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Brian Leiter's Law School Rankings | |||||||
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| November 1999 Brian Leiter's Educational Quality Ranking (hereafter "EQR") of U.S. law schools has emerged, since its debut in 1997, as the most widely discussed law school rankings after those published by U.S. News. The EQR is the only national ranking developed by a legal educator, someone with an insider's knowledge of law schools. The March 1998 issue of the American Bar Association Journal: The Lawyer's Magazine identified the EQR as one "of the better-known law school rankings." The National Law Journal (June 2, 1997) ran a front-page story on the EQR, reporting that this new ranking was "being praised as a more reasonable alternative by a number of law school deans." The rankings have been featured in newspapers around the country, as well as in various legal journals and the professional newsletters of the Midwest Association of Pre-Law Advisers and the Northeast Association of Pre-Law Advisers. The EQR site has received thousands of visits, and has become a popular source of information for prospective students at the nation's leading colleges and universities. Unlike most other law-school rankings, the EQR focuses exclusively on the three factors central to a good legal education: the quality of the faculty, the quality of the student body, and the quality of teaching. The 1999-2000 "Ranking of U.S. Law Schools by Educational Quality" has been changed in two major respects: (1) Membership in the American Law Institute is no longer counted. Although a traditional badge of distinction in the legal academy, consideration of ALI membership skewed some results last year (e.g. the ranking of Stanford), that detracted from the overall value of the rankings. Several law professors also contacted me contesting the meaningfulness of small differences in total ALI membership. (2) This year's ranking incorporates the results of a comprehensive study of faculty quality that will appear in The Journal of Legal Studies (January 2000). This study reflects faculty affiliations for 98-99, and employed both objective and subjective reputational measures of faculty quality. It is the most comprehensive, reliable and up- to-date study of faculty quality available, and even before appearing has already generated considerable discussion and comment. Keep in mind that all rankings reflect contestable judgments about criteria and their relative importance. Thus, all rankings should be used with caution and with attention to what exactly they purport to measure. This ranking focusses exclusively on traditional academic criteria. Such criteria count for less than half of the well-known U.S. News rankings, by contrast. Academically serious and ambitious students, who embark upon the study of law with a sense of intellectual excitement, are likely to find the EQR of most value. THE CRITERIA The final rank of a law school is based on its performance in three categories: Faculty Quality (70% of final rank): the rank in this category is based on three criteria: scholarly productivity; scholarly impact of faculty work; and reputation. More precisely, the rank is based on the per capita rate of publication for the period 1995 through July 1998 (1) of articles in the ten leading student-edited law reviews and the ten leading peer-edited law journals, and (2) of books from the three leading law publishers and the eight leading academic presses (25%); the per capita rate of scholarly impact for the top quarter of each faculty based on citations to faculty work on the Westlaw JLR database as of July 1998 (25%); and the subjective academic reputation of the faculty based on a fall 1998 survey of academics conducted by U.S. News & World Report (50%). Each measure of faculty quality has advantages and limitations, but together they promise to present an informative picture. The rationale for the particular weightings, and the details of the study methodology, can be found in Brian Leiter, "Measuring the Academic Distinction of Law Faculties," Journal of Legal Studies (forthcoming January 2000). Since the time the faculty quality data was collected one major faculty move has occurred that affects the results for one school substantially: Philip Frickey at Minnesota accepted an offer from Berkeley. Because the Minnesota faculty is small, and because Frickey was clearly one of the three most important members of that faculty, his departure lowers Minnesota's rank noticeably. (Berkeley, as a larger and stronger faculty, certainly benefits from hiring Frickey, but his impact, in terms of objective criteria, on Berkeley's rank is negligible.) As a result, I have had to go back to the original data and make certain adjustments to reflect the loss of Frickey. In that one respect, the results here differ slightly from the results in the forthcoming Journal of Legal Studies article. Student Quality (30% of final rank): the rank in this category is based on data collected by the American Bar Association on student credentials for 1998 for the 75th and 25th percentile of the entering class. The EQR employs the U.S. News formula, except giving somewhat more weight to LSAT: 60% of the score is for 75th/25th LSAT, 40% for 75th/25th GPA. Note that, unlike last year, the measure is no longer confined to the top half of the class. This runs the risk of penalizing state schools and schools with aggressive alternative admissions procedures, but student comments on last year's EQR convinced me that looking at 75th and 25th percentile presents a more realistic portrait of the student body as a whole. Even the data on the 75th and 25th percentile, however, can still give a skewed picture in some respects. For example, at Texas while the 75th percentile LSAT is 164, the 90th percentile is 168, an unusually large gap between the 75th and 90th percentiles. Because Texas is so much larger than most peer schools, that means that there are about 50 students in the entering class with scores 168 or higher. Contrast