the academic quality of their J.D. program at each of these schools. Consider all factors that contribute to or give evidence of the excellence of the school's J.D. program, for example, curriculum, record of scholarship, quality of faculty and graduates."

The bad news is I need to tweak my proposed conception of "value added," I think. Things like career services, alumni network, possibly some extracurriculars seem like they're outside the scope of the question of "academic quality."

The good news is that with scholarship in the mix, one could create a Voters' Guide with relative quality assessments for both scholarly and educational excellence. Still questions about the weight to be given to each, but voters could decide for themselves. Leiter and I could live together happily ever after.

What do you think -- with this description of the question, is the answer to rate the "academic quality" of each J.D. program in the U.S. News survey with 50% of the rating based on scholarly quality, and 50% educational quality? I'm inclined to think that for this particular forum (U.S. News rankings for students and employers), 50-50 overweights scholarly quality, but I'm guessing others may disagree.