A new study by Rob Willey and Melanie Knapp from George Mason University Law Library ranks The Top 100 Legal Scholars of 2024. The study continues their methodology that counts citations to law journal articles in HeinOnline, limiting to articles written in a recent, three-year period of time (2018-2020). By focusing on more recent scholarship, their approach makes the ranking more inclusive of women scholars, newer academics, and non-traditional scholars like practitioners who may have more limited time for scholarship.
While this ranking provides valuable insights, it’s important to note that it doesn’t capture a complete representation of legal scholarly impact since it doesn’t include citations to books or interdisciplinary work published outside of law journals.
Nevertheless, their analysis of highly cited articles does reveal some patterns that could help legal scholars optimize their work:
- Aim for longer articles – well-cited papers averaged 54 pages while less-cited works averaged only 23 pages. The most-cited article was 73 pages.
- Keep titles short – articles with 10 or more citations averaged 46 characters in their titles, down from 52 characters in their 2021 study.
- Avoid colons in titles – only 14% of well-cited articles contained colons in their titles.
- Don’t stress about occasional low-impact pieces – even top scholars produce some articles that receive few citations.
The study concludes with an interesting discussion of how generative AI might impact legal scholarship, suggesting it could help level the playing field for time-constrained scholars but also potentially create new disparities between well-funded and under-resourced institutions. Time will tell but it’s an area that I will continue to keep my eye on.