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Pants Down

By Jim Chen et al.

I guess I did not see it when it came out but now I have come across the Leiter ranking (or is an effort to allow others to rank) the top 40 law schools. As I understand it, 331 respondents ranked 57 law school that are arguable in the top 40. The eventual ranking was then determined by taking each school and seeing how it did in head to head combat with each other school. The most wins gets you number 1 and so on. Yale is overall the winner and Harvard second.

Whether or not I have described the methodology exactly accurately, the most interesting part of the effort is the rankings of each respondent. Leiter picks on FSU a bit for its strategic voting. Rightfully so since FSU is ranked ahead of Yale on 35 ballots. Plus FSU has about 20 votes for the top law school in the land and most of the voters taking that view ranked all other schools as tied for last of 57. Remember, this gets FSU 20 x 56 wins in head to head competition. I can understand the FSU frustration. It is an excellent law school and overlooked but, sadly, their pants are down.

Plus, there are plenty of others with their pants around their ankles. Yale gets about 35 last place votes. In fact, Yale's high ranking is mostly the result last place votes (yes, worse of 57 schools) combining with many very high votes. It goes the other way too. A number of those voting for Yale as number one also rated every other school last. Think about it! You are are a Yale grad and so worried about Yale's ranking, that you felt compelled to rank every other school as tied for worst. Harvard has a number of these as well. These voters, far more than FSUs, should look into therapy. There must be a limit to insecurity or a craving status.

Even this way understates those with their butts hanging out. Miami gets a first place vote, also by someone ranking every other school last. So do Michigan, San Diego and others.

In fact, although I did not count, it appears that the most common ranking given was 57. How does that come about? It happens when someone votes the school he or she teaches at or the school he or she attended first and all other schools tied for last or 57th.

As I said, 331 people voted. I deeply appreciate those instances in which an obviously outside the top 15 school did not get a first place vote. I have no idea what percentage of those voting voted strategically. I did do this. I selected Boston College. I doubt any reasonable person thinks BC is the best or the worse law school of the 57 selected. Thus, I counted the number of last place or first place vote BC got as a rough and very very conservative estimate of the percentage of strategic voters. I get 79+ stragetic votes out of 331. Twelve of them are from those who ranked FSU first.

I guess this is fine because, after all, we're just having fun. Right?!

Full post as published by MoneyLaw on January 16, 2011 (boomark / email).