this with much smaller schools, like Washington & Lee and the University of Washington, which report 75th percentiles of 166. In reality, that translates in to about 30 students with scores 166 or higher at Washington & Lee, and about 40 students at Washington--far fewer actual students than are at Texas with an even higher LSAT. For obvious reasons, it's easier to boost the 75th percentile numbers at smaller schools than larger ones, but it may not present the most accurate portrait of the student body (contrast, for example, the ranking of schools by placement as clerks on the U.S. Supreme Court, below). Teaching Quality was last year treated as 10% of the final rank, but many readers of the EQR correctly complained that the data was too limited and too crude to warrant this kind of quantification. This year, several years worth of Princeton Review Surveys of Student Satisfaction with Teaching are used to give "extra credit" to strong teaching faculties. Nine schools have quite consistently gotten high marks for teaching quality in these surveys year after year: Boston University, University of Chicago, University of Notre Dame, University of Texas, Cornell University, College of William & Mary, University of Virginia, Vanderbilt University, and Washington & Lee University. These schools were, accordingly, pushed ahead one rank based on teaching quality. So, for example, Virginia was ranked 9th based on student quality and faculty quality, but is ranked 8th because of its reputation for teaching excellence. So too, Chicago and Yale tied for 1st based on student quality and faculty quality, but Chicago was nudged ahead, to occupy the #1 spot by itself, based on its reputation for teaching excellence. Faculty quality is given more weight than student quality because (1) it is the traditional measure of the academic caliber of an institution, (2) it correlates more reliably with reputation and prestige than any other factor, (3) it is less likely to produce a ranking that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and (4) some schools have notorious reputations for boosting the numerical credentials of the student body artificially (e.g. by admitting the Phys Ed majors with 4.0 GPAs and the like, or by making LSAT-driven admissions decisions). (Among the leading law schools, NYU is most often mentioned as the worst offender on this score.) The faculty quality measure is more sensitive to actual faculty quality and actual changes in faculty quality. Student quality largely tracks perceived prestige--hence the self-fulfilling prophecy aspect if rankings weight it heavily. Schools historically favored by U.S. News because of that magazine's use of criteria that reward small, private institutions typically have far stronger student bodies than measures of faculty quality would predict (see, for example, the results for Duke and Washington & Lee, below). It would be useful to be able to include data on reputation among practitioners. Unfortunately, no remotely reliable data exists. Because practitioner reputation is much more regional than academic reputation, any reputational survey that is not geographically balanced in very careful ways will produce meaningless results. (The U.S. News editors have admitted to me in discussion that their reputational surveys of practitioners are not geographically balanced.) BRIAN LEITER'S EDUCATIONAL QUALITY RANKING vs. U.S. NEWS The EQR continues to omit consideration of tangential or prejudicial criteria, of the sort that mar the U.S. News results every year. For example, U.S. News assigns weight in the final rank to per capita expenditures, a criterion which rewards inefficiency and systematically favors small schools over large schools, since the latter enjoy obvious economies of scale. Similarly, U.S. News assigns weight in the final rank to spending on financial aid, a factor which seriously prejudices all state law schools, which charge lower tuitions in the first place and thus spend less on financial aid. Yet low tuition is a factor nowhere credited by U.S. News. U.S. News employs only subjective measures of reputation, which often reflect hearsay and out-of-date information; U.S. News assigns no weight at all to teaching quality. The EQR does omit job placement rates, which U.S. News includes. Unfortunately, there is simply no way--as even U.S. News admits--to verify the accuracy of the placement data schools report: U.S. News relies on an "honor" system, yet all the incentives invite dishonorable conduct. If U.S. News, for example, were to be believed, it would appear that the University of Kentucky and Loyola University-Chicago have better placement records than Yale, Harvard, Stanford, and Chicago. Such absurd "results" counsel against employing putative placement data in ranking law schools. All the schools that provide a quality legal education--as measured by the criteria identified above--are schools that, without exception, enjoy a high success rate in placing their graduates. The top 15--the traditional "elite" law schools--all place nationally. [1] The ABA publishes employment data, and this is likely to be more reliable, but because the rates at which schools ascertain the employment rates of their graduates vary, even these figures are hard to interpret. Some very good schools report surprisingly high rates of "unemployed graduates seeking work"--for example, Harvard (2.4%) and Michigan (3.9%)--while weaker schools report lower rates to the ABA (for example, Duke [.5%] and North Carolina [.5%]). In short, by concentrating exclusively on the factors central to a good legal education--quality of the faculty and student body --and by omitting irrelevant and prejudicial criteria, the EQR eliminates the biases against public law schools that are the distinguishing characteristic of the annual U.S. News rankings. Thus, the EQR ranks 14 public schools among the top 30 in the nation, while U.S. news ranks only 10. If we exclude Michigan and Virginia, which are only nominally public law schools (they admit relatively few in-state residents, charge tuitions more like private schools, and operate largely or entirely with private money), here is how the 12 genuinely public law schools in the EQR top 30 fare by comparison to how they are treated by U.S. News:
