Laura -- you certainly have my sympathy -- I am in the Finance Dept. at NMSU
and up for promotion and tenure this year.  Some T & P members suggested
equally absurd formulistic methods of evaluating my research.  Luckily the
voice of reason won out -- instead they used a combination of actually
reading what I published and utilizing external reviewers that they selected
(I do not know who served in this capacity or from what Universities).  As a
result, I have received positive recommendations through the Dean's level,
so I am expecting good news soon.
 
Our college does not value "law review" publications more than other types
of publications since such publications are NOT peer reviewed, are student
edited and since the perception (here anyway) is that research of BLAW
faculty is most appropriately directed to issues of relevance to business
and to scholars within the business disciplines.  Essentially, BLAW faculty
are viewed as the lawyers who should bridge the gap between what law school
faculty publish what non-legally trained academic scholars write.  For the
most part, I believe that logic is sound.  As a result of these attitudes, I
found out what publications were viewed as the "best" in each of the
business disciplines and determined those in which legal issues papers might
be accepted.  I began directing my research and writing to papers that could
be submitted to these journals.  For example, our accounting dept. thinks
that the CPA Journal is a top journal in their field, so I submitted there,
and have an acceptance.  My thinking was that the business faculty would be
hard put to discount publications in journals that they count when members
of their own discipline publish there.  I also found that writing and
publishing in these outlets is much easier than in law reviews.  (Footnotes
always take me longer than the paper.)
 
I think it is very unfair for your T & P committee to set a new set of
guidelines in your fourth year.
 
Also, how do you think your collegues would fare if their methodology was
applied to evaluating their own research?  (Take the same peer institutions,
the same number of full time faculty from those institutions, database
reviews of publications and then "count" only those that appear in journals
where the peer group has published three times.)  If there is anyway to ask
them to think about this question, they may see that their own research
would not hold up under this methodology.
 
The methodology is also skewed if you presume that faculty attempt to
develop expertise in particular subject areas.  If your areas of expertise
are not shared by BLAW faculty at the peer institutions, then it is highly
unlikely that you will publish in the same outlets.
 
Sorry to be so long winded.  You have probably thought of most of this on
your own.  Are attitudes at your university open enough to allow you to
provide print-outs of all your e-mail responses to the individuals who
devised the system?
 
Good luck.  Liz
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lizbeth G. Ellis
Assistant Professor
New Mexico State University
P.O. Box 300001, Dept. 3FIN
Las Cruces, NM  88003-8001
(505) 646-5066