Empirical Legal Studies

UCLA-Rand Conference on Transparency

ELS Blog readers located in Southern California might be interested in this event:

UCLA School of Law and RAND Institute for Civil Justice are co-hosting a conference on Transparency in the Civil Justice System on Nov. 2 at UCLA School of Law (details here).  Researchers who are based primarily at the RAND Institute for Civil Justice and UCLA School of Law are collaborating on an analysis of the issue of transparency, both its advantages and disadvantages, in many aspects of the civil justice system. The following questions guide their research:

• Are there specific examples of problems in the civil justice system that might have been avoided if the system were more transparent? What are the risks associated with too much transparency?
• How can the civil justice system balance the value of privacy with the value of transparency?
• What mechanisms are involved in providing greater transparency? What are the costs, and who pays them?
• Will greater transparency improve the civil justice system? Is it likely to improve accountability and increase public confidence?
• Are there examples of reforms that have led to greater transparency? Have they affected outcomes in the system? Have they improved efficiency in the system?
• Can plaintiffs and defendants agree on a cohesive vision of increased transparency in the civil justice system?

    The keynote address will be delivered by Ron George, Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court.  The opening remarks will be delivered by Ken Feinberg, Special Master of the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund.

Princeton's LAPA Fellowships

Kim Scheppele (Princeton) wanted to make sure ELS blog readers were aware of the following Fellowship opportunity. Please note that applications are due by 15 November 2007.

Princeton University's Program in Law and Public Affairs (LAPA) invites outstanding faculty, independent scholars, lawyers, and judges to apply for appointments as Fellows for the academic year 2008-2009. We anticipate naming up to six Fellows who are engaged in substantial research on topics broadly related to law and public affairs or law and normative inquiry, including one Microsoft/LAPA Fellow specializing in intellectual property or the legal regulation of the economy. The remaining fellowships are not limited in their choice of topics within the broad theme of legal studies. Successful candidates will devote an academic year in residence at Princeton to engage in research, discussion, and scholarly collaboration.  Fellows may also qualify to teach a graduate or undergraduate course. Applicants should have a doctorate, JD, or an equivalent professional postgraduate degree. The application deadline is November 15, 2007. For more information and for instructions about the on-line application process, visit the LAPA website.

Kim Lane Scheppele, Director, Program on Law and Public Affairs Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Public Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School and in the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University, and Faculty Fellow University of Pennsylvania Law School. Contact information: Woodrow Wilson School 415 Robertson Hall Princeton University Princeton, NJ 08544. Phone: 1-609-258-6949 Fax:  1-609-258-0922. E-mail: [email protected].

Princeton University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. LAPA is co-sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, the Center for Human Values, and Princeton University.

WSJ Article on Legal Job Market, Transfer Students, and Alternative Law School Rankings

Wall Street Journal reporter Amir Efrati continues to make a name for himself by aggressively covering the legal education beat.  Today's WSJ page B1 story (How to Cut Debt, Boost Job Prospects from Law School) lays out some the calculus that prospective law students  should consider in making the decision to enroll in law school.  It also includes reference to the benefits of transferring to a national law school after a successful 1L year at a lower ranked institution; in my last post, I learned that this is a very sensitive topic.

The story contains a quote from me and a reference to an alternative law school ranking that I am working on with Andy Morriss (Illinois Law).   I would like to add two key pieces of context:

• Chances of landing a large law firm job.  In the story, I am quoted, "If you go to a school ranked 35th or 40th over one that's ranked 70th or 80th, you are by no means substantially increasing your chances of landing a high-paying job."  This is more than just my opinion.  When I made this statement, I was looking a data that took months to compile.  Further, the same analysis holds true when you compare, say, the 25th or 30th with the 50th or 60th.   My point is simple: a higher rank in US News does not necessarily provide students with an opportunity set that justifies a price premium.  That will be the central takeaway of our alternative ranking--from a student perspective, over-reliance on US News can be a big financial mistake.