A RANKING OF U.S. LAW SCHOOLS BY EDUCATIONAL QUALITY, 1999-2000 Comparative Rankings for the Top 25
BREAKDOWN BY CATEGORY Overall Faculty Quality (by subjective and objective criteria)
Two schools that basically performed comparably to George Mason and San Diego, and thus really deserve to be in the top 50, are Rutgers-Camden (average rank of 50; subjective rank of 65, objective rank of 35) and Yeshiva University/Cardozo Law School (average rank of 50; subjective rank of 60; objective rank of 40). One anomalous result was that Duke ranked, for the first time ever, ahead of Cornell, Northwestern, and Texas in subjective reputation--schools it at best tied with, and typically trailed, in prior years. One possible explanation (given Duke's weaker showing by objective measures of faculty quality) is that repeated rankings of Duke in the top 10 by U.S. News for reasons unrelated to faculty quality have affected subjective perceptions even among academics. Ranking by Quality of Student Body Based on 75th and 25th percentile scores for the fall 1998 class: 60% of the rank is based on LSAT, 40% is based on GPA. As noted earlier, it is of course easier for smaller schools to boost the 75th percentile numbers than larger schools: thus, we find that all the schools with surprisingly "strong" student bodies by the measures employed here are unusually small (e.g. Washington-Seattle, Washington & Lee, Colorado). Hence, I list total size of the student body for purposes of comparison. Please note that the list is confined to the top 50 schools by overall quality. Having taught at the #1, #17, and #46 schools on this list, I can offer the following observation from personal experience: there is a more dramatic difference in student quality between #46 and #17 than between #17 and #1. Indeed, among the stronger students, there is essentially no difference between #17 and #1. (This may, admittedly, be a peculiarity of Texas, given the exceptional credentials of the strong end of the class [see the date above regarding 75th and 90th percentile scores].) The most noticeable differences at each school are found at the bottom of the class: the bottom at #1 is noticeably stronger than at #17, and so forth. The conclusion is hard to escape, given my experience, that above a certain LSAT/GPA threshhold, differences in numerical credentials make little difference in actual student ability and potential.
SUPREME COURT CLERKSHIP PLACEMENT Since 1996 (through the 1999-2000 term), this is how the nation's law schools rank for placement of graduates as clerks on the United States Supreme Court, the most prestigious job available to a recent law graduate. The number of clerks during this time period appears in parentheses.
MAJOR LAW SCHOOL FACULTY MOVES SINCE 1995 This list records lateral moves of faculty since 1995 at the top 25 law schools (in terms of faculty quality)--plus several perennial top 25 contenders--for the indicated period. The major hires from 1980-1994 are an illustrative, but not a complete listing: I've confined the list to five faculty at each school (if there were that many). Where the information was available, I list current "serious" visiting professors for 1999-2000 (i.e. faculty being considered seriously for permanent appointment). This latter information is less reliable and less comprehensive than the other information printed below. "Total faculty size" for each school is also listed, since the degree of movement (in and out of a school) is obviously related to total faculty size. Indeed, the schools that have lost the highest percentage of faculty in the last five years are:
Note, however, that Chicago and Michigan added as many faculty laterally as they lost, though all the others suffered a net loss. BOSTON UNIVERSITY Hired laterally: Keith Hylton from Northwestern University Lost to other schools: David Dana to Northwestern University Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Randy Barnett from Chicago-Kent College of Law/Illinois Institute of Technology Total faculty size: 46 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Hired laterally: José Alvarez from the University of Michigan. Lost to other schools: Anne Alstott to Yale University Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Vincent Blasi from the University of Michigan Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: Amy Chua from Duke University Total faculty size: 59 CORNELL UNIVERSITY Hired laterally: Kathryn Abrams from Northwestern University Lost to other schools: Lynn LoPucki to the University of California, Los Angeles Offers outstanding to Susan Koniak at Boston University Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Gregory S. Alexander from the University of Georgia Total faculty size: 41 DUKE UNIVERSITY Hired laterally: Michael H. Bradley from the University of Michigan (primary appt. in Business School at Duke) Lost to other schools: Stanley Fish to the University of Illinois at Chicago (to become Dean) Offers outstanding to James Boyle at American University Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Jerome Culp from Rutgers University, Newark Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: Stewart Schwab from Cornell University Total faculty size: 33 EMORY UNIVERSITY Hired laterally: Johan van der Vyver from the University of Witwaterstrand (South Africa) Lost to other schools: Fred McChesney to Cornell University Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Harold Berman from Harvard University (emeritus at Harvard) Current serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: Anita Bernstein from Chicago-Kent College of Law/Illinois Institute ofTechnology Total faculty size: 27 GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY Hired laterally: Alexander Aleinikoff from the University of Michigan Lost to other schools: Anita Allen to the University of