Richard Lempert (Michigan) has apt comments here; an excerpt:

I have concerns about the quality of some of the empirical work
being done and how empirical work, even good scholarship, is used.  To
put it bluntly too much empirical scholarship is being deployed
normatively, downplaying caveats that should be attached to findings,
and some research, including work by outstanding scholars, seems
strongly agenda driven (sometimes to the point of being financed by
parties building records for litigation).  I also see in some work a
divorce of empirical analysis from theory and context which not only
can diminish the utility of empirical studies in building more general
understandings, but can also lead to poor research designs and
misunderstandings of data.  Moreover, even when research is of high
quality and done with great care, its results can be hijacked by groups
that oversimplify what was found in order to  "sell" positions they
hold and would hold even if the empirical work had come out
differently.   

Too often researchers encourage misuses of their results in
conclusions that push the practical implications of their research,
even when the more detailed analysis emphasizes proper cautions.  While
this occurs with empirical students of the law in liberal arts schools
by political scientists, sociologists, economists and psychologists
among others, the problem tends to be more severe in the empirical work
of law professors, perhaps because most see their business not as
building social or behavioral theory but as criticizing laws and legal
institutions and recommending reform.