• Alternative rankings.  The story notes that our alternative rankings will include large law firm employment.  Our project, however,  is actually much broader than that.  If a student wants to preserve maximum financial flexibility upon graduation in order to pursue a variety of interesting legal jobs (government, public interest, small firm practice) with little or no law school debt, we will show students how to do this calculus using actual law school data.

As I have said before, the future of legal education is driven by labor markets.

Empirical Work on Lower Federal Court Clerks

Over on SSRN, Todd Peppers, Mike Giles, and Bridget Tanier-Parkins have posted "The Hiring and Utilization of Federal District Court Law Clerks."  From the abstract:

Using original survey data of 311 active and senior federal district court judges, we take the first step in delineating the institutional rules and norms surrounding the selection and use of law clerks in the federal district courts. Our findings reveal that federal district court judges assign their law clerks a number of substantive job duties, findings which raise important new questions about law clerk influence in the lower federal courts.

Among their interesting findings: District court judges place an applicant's personality high on the list of desiderata when selecting clerks. ATSRTWT.

Finally, Some Useful (for Academics) Applied Research

A colleague, Jeff Rachlinski, alerted me to this news report of a study that detected a positive correlation between chocolate and more favorable professor ratings and course evaluations.  The study's money-shot goes as follows: "A recent study to be published in an upcoming issue of Teaching of Psychology Journal, found that students who eat chocolate before filling out a course evaluation may give their professor a higher rating than they otherwise would."  More specifically, "for each of the nine questions on the evaluation form, students who were offered chocolate rated their professor more favorably than students who were not offered chocolate." (emphasis added)  A few interesting particulars about the research design follow.

"To conduct the experiment, Youmans pretended to be administering course evaluations on behalf of the student government. For one section, he passed around a bag of mini Hershey bars and told students that they were leftover from a previous event. The other section, where students were given the course evaluation without any chocolate, served as the control group."

In addition to the finding that professor ratings from students receiving chocolate increased on every question, also notable was that a rating's boost was observed without attributing the chocolate to the professor. Just imagine the results if the professor bought and personally served students pizza.

Job Posting: Assistant or Associate Professor of Law and Public Health

Harvard School of Public Health Department of Health Policy and Management

Assistant or Associate Professor of Law and Public Health

The Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health seeks candidates for the position of assistant or associate professor of law and public health. This is a tenure-ladder position, with the academic rank to be determined in accordance with the successful candidate’s experience and productivity. The successful candidate will play a central role in the department’s program of teaching and research.

Candidates should possess the following qualifications: a law degree and a doctoral degree in health policy (or a related social science discipline) preferred, but candidates with an MD or MPH and evidence of advanced quantitative research skills will be considered; a broad knowledge of legal issues in health care and public health policy and of ethics; and experience in conducting empirical research employing statistical and econometric methods. Additional qualifications include evidence of the ability or the potential to manage national and international projects, to collaborate with professionals in other disciplines, and to teach health law at the graduate level.

Please send a letter of application, including a statement of current and future research interests, curriculum vitae, sample publications, and the names of three referees to the following address. Applicants should ask their three referees to write independently to this address.

Chair, Search Committee for Law and Public Health
c/o Mindy Starmer, Search Administrator
Department of Health Policy and Management
Harvard School of Public Health
677 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115

An Announcement from the UK

The Ministry of Justice and the Empirical Legal Research Support Network are holding a half-day conference:

CHANGING THE RESEARCH LANDSCAPE--THE CREATION OF THE MINISTRY OF JUSTICE: IMPLICATIONS FOR EMPIRICAL RESEARCH IN LAW AND THE JUSTICE SYSTEM

Date: Tuesday 18 December 2007

Time: 2-5 pm (Registration from 1:30pm)

Venue: Royal Statistical Society, 12 Errol St, London EC1Y 8LX

The creation of the new Ministry of Justice fundamentally changes the context for undertaking empirical research into law and justice issues. The traditions and practices of the Home Office were very different from those of the Department for Constitutional Affairs. This conference is a first opportunity for those within the new Ministry to inform the research community about how they see research developing, and the contribution external researchers will make to their research activity.