Pennsylvania Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Anthony Cook from the University of Florida Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: Michael Knoll from the University of Southern California Total faculty size: 86 GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY Hired laterally: Raj Bhala from the College of William & Mary Lost to other schools: Harold Bruff to the University of Colorado (to become Dean) Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Thomas Buergenthal from Emory University Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: Brian Bix from Quinnipiac College Total faculty size: 65 HARVARD UNIVERSITY Hired laterally: Einer Elhauge from the University of California, Berkeley Lost to other schools: no one Offers outstanding to: Michael McConnell at the University of Utah Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Mary Ann Glendon from Boston College Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: Stephen Burbank from the University of Pennsylvania Total faculty size: 70 NEW YORK UNIVERSITY Hired laterally: Barry Adler from the University of Virginia Lost to other schools: Lea Brilmayer to Yale University Offers outstanding to Joseph Bankman at Stanford University Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Larry Kramer from the University of Michigan Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: Barry Friedman from Vanderbilt University Total faculty size: 80 Note: In their infamously hyperbolic and widely distributed alumni magazine--which one Stanford professor has dubbed "law porn"--NYU has advertised as "major" appointments to the faculty (1) those who hold adjunct appointments at NYU, and a real appointment elsewhere, (2) those who hold appointments primarily in other departments at NYU, and are "affiliated" with the law school, (3) clinical appointments, and (4) those faculty in their dotage who spent their career elsewhere before setting up some relationship with NYU. I have omitted those appointments here, to focus on the genuine appointments of academic faculty in the law school. NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Hired laterally: David Dana from Boston University Lost to other schools: Kathryn Abrams to Cornell University Some major lateral hires 1980-1994:
Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: Philip Hamburger from George Washington University Total faculty size: 31 STANFORD UNIVERSITY Hired laterally: Bernard Black from Columbia University Lost to other schools: John Hart Ely to the University of Miami Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Gerhard Casper from the University of Chicago (as President of the University) Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: Amy Chua from Duke University Total faculty size: 34 UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA Hired laterally: James Anaya from the University of Iowa Lost to other schools: Mark L. Ascher to the University of Texas, Austin Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Robert Jerome Glennon from Wayne State University Total faculty size: 27 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY Hired laterally: Stephen Choi (untenured) from the University of Chicago Lost to other schools: Einer Elhauge to Harvard University Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Malcolm Feeley from the University of Wisconsin, Madison Total faculty size: 41 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, HASTINGS Hired laterally: Vik Amar from the University of California, Davis Lost to other schools: no one Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Joseph Grodin from the California Supreme Court Total faculty size: 47 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES Hired laterally: Stephen Bainbridge from the University of Illinois Lost to other schools: Evan Caminker to the University of Michigan Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Peter Arenella from Boston University Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: William van Alstyne from Duke University Total faculty size: 55 UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Hired laterally: Lisa Bernstein from Georgetown University Lost to other schools: Mary Becker to DePaul University Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Albert Alschuler from the University of Pennsylvania Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: C. Edwin Baker from the University of Pennsylvania Total faculty size: 31 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO Hired laterally: Harold Bruff from George Washington University (as Dean) Lost to other schools: Gene Nichol to the University of North Carolina (to become Dean) Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Richard Delgado from the University of Wisconsin, Madison Total faculty size: 30 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS Hired laterally: Richard McAdams from Boston University Lost to other schools: Stephen Bainbridge to the University of California, Los Angeles Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Matthew Finkin from Southern Methodist University Total faculty size: 31 UNIVERSITY OF IOWA Hired laterally: Randall Bezanson from Washington & Lee University Lost to other schools: James Anaya to the University of Arizona Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Herbert Hovenkamp from the University of California, Hastings Total faculty size: 44 UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Hired laterally: Reuven S. Avi-Yonah (untenured) from Harvard University Lost to other schools: Alexander Aleinikoff to Georgetown University Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Merritt Fox from Indiana University, Bloomington Total faculty size: 58 UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA Hired laterally: Donald Dripps from the University of Illinois Lost to other schools: Philip Frickey to the University of California, Berkeley Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Daniel Farber from the University of Illinois Total