In addition to Tennessee's
upward move, West Virginia, New York, Nebraska, and Delaware made
significant improvements in their proficiency standards, climbing a full letter grade from where they had been in 2009.
In the absence of
significant innovation that adds real value to the practice of law, the
upward trajectory that saw Carswell Thomson and LexisNexis Butterworths
move to the top ranking positions in the Canadian legal publishing over the last three decades will likely stall and possibly even reverse itself.