Details of the programme are still being finalised, but it is hoped that it will include:

1. Keynote address by Professor Paul Wiles
2. Introduction to current and future research priorities by research leaders in the new Ministry
3. Breakout discussion groups to consider specific issues. These could include*:
• Developing stronger relationships between the policy and research communities;
• Developing closer links within the research community (to explore more readily how lessons in one area, e.g. criminal justice, might read across into other areas, e.g. civil justice or family justice);
• The scope for better integration of the research activity of academics and private researchers and research consultancies;
• The role of external funders in the new research environment;
• The future of the Socio-Legal Research Users Forum/other standing links between government and the research community.4. Feedback/Questions and Answers/ Next steps - with commentary from invited academic researchers

Who should attend? Empirical researchers – whether in university, research consultancies, private researchers, and empirical research funders with interests in the justice system

This is an open invitation, but numbers are limited so those planning to attend must register their interest as soon as possible. Places will be allocated on a strictly first come first served basis. Expressions of interest should be received no later than 31st October 2007. Confirmation that you have a place (or are being held on a reserve list) will be emailed by mid November.

*When replying please indicate whether there are other issues that you would like to see discussed in the breakout discussion groups. We will try to accommodate these in the final programme.

All initial replies to Marc Mason @ [email protected]

***
Editor's Note: Check out www.homeoffice.gov.uk, www.justice.gov.uk, and <http://www.ucl.ac.uk/laws/socio-legal/empirical/ for additional background info.

Job Opportunities at BJS

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), nested within the U.S. Dept. of Justice, remains an important source of data and analyses for empirical legal scholars. I just learned that BJS has an array of employment openings, including active searches for a Deputy Director and Statisticians.

Those interested should go to the USAJOBS website (here).  Once at the USAJOBS website type in "Bureau of Justice Statistics" in the search engine (in the "What:" window). This search will locate various job postings and related information.  Those really interested should also contact Ms. Lisa Price-Grear at either: [email protected] or 202.616.3561.

New Data on the ECJ

Tom Brunell (UT-Dallas) and Alec Stone Sweet (Yale Law) have updated their important data on cases in the European Court of Justice (ECJ).  The data now cover ECJ cases from the 1950s through 2006.  They've also expanded the data to include actions brought under Article 226 (infringement proceedings - where the Commission brings suit against a member state) and Article 230 (annulments - where an individual or group sues the Commission itself), in addition to their original Article 234 (preliminary references) data.  Jason has kindly added a link to the "Databases" bar on the right; look for the "Litigating EU Law Data" link.

Does Judicial Ideology Impact IP Cases?

Matthew Sag, Tonja Jacobi, and Maxim Sytch have written, "The Effect of Judicial Ideology in Intellectual Property Cases" (2007). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=997963.

The paper investigates the relationship between ideology and judicial decision-making in the context of intellectual property.    Is the traditional ideological divide between “liberals” and “conservatives” of little or no relevance in specialized fields like IP?  Does law relating to patents, copyrights, trade marks and trade secrets have any consistent or predictable ideological component?

Using data drawn from Supreme Court intellectual property cases decided in between 1954 and 2006, the paper argues that judicial decision making in relation to IP is significantly and predictably shaped by judicial ideology. They find that the more conservative a Justice is, the more likely it is that she or he will vote for the IP owner in any given case.  Beyond the conclusions themselves, readers might be interested in their use of the “Martin-Quinn” scores as a measure of judicial ideology.

Q&A With Andrew Martin

Over at SCOTUSblog, I posted a Q&A session with Andrew Martin, who is a former guest blogger on ELS and current professor of law and chair of the political science department at Washington University.  I interviewed Andrew about the potential academic and non-academic uses of his Martin-Quinn scores of judicial ideology.  I also asked him a number of questions about his new co-authored piece on ideological drift of Supreme Court Justices, see here, with Lee Epstein, Kevin Quinn, and Jeffrey Segal, which is forthcoming in issue four of the Northwestern University Law Review.  As you may know, the ideological drift piece has been cited and discussed in the popular media and it triggered interesting responses from such excellent scholars as Ward Farnsworth, see here, David Strauss, see here, and Stephen Burbank, see here.  Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times even weighed in the on the issue here. 

