Wayne State's Web page garners top-10 honors

Wayne State University Law School has been honored for its Web site’s home page, which has been named the third-best of all 195 American Bar Associated-accredited law schools.  The study, “Top 10 Law School Home Pages of 2009,” was conducted by Roger Skalbeck, the associate law librarian at the Georgetown University Law Center.

“The website home page represents the virtual front door for any law school.  It’s the place many prospective students start in the application process.  Enrolled students, law school faculty and other employees often start with the home page to find classes, curricula and compensation plans,” reads part of the study’s introduction.

Web home pages were graded on 14 criteria, including the physical address of the law school included on the page; a search box directly on the page where users could type search terms; headlines about news and events related to the law school and graphics or images next to these news links; links to the school’s profiles on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook; and even whether the site included photos of people smiling.

“This brief ranking report attempts to identify the best law school home pages based entirely on objective criteria,” Skalbeck writes in the introduction.  “The goal was to include 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.

The home page for George Mason University School of Law took the top spot on the list.  Michigan State University’s College of Law was ranked 46th, the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law 54th, the University of Michigan Law School 119th, and Cooley Law School 163rd.

A PDF of the full study can be downloaded from Wayne State’s home page at http://law.wayne.edu/.
 

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