Actually, Leiter didn't do it himself this time; someone else used his methodology apparently.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=143619&forum_id=2#2248090)

Looks like nothing has changed though, still using the same crappy methodology and its biases.

EDIT: Just looked at the site... It's by a student.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=143619&forum_id=2#2248093)

"Self-selection by students in choosing where to go to law school in the first place has a lot to do with the results. Students who choose to go to Stanford or Columbia are probably, among other things, choosing based on lifestyle and regional loyalties: this is reflected, unsurprisingly, in where graduates end up practicing. (How many students choose to go to Stanford in order to practice in Cleveland or Pittsburgh? How many pick Columbia with the goal of big firm practice in Dallas or Portland?) By contrast, Michigan, with only a minority of Michigan residents in its student body, doesn’t offer many attractive regional options (no Detroit firms make the Vault lists, for example), with the result that its students both come from all over and spread out all over. The same might be said for Duke and Vanderbilt (no North Carolina or Tennessee firms make the Vault lists, either). Something similar is also true for Virginia, which combines both a low number of in-state students with proximity, and traditional feeder relationships, to attractive legal markets in D.C. and New York, among many others.

Contrast these cases with Berkeley or Texas, which have very high in-state student populations, are in states with major legal markets, and, like Columbia and Stanford, tend to be chosen by many students who have distinct lifestyle preferences and regional loyalties.

So the bottom line is this: a student utilizing this data shouldn’t conclude that they should choose Vanderbilt over Boalt—remember Boalt’s faculty is better, its placement in law teaching is better (an even more elite selection process), and its students largely choose to be in California and environs, which has a lot to do with why they choose Boalt in the first place. The same could, of course, be said for Columbia, NYU, Stanford, and Texas, among others."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=143619&forum_id=2#2248643)

Mysteriously though, Texas seems to do well in all of the studies.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=143619&forum_id=2#2248656)

This isn't even going into:

-- the fact that it looks at all hires, and not just recent hires.

-- the bias introduced by LLM graduates

-- the horrible limitations of Martindale-Hubbell

-- the arbitrary weighting scheme

-- the lack of adjustments for sectoral preferences

I'm not going to get into this now, but I think after you see the section of my lit review that addresses the Leiter (and Sullivan) report that this is just not a reliable way of measuring placement (and from his disclaimer, it looks like Sullivan agrees with me!).

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=143619&forum_id=2#2248341)

"For instance, his job placement rankings recently appeared in Susan Estrich's book How to Get into Law School."

Susan Estrich cited Leiter's rankings? Okay, my respect for her just went down several notches.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=143619&forum_id=2#2248110)

Given the inadequacies of the database, a better way of doing this kind of study would be to use firms that had search engines on their websites that searched by law school. For now my goal was simply to try to get new data using the same methods as Brian Leiter. I think the biggest lesson I've learned from doing this is that using the Martindale-Hubbell database for this kind of study is a ridiculous enterprise.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=143619&forum_id=2#2248167)

Ugh, now I gotta change every single Leiter reference to "Leiter and Sullivan."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=143619&forum_id=2#2248286)

'...the Herculean labor of updating my 2003 study of the law school's with the most national placement at top firms'

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=143619&forum_id=2#2248236)

imo the most prestigious president ever

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=143619&forum_id=2#2248495)

http://www.law.georgetown.edu/news/releases/documents/nlj_000.pdf

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=143619&forum_id=2#2248515)

1) Harvard

2) Yale

3) Columbia

3) Stanford

5) NYU

5) Chicago

7) UVA

7) Michigan

9) Georgetown

9) Penn

11) Cornell

11) Boalt

13) Northwestern

13) Duke

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=143619&forum_id=2#2248899)

clearly a Boalt troll

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=143619&forum_id=2#2248925)

For instance, Martindale says there are 19 Columbia Law people at Cravath -- however, Cravath's own search engine says there are 87!

Is it any wonder why Columbia, NYU, etc. are ranked so low when you're using that kind of TTT method of data collection?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=143619&forum_id=2#2263490)