My friend Tom Smith, Right Coast blogger and fellow corporate law professor, boasts that "USD kicks butt on bar results." Memo to Tom: Coming in sixth does not count as butt kicking in my book. Just for the record, via Paul Caron, here is the ranking of California law schools by their graduates' California bar results. The observant reader will note which school came in #1, by the way:
July 2005 California Bar Exam Law School Results (First Time Takers) v. US News & SSRN | ||||
CA Bar Rank |
School |
US News Overall CA Rank |
US News Peer CA Rank |
SSRN CA Rank |
1 (88.7%) |
UCLA |
3 |
3 |
2 |
2 (88.0%) |
Stanford |
1 |
1 |
1 |
3 (87.0%) |
Boalt |
2 |
2 |
4 |
4 (84.3%) |
Hastings |
6 |
6 |
9 |
5 (81.7%) |
USC |
4 |
4 |
3 |
6 (80.0%) |
USD |
8 |
7 |
5 |
7 (75.0%) |
Loyola |
7 |
8 |
6 |
8 (74.4%) |
USF |
Tier 3 |
10 |
13 |
9 (73.8%) |
Davis |
5 |
5 |
7 |
10 (72.6%) |
Pepperdine |
9 |
10 |
16 |
11 (66.4%) |
Southwest. |
Tier 3 |
13 |
10 |
12 (63.9%) |
McGeorge |
10 |
12 |
15 |
13 (62.5%) |
Santa Clara |
Tier 3 |
9 |
12 |
14 (59.5%) |
Chapman |
Tier 4 |
17 |
11 |
15 (57.7%) |
Cal- Western |
Tier 4 |
14 |
14 |
16 (43.8%) |
Golden Gate |
Tier 4 |
14 |
18 |
17 (39.7%) |
Whittier |
Tier 4 |
16 |
17 |
18 (38.4%) |
T. Jefferson |
Tier 4 |
17 |
8 |
19 (24.6%) |
Western St. |
Tier 4 |
19 |
19 |
On another front, Professor Smith asks why there is no law wiki. Wikipedia has gotten a lot of disrespect in the blogosphere lately, but the BBC reports that Wikipedia in fact is about as accurate the Encyclopedia Britannica on science issues, which suggests the wiki idea may not be so bad after all. Indeed, Prof. Smith later noted that a law wiki in fact exists. Personally, however, I can think of at least four reasons why a corporate law wiki is unnecessary:
