Talk:Stanford Law School

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Tommy Goldstein is a lecturer at Stanford Law School. He co-teaches the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic with Pamela Karlan. He also runs the popular ScotusBlog. I vote for re-adding him to the Notable Faculty list.

There are also several notable faculty whose names already have articles: Larry Kramer and Richard Ford are two that I checked. Not sure how we should deal with this. Other notable faculty that could be added: Mark Kelman, Thomas Grey, Robert Weisberg, Barbara Freid, George Fisher, Marcus Cole, Pamela Karlan, Mark Lemley, Barbara Babcock, Larry Marshall (off the top of my head...)

-Dana Powers 21:41, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

There is clear Columbia trolling going on here. First, Stanford isn't usually behind Harvard - 6 of the past 8 years, Stanford has been second. Harvard only recently claimed the title and 1 point on the US News score is the difference. Second, Stanford isn't "just" ahead of Columbia. I believe the US News score difference is about 7 points. Edit the page.

The law school has now dropped the logo shown in the current photo (the leaf looking thing). Here are a couple from my flickr stream that might be nice replacements: [1] [2]

-Dana Powers 18:25, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

rankings information

The ranking information on the Stanford, Harvard, & Yale (and perhaps other) law school pages seems disproportionate and over-emphasized in the early part of the article. Moreover it seems likely to encourage the kinds of disputes among afficionados of one school or the other tweaking endlessly to pull out particular rankings. I think on all these law schools that a general statement of prestigiousness & reference to the admittedly important US News rankings, historically contextualized, is useful. But comparisons b/w the different law schools are too specific for the top portion. I'm proposing to edit it down, but since it seems to be a frequently edited section in some of the articles I'm announcing for discussion here first.(Cross-posting to talk pages for SLS, HLS, YLS, maybe others.) --LQ 20:31, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Yale, Harvard, Columbia have all been cleaned up by other editors so that rankings information doesn't dominate to such an extent. I haven't touched Stanford yet because others are still actively editing, but suggest the other Stanford Law School editors look at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lquilter (talk • contribs) 15:04, 18 December 2006 (UTC).

As if to prove my point, numerous IP editors keep coming in and tweaking the wording to talk about "seven of nine years" or "X behind Y in Z year" etc. This level of specificity about one set of rankings -- even the almight USN&WR rankings -- is too much for an intro paragraph in the article. I've dropped it down to a manageable sentence that accurately describes the prestigiousness without getting into the nitty-gritty specifics. It is now more in keeping with Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School, Yale Law School, and so on. There's a lot more that's important to a school than it's rankings and the article will be much better if we focus on prestigious alum, curricular strengths, influential faculty, and petty scandals other substantive information. --lquilter 19:30, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Mean GPA Information

Recent edits to this article have included the fact that a 3.4 mean is enforced in exam classes. The cite given only lists stanford has having this mean, though it says that top schools are raising their means. It is my understanding that Harvard also curves to a 3.4 (any HLS students out there?). I don't see how this specificity is relevant, at least without including this same detail in other top law schools wiki profiles. As it stands, it makes it seem like Stanford is grade inflating in a way other schools aren't. If it's thought to be a relevant fact for this article, I'd say it should only be included if it's included in at least some articles about peer schools (it is not in Harvard, Columbia, NYU, or Chicago's profiles, and Yale does not give grades in the traditional sense). Thoughts?

To the persistent editor -- if I'm missing some reason why it's relevant, please explicate here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.44.212.48 (talk • contribs) 07:16, 26 December 2006

Agree with user 75.44.212.48 -- the information alone is not relevant. If we have an article somewhere talking about grade curves, grade inflation, etc., and there's a point to be made about Stanford particularly, or Stanford in relation to other schools, then we can make the point; but the curve alone is not helpful. Also it needs a cite, because someone (not a Stanford student speaking from "common knowledge" at Stanford) needs to be able to verify this info. --lquilter 16:24, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

>>There was a cite to a stanford law school recruiting page. Also, stating the fact that Stanford has a 3.4 curve doesn't automatically suggest that Stanford inflates grades. The school is open about having a 3.4 curve, as such information is publicly available on the law school's website. Removing such information or mentioning grade inflation more strongly suggests that the school really does inflate grades. Also, why won't you allow this information to be part of the page? Grades are a huge part of law school and the curve is important to grading. Wouldn't the article be more complete and honest if it gave the mean grade? Why do you need to take the curve information off of the Stanford page instead of adding curve information to other law school wiki pages? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lightbulb1 (talk • contribs) 17:29, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

It's "hugely" important to law students currently in the school, and people considering going to Stanford -- something less than a thousand people out of the entire world. ... Look, honestly I don't have a problem, per se, with the information; but as it is, it's a bit out of context. This information isn't in most school pages, and people don't really know how to assess it. I would suggest that there needs to be an article on curving grades (maybe there is already), explaining how curves work, what they mean in the context of schools, why they're important (becuase nobody but the thousand law students at a school knows or cares why they're important), and how they operate in overall law school / legal culture -- including accusations of grade inflation at top tier schools. Just sticking it in as it is leads to questions from folks like me and user:75.44.212.48 about "why". Buttressing it with background as to why, elsewhere in wikipedia, will help it all make sense; improve wikipedia; and improve the various law school articles. But right now, the fact that yes, it is important to law students, just doesn't adequately explain why it should be in the article. --lquilter 21:55, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

• • I wrote all this before I noticed Lquilter had responded, so excuse the redundancy.

Thanks Lquilter. I'm new to this and was hoping someone out there would agree. Responding to above -- I had no problem with either cite, and it's true that Stanford is open about it. I think LQuilter's hitting the same point I am, which is that it can't be relevant to include it only for Stanford without including it for peer universities. Including it for just Stanford does "automatically suggest that Stanford inflates grades," as you put it, since when anyone looks up the peer schools they find no such information. To be a law dork, since I know lquilter will get this, expressio unius. If you're only including it in one place, it's assumed to be excluded/different elsewhere.

I do sort of dispute your argument about the relevance. Stanford had a 3.2 mean until 6 years ago, and employment prospects didn't suddenly go up after the change. It's Stanford, and the grades really don't matter for the majority of the students. The quality of the school is far more relevant to its employment profile than whatever GPA mean they decide to follow (Chicago's is notoriously brutal and always has been).

Still, the relevance of the information if it were in other articles as well is arguable. I don't think I would have a problem if all or most peer law school articles included this information, as you suggested. But why should it be on me/everyone else to look this up? I "took the curve information off the Stanford page instead of adding curve information to other law school wiki pages" because I don't even think I could look that stuff up -- I'm sure most schools don't make that publicly available. Even if I could, I think you should have to do the legwork. Until that's done, I'm going to rest on Lquilter's laurels =). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.44.212.48 (talk • contribs) 22:04, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

NPOV tag

I've added an NPOV tag to this article, which is almost comically biased. The "Academics and Admissions section" is particularly bad; it reads as though it was taken verbatim from promotional material. Lest I be taken for a troll, I should note that the HLS paage is even worse. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Elliotreed (talk • contribs) 04:36, 29 December 2006 (UTC).

Pass rate data -- discussion is on Template talk:Infobox law school

As stated in my edit summary, the pass rate change justification is "Use 'most recent' per Template:Infobox law school guidelines. Please see discussion at Template talk:Infobox law school". This is a problem not just with SLS, but multiple law school articles. The template needs changing and discussion has opened there. Please contribute. --S. Rich (talk) 03:22, 15 August 2011 (UTC)03:23, 15 August 2011 (UTC)