In the second annual ranking of law school homepages, the redesigned John Marshall Law School homepage rose 116 places to finish in an 11-way tie with such other notable law schools as Yale, Columbia, and Boalt Hall (UC at Berkeley). In the 2009 ranking, John Marshall’s
homepage was 163rd out of 195 total. In the 2010 ranking, John Marshall’s homepage vaulted
up to 47th out of 200. Attaining the new elevated position involved leap-frogging over other
Chicago law schools—Northwestern, Loyola, Kent—that had topped John Marshall in the previous year’s tabulation.
During 2010, website designer Tori Kirk redesigned John Marshall’s website, making significant
improvements to the homepage.
The authors of the national study were Jason Isemann, librarian for emerging technologies at Yale Law School, and Roger Skalbeck, associate law librarian at Georgetown University Law
Center. The study was published in the Green Bag Almanac and Reader 2011.
To score the homepages, researchers performed more than 4,000 evaluations during October and November 2010. Sites were graded on 20 separate elements divided into three primary categories. Those categories were design patterns and metadata, accessibility and validation, and marketing & communications. The complete report is available at ssrn.com/abstract=1544368.