2012 US News & World Report Law School Rankings Forum

[danquayle]

Because they need these rankings to show their worth. As far as a law firm, I do not think they hold as much weight.

I've had people outright ask me what the current rank of my school was during interviews. I sense a lot of it is just curiosity --> people love a horse race. But even if people don't place much stock in the ranks beyond the spectacle, they are interested in them and I have to imagine there's some effect.

By chance I met a recruiting coordinator from a respectable Texas firm while I was choosing a law school to attend. She asked which schools I was considering. When I told her, she said, "Oh, those are good schools. We take from the top ##% at school X and ##% at school Y." We discussed school rankings and she told me that they had a spreadsheet with a percentage cut-off for interviewees from each school.

Firms probably care a lot less once you have the job. But they are conscious of the school you attend and the GENERAL signal it sends about your quality as a candidate when you are interviewing.

It makes sense that they'd have cut offs for each school, but are those cut offs in any way related to US News, or just their views of school quality which may have some correlative, but not causal, relationship with the US News? Like if their cut off for Baylor it top 10% now, would that suddenly go to top 25% if Baylor shot up to US News top-25?

I would doubt it.

[run26.2]

Because they need these rankings to show their worth. As far as a law firm, I do not think they hold as much weight.

I've had people outright ask me what the current rank of my school was during interviews. I sense a lot of it is just curiosity --> people love a horse race. But even if people don't place much stock in the ranks beyond the spectacle, they are interested in them and I have to imagine there's some effect.

By chance I met a recruiting coordinator from a respectable Texas firm while I was choosing a law school to attend. She asked which schools I was considering. When I told her, she said, "Oh, those are good schools. We take from the top ##% at school X and ##% at school Y." We discussed school rankings and she told me that they had a spreadsheet with a percentage cut-off for interviewees from each school.

Firms probably care a lot less once you have the job. But they are conscious of the school you attend and the GENERAL signal it sends about your quality as a candidate when you are interviewing.

It makes sense that they'd have cut offs for each school, but are those cut offs in any way related to US News, or just their views of school quality which may have some correlative, but not causal, relationship with the US News? Like if their cut off for Baylor it top 10% now, would that suddenly go to top 25% if Baylor shot up to US News top-25?

I would doubt it.

Now that I have reread what I wrote, I realize I need to clarify a little--this conversation was 2 years ago! With one of the schools, she knew the cutoff. With the other school, she asked me what it was ranked and she then indicated that she thought the firm took around a certain percentage from a school at that rank.

Firms may not necessarily correlate with a 1 year change in the US News ranking, but I do think they correlate (at least at some firms) with a longer-term average in the US News. Alternatively, there may be bands and firms take x% from a school in a particular band (say 20-25). These percentages may serve as a general guideline for most applicants with occasional exceptions. This also may be subject to whether or not they tend to take any from a particular school, e.g. a firm from TX may not have enough familiarity with say Iowa to use that percentage as a guide. I base this on having gained a general idea of the selectivity of firms at OCI at my old school and my current school and from talking to students at other schools.

What I am saying is that firms are aware of the rankings and use them to inform their hiring decisions. The extent to which they use them may vary by firm, but my guess is that those involved in hiring have a sense of the approximate rank of a school over the past several years.