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A statistical approach to law school citation rankings

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  • Joshua Fischman

Abstract

Citation rankings have emerged as a popular approach to ranking the scholarly impact of law faculties. This paper develops a statistical approach for inferring faculty quality from citation counts and determining when differences among law schools are significant. Statistical tests demonstrate that the distribution of citations within faculties closely follows the lognormal distribution, subject to small adjustments. This suggests a simple test for comparing faculties: whether they could be drawn from lognormal distributions with the same log mean. Under this approach, the geometric mean of citations is the most efficient measure for summarizing faculty quality. Using citation data collected from HeinOnline, this article provides a citation ranking for 195 law schools in the United States. Most differences between peer schools are statistically insignificant, and confidence intervals on citation ranks are extremely wide. Except for the highest‐ranked faculties, citation rankings provide little information on the relative quality of faculties.

Suggested Citation

  • Joshua Fischman, 2024. "A statistical approach to law school citation rankings," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 21(3), pages 632-668, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:empleg:v:21:y:2024:i:3:p:632-668
    DOI: 10.1111/jels.12381
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Michael J. Stringer & Marta Sales‐Pardo & Luís A. Nunes Amaral, 2010. "Statistical validation of a global model for the distribution of the ultimate number of citations accrued by papers published in a scientific journal," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(7), pages 1377-1385, July.
    2. Rodríguez-Navarro, Alonso & Brito, Ricardo, 2018. "Double rank analysis for research assessment," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 31-41.
    3. Magne Mogstad & Joseph P Romano & Azeem M Shaikh & Daniel Wilhelm, 2024. "Inference for Ranks with Applications to Mobility across Neighbourhoods and Academic Achievement across Countries," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 91(1), pages 476-518.
    4. Michael J. Stringer & Marta Sales-Pardo & Luís A. Nunes Amaral, 2010. "Statistical validation of a global model for the distribution of the ultimate number of citations accrued by papers published in a scientific journal," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(7), pages 1377-1385, July.
    5. Dag W. Aksnes & Liv Langfeldt & Paul Wouters, 2019. "Citations, Citation Indicators, and Research Quality: An Overview of Basic Concepts and Theories," SAGE Open, , vol. 9(1), pages 21582440198, February.
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    7. Eisenberg, Theodore & Wells, Martin T, 1998. "Ranking and Explaining the Scholarly Impact of Law Schools," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(2), pages 373-413, June.
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