Utilizing the data that Larry Solum has compiled for two years on where newly hired law teachers earned their first degree (here and here), I've compiled a list of all schools that sent at least three graduates in to law teaching during this time period. Next to the name of each school appears the number of graduates who took tenure-track jobs in the last two years; and following that number is the number of students in a typical class (rounded to the nearest 50) based on the 2000 ABA Guide to U.S. Law Schools. (Some schools have shrunk their class sizes since, but the 2000 Guide is probably more indicative of class size for those currently entering law teaching, since most of them earned their law degrees 3-8 years ago.) Where there were ties in total number of graduates in teaching, I used class size to break the tie, ranking the smaller school higher. Because the numbers that enter law teaching are so small, and because the sample size here (just two years), is also small, it's hard to know whether per capita measures would be informative, or just confusing. (The reality of hiring, too, is that it helps to have a lot of graduates of your school in law teaching: institutional loyalty and all that.) Yet surely it is relevant when comparing, e.g., Harvard and Yale, that Harvard is two-and-a-half-times the size of Yale, yet Yale places almost as many graduates in teaching as Harvard. So the figures on student body size in parentheses permit modestly useful comparisons for schools with roughly similar numbers of graduates in law teaching during this time period. (Remember: because the totals for most schools are small, another year's data could change the results significantly.)
The results are not significantly different from the results of earlier data I compiled. Note, however, that Solum's data, and my aggregation of it here, do not control for quality of the school at which graduates are hired, or for the number of graduates who earned other degrees from other institutions prior to securing a post in law teaching. (This is important, e.g., in the case of Kansas, perhaps the most surprising performer on the list.)
Top Producers of New Law Teachers, 2003-2005
1. Harvard University (51) (550)
2. Yale University (41) (200)
3. Stanford University (15) (200)
4. Columbia University (15) (350)
5. University of Chicago (13) (200)
6. New York University (10) (450)
7. University of California, Berkeley (9) (250)
8. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (9) (350)
8. University of Virginia (9) (350)
10. University of Pennsylvania (7) (250)
11. Georgetown University (7) (600)
12. University of Texas, Austin (6) (450)
13. University of California, Los Angeles (5) (250)
14. University of Kansas (4) (150)
15. Duke University (4) (200)
16. Howard University (3) (100)
17. Cornell University (3) (200)
17. Northwestern University (3) (200)
UPDATE: Law professor Chris Drahozal from the University of Kansas writes:
I'm happy that Kansas is finally getting some positive recognition (after our fall to 100 in U.S. News!). I do take some issue with the following remark from your post, however, which I think is a little unfair to KU: "Note, however, that Solum's data, and my aggregation of it here, do not control for quality of the school at which graduates are hired, or for the number of graduates who earned other degrees from other institutions prior to securing a post in law teaching. (This is important, e.g., in the case of Kansas, perhaps the most surprising performer on the list.)"
Our four alums who entered teaching the past two years have gotten jobs at Cornell, Minnesota, St. Louis, and Akron - a better group of schools than the Duke alums are teaching at, for example. And only one of the four has a degree from somewhere other than Kansas (one other has an MBA from Kansas as well). [Ed.-one grad earned an SJD at Yale, and is now at Cornell.] As I'm sure you know teaching at a state school, we get some really good students who don't want to pay out-of-state or private school tuition. As a result, our top graduates are really good, and, as this data suggests, competive with law graduates from anywhere. We just don't have as many students like that as some other schools do.
Of course, the same is presumably true at the University of Georgia and the University of Minnesota and the University of Iowa and so on, yet these schools didn't perform as well as Kansas in the last two years. While I wouldn't suggest that students now head off to Kansas in order to enter law teaching, it's clear that they're doing something right in Lawrence to help their students fare well in this most competitive of job markets. (And the U.S. News ranking of the school is obviously silly, needless to say.)
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