I am not sure. I like reading about various ways of ranking law schools, faculties, and reviews because there is no one way that captures what it means to be productive. Thus, it is a wonderful subject for debate (unlike many scholarly issues in legal education where debate is not permitted.)When I read the most recent posting about tax profs, I did not know what to make of it. Although I personally oppose educating tax LLM students on the taxpayers' tab, the tax profs at my law school have an exemplary work ethic and I was surprised that none of them ranked in the top 25 as far as downloads.
My curiosity led me to select three of the profs from my School and tally their citations by scholars and courts using Westlaw. I then selected three professors from roughly the middle of the top 25 SSNR downloads. I tallied their scholar and court citations also using Westlaw. On average, my three colleagues outperformed the middle of the top 25.
So, I ask this quite seriously, what do SSRN downloads tell us? And, is it a better measure of productivity, impact, or the importance of an individual's work than a Westlaw citation search?