Go Green! A scholarly analysis of law school webpages ranks Wayne State Universty Law School's website as best in the nation (if you overlook #1 University of Illinois College of Law). And just below Wayne State, at number 3, is Michigan State College of Law. Far below are U of M at #63, U of D Mercy at #74, and Cooley Law School at #145.
Here's what the authors Jason Eiseman, Librarian for Emerging Techologies at Yale Law School, and Roger Skalbeck, Associate Law Librarian at Georgetown University Law Center, have to say about the study:
This ranking report attempts to identify the best law school home pages based exclusively on objective criteria. The goal is to assess elements that make websites easier to use for sighted as well as visually-impaired users. Most elements require no special design skills, sophisticated technology or significant expenses. Ranking results in this report represent reasonably relevant elements. Twenty elements are surveyed across three broad categories: Design Patters & Metadata; Accessibility & Validation; and Marketing & Communications.
And here's a link to the study itself. The National Law Journal's story on the study leads with an amusing observation:
A recent empirical study and ranking of the home pages for all 200 American Bar Association-accredited law schools found that 65 included photos of students in or around trees, a phenomenon the authors dubbed "Girls Under Trees."
And even more amusing, and insightful, is this venn-diagram-cartoon from xkcd.com.
