Someone should write a student note comparing the productivity and scholarly impact of entry-level law professors who have Ph.D.s with those who do not. Pick your measure of productivity and scholarly impact — citations, number of articles, etc. — and then run the numbers for the law professors who have been teaching for 10 years or less either at all schools or at some subset like the “top 50” schools. Then look for trends between the group that has Ph.D.s and the group that does not. Maybe code for other variables, too, like J.D. institution, field of Ph.D., and gender. The result would be a fascinating empirical study that could test a lot of assumptions prevailing today about what kinds of scholars are likely to be the most productive or have the greatest scholarly impact.