Osler's Razor

It looks like the results of the U.S. News law school rankings have leaked, and they have Baylor Law at 53. This is almost no change from last year's position at 51, which is encouraging given that new reporting methodology was used this year. Swanburg ran a poll, in which the majority of voters thought that Baylor Law's position will improve this year, but this seemed unrealistic given the change in reporting numbers for incoming students.

For a good analysis of how these rankings are compiled, check this out. A major component of the rankings is the "academic reputation" of a school, which is compiled through surveying certain law professors-- the dean, chair of the hiring committee, most recently tenured prof., and, uh, one other person I can't remember. Anyways, as the most recently tenured professor at Baylor, I got to fill out the survey this year. It was an odd experience; knowing how much this matters to a law school these days, I answered "No Opinion" for many schools, since I didn't have enough information. However, I found that I had to resist voting just based on an isolated fact or single person at those schools. The experience left me with the impression that many people must vote based on hunches, rumors or stray events, and that would risk skewing the results of poll.

Like many academics, i wish that the U.S. News rankings were not seen as so important. For one thing, these rankings are somewhat arbitrary, and for another, they slight the strengths of a school like Baylor, where (for example) our Practice Court program doesn't strengthen us in any of the recorded categories.

You can see the biggest movers up and down (including Pepperdine moving up 21 places!) here. Just to reiterate, I think this a pretty good result for Baylor given the change in reporting.