Transfers, US News Gaming, and Brand Dilution

Entering credentials of transfer students are irrelevant to U.S. News ranking calculations.  As a result, many have speculated that transfers are fertile ground for U.S. News gaming.  This post examines data on 2L transfers, which the ABA recently collected and released in the 2008 Official Guide.  In short, there are a lot of transfers, particularly to schools with high U.S. News rankings.  Here the breakdown by US News Tier:

USNWR '07            Net Transfers 
    Tier 1                                +694
    Tier 2                                +223
    Tier 3                                 -114
    Tier 4                                 -739

Why am I posting on transfer students?  That is an important subtext.  During a recent conversation, hiring partners at one of the nation's largest and most prestigious firms (biglaw X) complained to me that they were running across a lot of transfer students at elite law school Y (where pre-screening is not permitted) with nondistinguished 1L records from Tier 2 or 3 schools.  As a follow-up to our conversation, I crunched the numbers from the 2008 Official Guide.

But the more salient issue is how firm X responded in the absence of hard data.  Because the transfer students could not meet the grade cutoff for an interview at their old school, (a) they did not receive a callback, (b) firm X wasted 30 minutes x 2 lawyers for each incident, and (c) a perception took root that elite law school Y was diluting its product through an unprincipled transfer policy designed to "sell" 2L admission at full tuition price in order to constrict and subsidize a smaller crop of 1L students with higher LSAT scores--and through the process, increase its US News ranking.  The hiring partners had a clear, unflinching grasp of the underlying dynamics.  Did administrators at law school Y really believe that no one would notice?

In our Student Quality as Measured by LSAT Scores study, Andy Morriss and I theorized that a heavy intake of transfer students was likely the preferred gaming strategy of high ranked schools (lower ranked schools, in contrast, relied upon part-time programs).  For schools who were in the U.S. News first quartile in 1992, constriction of the 1L full-time class over the next 12 years was associated with larger gains in median LSAT scores.  (At the time, we lacked the data on transfers, which we thought would reveal a revenue-neutral strategy that worked in lockstep with 1L constriction.)

But here are the difficult institutional questions: 

• Reputation.  Is a slight increase in median 1L LSAT scores worth the damage to a law school reputation among employers?   Arguably law school Y's biggest mistake was taking all comers rather than building a larger pool of transfer applicants.  Apparently, some Tier 1 and 2 law schools actively solicit transfer applicants and thus can be more selective.  Over time, this could easily evolve into a second, substantial admissions process.
• Payoffs to the school.  Although students and faculty may be jubilant over a bump in the rankings from #14 to #12, or #22 to #19, are more opportunities thereby available to graduates, especially if the gaming strategy is being flagged by key employers? 
• Payoffs to transfer students.  And what about the students with nondistinguished records from lower ranked schools who incurred huge debt for a elite credential in order to subsidize a high LSAT 1L--are these transfer students, with a paucity of callbacks and no 1L peer relationships, clearly better off?  See 2005 LSSSE Report (showing heightened social isolation for transfer students)
  
• Externalities on legal education.  Can we all agree that any underlying increase in U.S. News rank has zero substance?  If so, should the ABA crack down on law schools that divert a lot of resources toward recruiting 2L students for no other purpose than boosting entering credentials of 1Ls?

Without further ado, here is the graph for transfers (Tiers 1-2), ordered by 2007 U.S. News rankings and normalized as a percentage of each school's graduating class [click-on to enlarge].  In Tier 1, Georgetown (+14%) and Washington University (+18%) have the largest net inflow of transfer students.  In Tier 2, the big net gainers are Florida State (+20%) and Rutgers-Camden (+16%).  The graph for Tiers 3-4,  in many respects the mirror opposite of Tiers 1-2, is after the jump.

