"I just wanted to point out that the accepted knowledge is in fact true on this point."
Accepted by whom? I don't remember the numbers well enough to recite them, but my understanding after talking to several professors at top schools and many more students is that the real gap amongst the top three is between Yale and Harvard/Stanford.
1) I obviously wasn't using the fact that the knowledge is accepted as a premise. I've been around for a while: when I say accepted, I just mean "the grouping you hear most often." There is accepted knowledge that there's a "T14," but it may or may not be fair/accurate/representative of anything to make such a grouping.
2) Leiter and I disagree about the extent to which class size matters, and so he agrees with you. If you accept my argument about class size, then the data bear out the conclusions pretty well. I'm not going to find that stat about "total tenured and tenure track faculty" right now, which is probably stronger.
Here are the interesting stats:
2000-2002 Stats:
Total # of Tenure-Track Jobs Secured by Graduates Who Had Not Earned LLMs etc.
1. Harvard University (108)
2. Yale University (104)
3. Stanford University (48)
4. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (32)
5. University of Chicago (30)
6. University of Virginia (23)
[Leiter's 2000-02 groupings were Y, HS, CM, CBoaltV, etc.]
Total # of Top Jobs Secured by Graduates Who Had Not Earned LLMs etc.
1. Yale University (36) 4 at Yale
2. Harvard University (20) 5 at Harvard
3. Stanford University (-8-) 0 at Stanford
4. University of Virginia (5) 3 at Virginia
Total # of EQR or US News Tier 1 Jobs (whichever is more) Secured by Graduates Who Had Not Earned LLMs etc.
1. Yale University (73)
2. Harvard University (53)
3. Stanford University (26)
2006 Stats:
Yale Law School 92
Harvard Law School 78
Stanford Law School 21
University of Chicago Law School 26
Columbia Law School 24
[Looking at the numbers, one might be surprised to learn that Leiter's Groupings are Y, HSC, CN etc.]
It's also noteworthy that 71% of the 21 SLS people had other grad degrees (compared to 58% at YLS and 41% at HLS). This may sound like a good thing, but it's actually indicative of
inflated numbers: because other grad degrees are so desirable in the current teaching market, it's not unreasonable to conclude that some of the 21 would not have gotten their jobs on the SLS JD alone.
Discussion
Resources
I guess Cambridge would be an appropriate introduction.
