ABA NAAC regional assignments released

The staff at the ABA has had some difficulty this year setting the six regional cities for the 2010 National Appellate Advocacy Competition. Frankly, I'm surprised they're ever able to accomplish the monumental task of securing six (with the exception of Miami and Boston) federal courthouses to run competitions of 30-plus teams over a specific three-week period. Last year's city of St. Louis was replaced by Las Vegas, which the NAAC had used in 2007 and 2008.

Anyway, the teams had to lodge their preferences by Monday, and the ABA was able to turn those requests around in a day to release the regional assignments. Pretty impressive. They're now posted to the NAAC competitors site, but because the info on that site is confidential to the students and coaches, I won't divulge the address...

It's always a bit silly to try predicting the "toughest city" in terms of team strength, but hey, I might as well try. I ran the numbers using three different metrics: Last year's 24 ABA regional champions, the top 16 teams of the University of Houston Blakely Advocacy Institute's Moot Court National Championship rankings, and the current top 16 teams according to Brian Koppen's LawSchoolAdvocacy.com ranking site. Note that although Mercer University School of Law and University of Miami School of Law are participants in this year's Moot Court National Championship, they weren't in the original top 16 -- University of California Hastings College of the Law and Columbia Law School declined their invitations, which led to to Mercer's and Miami's entries.

If we look at last year's 24 ABA regional champs, it would appear that Boston is this year's toughest ABA regional, hosting six schools that sent a team to Chicago last year (Loyola University Chicago School of Law, Marquette University Law School, South Texas College of Law, St. Mary's University School of Law, University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, and University of Florida Levin College of Law), including last year's national champion (South Texas). Las Vegas and San Francisco would appear to be the weakest regions, with just two schools at each having sent teams to last year's national finals (Vegas hosts Chicago-Kent College of Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology and University of San Diego School of Law; San Fran hosts Hastings and University of Texas School of Law).

Using UH's MCNC rankings from the 2008-09 academic year, Brooklyn and Washington, D.C. tie for the toughest, with three top-16 schools at each region. Brooklyn will play host to #15 Brooklyn Law School, # 6 Seton Hall University School of Law, and # 9 Texas Tech University School of Law, with D.C. fielding #4 Duke University School of Law, #14 Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law, and #16 William and Mary Law School. San Francisco would seem to be the easiest, with only one school in the top 16 (#5 Hastings).

And finally, under LawSchoolAdvocacy.com's 2009 running tally (which hasn't yet been updated with results from seven fall competitions), the Miami regional looks like the roughest go, with four top-16 schools (#4 Michigan State University College of Law, #7 Louisiana State University Paul M. Hebert Law Center, #9 Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, and #13 Earle Mack School of Law at Drexel University). Again, San Francisco is the lightest, with just one (#5 Hastings).

So, umm, yeahhhhh. Not a real definitive answer, except that San Francisco would appear to be the weakest regional under any of the three approaches.

***12/18 Edit: The ABA revised three regional assignments yesterday: SMU and Regent University School of Law have swapped cities, so now SMU will go to Brooklyn and Regent will go to D.C. Miami, rather than staying home, will now go to Vegas. Nothing changes above except as to the Houston MCNC rankings; with the addition of SMU, Brooklyn becomes the toughest city by itself (as opposed to being tied with D.C.) using that metric, having four top-16 teams instead of three.