Data Cleaning Hints

A helpful post over at the Social Science Statistics blog illustrates how data visualization techniques can be pressed into data cleaning service.

Round-up of Advice for Erwin Chemerinsky

My good friend Paul Caron has created a single post at TaxProf that collects, in alphabetical order by author, all the advice for Erwin Chemerinsky.   In total, forty lawyers, law professors, and administrators contributed to this series.   Although Paul and I got the ball rolling for this series,  soliciting dozens of submissions, it was Paul who did the editing, posting, and collecting all the wonderful links.   Paul, you did a fabulous job.

I am confident that we have collectively supplied some very good ideas.   It is up to Erwin to find the golden nuggets.  We wish him much success at UC Irvine Donald Bren School of Law.

JELS 4:3 (2007)

On behalf of the JELS editors I am delighted to note that the most recent issue (4:3, Nov. 2007) was recently shipped to subscribers and libraries and is also accessible on-line (here). Papers in this issue range from Dan Kahan (Yale) et al.'s assessment of the "white-male" effect in risk perception to Pascoe Pleasence & Nigel Balmer's (Univ. College London) randomized study of debt advice in England and Wales.

Professor of Empirical Legal Studies at the University of Amsterdam

The Amsterdam Center for Law & Economics (ACLE) at the University of Amsterdam

The Amsterdam Center for Law & Economics (www.acle.nl), is a joint initiative of the economics and law faculties of the University of Amsterdam. The objective of the ACLE is to promote high-quality research in the fields at the interface of law and economics. Located in the heart of Amsterdam’s old city, the ACLE presently associates around twenty scholars in both disciplines, ranging from full professor to PhD students. The Center's main focus areas are: Competition & Regulation, Corporate Governance & Law, and Foundations of Law & Economics.

 Vacancy for the position of (Full) Professor of Empirical Legal Studies (1,0 Fte)

The purpose of the Chair is to strengthen empirical research in law and economics, and particularly the application of legal analysis, statistical inference and economic modeling to fundamental areas of national and international law ranging from tort liability, property and intellectual property, contracts, criminal law, to law enforcement and litigation.

The prospective Chair-holder should be an established researcher with international standing reflected in high-level publications in top law & economics journals. We envision a researcher that has a rigorous knowledge of relevant fields of law combined with econometrical and statistical skills. The principal tasks are active engagement in research, teaching and course development, and the supervision of PhD students and post docs.

The Chair in empirical legal studies is a full time tenured position in the Amsterdam Center for Law & Economics (ACLE). The formal appointment of the Chair will be within the Faculty of Law.

While a senior position is available, the position could also be filled at a more junior level, i.e. a tenure-track appointment that could mature over time to a full professor.

Further information

For further information, please contact Prof. Arnoud Boot ([email protected], +31 20 525 4162) or Dr. Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci ([email protected], +31 (0) 20 525 7157).

A further description and instructions on how to apply are available on www.english.uva.nl/vacancies. The deadline for application is 15 December 2007.

7th Circuit Conference

Steve Wasby sent me the following announcement to pass along:

Southern Illinois University-Carbondale's School of Law announces conference on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

The conference will be held on February 22 and 23, 2008, at the law school.  The focus of the conference will be on the process by which the court decides cases, including its relations with other courts. Topics to be covered include aspects of the judges' decision-making; the court's caseload and how it is handled; the way in which circuit precedent is developed and announced; and the court's relationship to district courts and the Supreme Court. This will be one of the first academic conferences to examine the workings of this important and influential court. Presenters and commentators will include several judges of the court, district judges, and political science and law professors.

There will be no registration fee for the conference, but advance registration will be required. The conference is offered for CLE credit, which will require a fee. Those who wish information about conference logistics should contact Ms. Bonnie Miller at SIU-C Law School ([email protected]; 618-453-8730).

