For those rankings mavens amongst us, it appears that the U.S. News Rankings for 2011 leaked yesterday. What do people think of this year’s IP specialty rankings (assuming the list is accurate)?
1. Berkeley
2. Stanford
3. George Washington
4. Boston University
5. N.Y.U.
6. Columbia
7. U Michigan
8. Houston
9. Duke
10. Franklin Pierce
Other than as a tool for recruiting students interested in IP, do schools or professors really care about these rankings?
Jacqui — I can’t answer your question extensively without the risk of making enemies, but I will say that I think Berkeley’s reputation for excellence in IP is well deserved. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy with all these ranking games, but I’d say that, w/r/t Berkeley, for a variety of reasons, the prophecy has been adequately and consistently fulfilled.
It has been pointed out to me that it looks like Franklin Pierce actually rates equal 9th with Duke. I can’t properly read the fuzzy copy I saw online, so if anyone knows for sure, that would be helpful.
Aside from using rankings like these to attract students who are interested in IP, do law schools or professors really care about these rankings? Does it affect how you view placements in these school’s IP journals? Things like that?
I imagine the folks at these schools are understandably and justifiable happy about being listed, so it matters in that sense. Named schools will use this as an opportunity to attract more and better students interested in IP, and I think it can matter to faculty that way.
But the reality is that most IP professors have substantially more information about the IP programs at various schools than US news can provide in a numbered list of names.
Berkeley has a wonderful IP journal, which is just one reason I think it is an excellent school for students interested in IP.
I should add that there is a virtual consensus, I think, that the US news rankings are deeply flawed and shouldn’t matter as much as they do… but all the same, they matter.
I must concur with the comments made by my learned colleague, Greg Lastowka, in response to “Outsider”. Even though it’s nice to be listed in the specialty rankings, and some/many programs clearly deserve to be there (for whatever that’s worth), faculties in the IP field probably have a better idea of which schools are good at what in the field – so the specialty rankings are probably only a very flawed guide to students about programs that have achieved some notoriety during a given time period.
You are not going to find a larger IP Faculty or array of courses than at Franklin Pierce and yes they have an incredible IP Law Review as well. What you all need to understand is these rankings are based on going down the list of IP faculty, picking every 3rd one now (it used to be every other) and asking their opinion. The reality is schools attached to good engineering programs and/or are already in the top of the regular rankings tend to receive some deference. In addition, the vote discrepancy in the past differentiating the top and the bottom schools was a matter of a couple of votes. On that note you can take it all these rankings with a grain of salt. On another note, GW I believe has the longest running IP program and is the only other law school that has an international presence aside from Pierce. U of M … just hired 3 good IP faculty, so I am assuming they got some extra votes this year catapulting them into the top ten for the first time ever. Again showing the failure to adequately evaluate programs for their true worth.
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