As Eugene noted, there is a new, updated study of law school "scholarly impact" by Gregory Sisk, et al. This study looks to measure the impact that different schools' law faculties have upon legal scholarship by looking at citation counts. (VCU isn't ranked, but as Ilya noted, it would apparently do quite well.)
In light of the new study, Brian Leiter has posted updated lists of the most cited legal scholars over the 2013-2017 period. Here are the top ten: Rank Name School Citations Area(s) Age in 2018 1 Cass Sunstein Harvard University 4900 Constitutional, Administrative, and Environmental Law, Behavioral Law & Economics 64 2 Erwin Chemerinsky University of California, Berkeley 2570 Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure 65 3 Eric Posner University of Chicago 2330 Law & Economics, International Law, Commercial Law, Contracts 53 4 Mark Lemley Stanford University 2180 Intellectual Property and Cyberlaw 52 5 Richard Epstein New York University, University of Chicago 2165 Constitutional Law, Torts, Law & Economics 75 6 William Eskridge, Jr. Yale University 2160 Constitutional Law, Legislation 67 7 Akhil Amar Yale University 1600 Constitutional Law 60 8 Thomas Merrill Columbia University 1595 Administrative, Constitutional, and Property Law 69 9 Mark Tushnet Harvard University 1590 Constitutional Law, Legal History 72 10 Jack M. Balkin Yale University 1580 Constitutional Law, Cyberlaw 62
In addition, Leiter has started to post lists of the most cited law faculty by subject area. Here are the fields he's tallied thus far:
Criminal Law & Procedure (led by the VC's own Orin Kerr!)
Constitutional Law (with an appearance by VC blogfather Eugene Volokh)
Public Law (excluding Constitutional Law)
In addition, Rick Hasen has posted the most cited legal scholars in Election Law over the same period at his Election Law Blog. (Leiter's list of Eleciton Law scholars is here.)
Leiter has announced he will post additional subjects in the coming days, and I will update this post as his rankings appear.
UPDATES: Here are additional rankings in particular specialty areas posted by Leiter:
Law & Economics (including Behavioral Law & Econ)
Law & Social Science (excluding Law & Econ)
UPDATES: Here's a post on how Sisk and Leiter address name misspellings and the omission of author names in multi-author articles.
Here's a list of the most cited Originalist scholars at the Originalism Law Blog.
Here, in addition, is an interesting post about the pros and cons of using the Westlaw JLR database as opposed to Google Scholar, or some other metric.
Here's a list of health law scholars, including professors from other fields, put together by Mark Hall and Glenn Cohen.
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