Stephen L. Wasby
Professor Emeritus, University at Albany

Pay and Workweek Differentials by Law Firm Size

I am working on a series of interrelated projects on law firm economics.  In my research, I recently ran across an interesting NALP data release on median associate salaries by year and firm size (2007 income).  To visualize the data, I generated the trend chart below [click to enlarge].  As the saying goes, a picture is worth a 1,000 words.

The median salary spread for a 1st year associate at a 2 -25 lawyer firm versus a 500+ firm is $77,000.  When the reference group is a 51-100 lawyer law firm versus 500+, the differential is still a substantial $55,000 per year.  Cumulatively, for all eight years of the associate track, the spread amounts to $631,000 for 2-25 vs. 500+ lawyer firms and $524,000 for 51-100 vs. 500+.  In other words, the bimodal distribution discussed in an earlier post appears to hold fairly steady during the first several years of a young associate's career.  In fact, most 8th year associates at firms smaller than 250 lawyers are making less than a 1st year associate at a 500+ lawyer firm.

Before readers (especially students) anchor on the dollars, it is worth asking whether the smaller paychecks translate into substantially fewer hours and a better work/life balance.  There are two fairly good sources of data to address this question: (1) the After the JD Project, and (2) an ABA Young Lawyers Division Survey.  Both of these datasets were compiled with the help of researchers from the American Bar Foundation.  A related resource is the Young Associates in Trouble essay/study, which I c0-authored last year with David Zaring (Wharton).  One of our central insights, amply supported by data, was the large variation in work environments among large law firms.

Graphics from these studies  appear after the jump.

Funding Opportunity for Litigation Scholarship

Jennifer K. Robbennolt (Illinois), as Chair of AALS Section on Law and Social Sciences, asked that I post information about a funding opportunity for scholarship related to litigation.   The ABA Section of Litigation will make a number of awards of $5,000 - $20,000 to support research relevant to civil litigation. The criteria are set out in the Announcement found here.

Call for Papers - Law & Society Associations

The combined 2008 annual meetings of the Law and Society Association and the Canadian Law and Society Association are scheduled for Thursday, May 29 through Sunday, June 1 in Montreal. The deadline for paper proposals is December 12th.

"The theme for this meeting signals that law is rooted in places — from families and villages to the global economy — and that law has the power to place and displace people in space, time, and relationships. We invite papers and encourage multi-disciplinary scholarship that reflect on the many dimensions of law, place, and power."

More information can be found here.

Habeas Litigation

Nancy King (Vanderbilt) recently circulated a paper that will interest criminal law folks in general and habeas scholars in particular.  In Habeas Litigation in the U.S. District Courts Nancy provides data on the processing of habeas petitions filed in U.S District Courts by state prisoners under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA"). More specifically, the paper analyzes data drawn from "2384 non-capital cases randomly selected from all non-capital habeas cases filed by state prisoners in federal district court during 2003 and 2004, and 368 capital cases started in 2000, 2001, and 2002 in the 13 districts with the highest volume of capital filings." The sample accounts for "over 60% of the capital habeas filings nationwide."  A brief summary of the paper's findings follows:

• Capital cases were filed an average of 7.4 years following state judgment.
• Non-capital cases averaged 6.3 years before filing, longer than the average 5 years before AEDPA.
• Of capital cases, 4% were dismissed as time-barred under AEDPA's statute of limitations, compared to 22% of non-capital cases.
• Non-capital cases have averaged 11.5 months in federal court, capital cases have averaged 3.1 years so far (1 in 4 capital cases was still pending in late November 2006).
• Of 1986 non-capital cases completed other than by transfer to another district, only 7 received relief. Courts granted the writ in 33 of the 267 completed capital cases.
• The location of the case had a significant relationship to both processing time and likelihood of relief, after controlling for case-level factors.

Conference on the Presidency and the Supreme Court

On November 11th and 12th, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum (New York) will host a conference on The Presidency and the Supreme Court. The speakers are numerous and distinguished. George H. W. Bush will start things off; Justice O'Connor will deliver the keynote address.