faculty size: 33 UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, CHAPEL HILL Hired laterally: John O. Calmore from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles Lost to other schools: no one Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Thomas Lee Hazen from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln Total faculty size: 35 UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME Hired laterally: John Finnis from Oxford University (part-time appointment) Lost to other schools: John Garvey to Boston College (to become Dean) Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: G. Robert Blakey from Cornell University Total faculty size: 26 UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA Hired laterally: Anita Allen from Georgetown University Lost to other schools: Lani Guinier to Harvard University Offers outstanding to: Michael Knoll at the University of Southern California Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: C. Edwin Baker from the University of Oregon Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: Paul Butler from George Washington University Total faculty size: 34 UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA Hired laterally: Jody Armour from the University of Pittsburgh Lost to other schools: Howard Chang to the University of Pennsylvania Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Jennifer Arlen from Emory University Total faculty size: 33 UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, AUSTIN Hired laterally: Mark L. Ascher from the University of Arizona Lost to other schools: Cynthia Estlund to Columbia University Offers outstanding to: Laura Kalman in the Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Julius Getman from Yale University Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: David Hyman from the University of Maryland Total faculty size: 61 UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA Hired laterally: Vincent Blasi from Columbia University (part-time appointment) Lost to other schools: Barry Adler to New York University Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Kenneth Abraham from the University of Maryland Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: Curtis Bradley from the University of Colorado Total faculty size: 63 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN, MADISON Hired laterally: Jane Larson (denied tenure) from Northwestern University Lost to other schools: Lauren Edelman to the University of California, Berkeley Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Linda Greene from practice (formerly at the University of Oregon) Total faculty size: 36 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY Hired laterally: Kent Syverud from the University of Michigan (as Dean) Lost to other schools: Donald Langevoort to Georgetown University Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Jon W. Bruce from Stetson University Total faculty size: 29 WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, ST. LOUIS Hired laterally: Rebecca Dresser from Case Western Reserve University Lost to other schools: Richard Lazarus to Georgetown University Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Peter Wiedenbeck from the University of Missouri, Columbia Total faculty size: 31 YALE UNIVERSITY Hired laterally: Anne Alstott from Columbia University Lost to other schools: no one Offers outstanding to: Aaron Edlin at the University of California, Berkeley Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Jack Balkin from the University of Texas, Austin Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: Douglas Baird from the University of Chicago Total faculty size: 41 TOP CHOICES BY SPECIALTY AREA This list was compiled in consultation with various experts in the different fields, as well as by consulting various anthologies of leading articles in each field. For each field, I list a half-dozen-or-so especially strong schools. The list is largely confined to the top 15 schools, other than in exceptional cases. Note that these lists sometimes differ from the lists compiled by U.S. News, in which academics in the area are asked to list ten or fifteen strong "programs" in these areas. Schools with established "programs" may not necessarily be schools with academically distinguished faculty in the area. What follows is based on faculty quality in the area. Please keep in mind that any good school will offer instruction in most or all of these fields. These lists simply flag the schools with the most outstanding faculties in the various areas. Administrative Law Columbia University Bankruptcy Harvard University Civil Procedure Duke University Commercial Law Harvard University Comparative Law Columbia University Constitutional Law: Freedom of Religion Case Western Reserve University Constitutional Law: Freedom of Speech Columbia University Constitutional Law-General (incl. theories of
constitutional interpretation) Columbia University Corporate Law and Securities Regulation Columbia University Criminal Law (substantive) Columbia University Criminal Procedure Harvard University Critical Race Theory Columbia University Environmental Law Chicago-Kent College of Law/Illinois Institute of Technology Feminist Legal Theory Cornell University Health Law (excluding medical ethics) Duke University International Law Columbia University Intellectual Property Boston University Jurisprudence Cardozo Law School/Yeshiva University Labor Law Columbia University Law and Economics Columbia University Law and Religion (excluding First Amendment
issues) Duke University Law and Social Science (incl. Psychology and
Sociology) Northwestern University Legal Ethics/Professional Responsibility/Legal
Profession Boston University Legal History Harvard University Moral and Political Theory (Anglo-American traditions) Boston University Moral and Political Theory (Continental traditions) Cardozo Law School/Yeshiva University Tax Harvard University Torts (including products liability) Cornell University Footnote: |
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