2014 Vault Rankings Forum

[Bronte]

The question is whether the supposed prestige measured by the Vault rankings translates into something tangible. The two tangible things people generally think the rankings might translate into are (1) better exit options and (2) more interesting work. Obviously both of these are difficult to measure and in any event little data exists to verify them.

But I think that in broad strokes the rankings are moderately useful as measures of these criteria. Obviously, the Vault rankings absolutely must be supplemented with some practice-specific and geography-specific measures. This is where Chambers and Partners can be helpful as well as to a lesser extent Vault's practice-specific and geography-specific rankings.

To pretend that the Vault rankings are completely irrelevant and that job seekers should completely ignore them is naive at best. As to this talk about whether lay people know the difference between Davis Polk and Jones Day, it's hard to overly stress how irrelevant this is.

[Borg]

All I can say to any of this is that the guy who used to do the therapy blog on Above the Law was at S&C before washing out and spending many more years in school to become a psychologist. That probably doesn't sound good to most of you, but the truth is that he's probably among the more successful S&C "alumni." He failed and had to ditch law entirely after just two years, but at least he figured out how to make himself happy and pursued that.

The truth is that most people wind up grinding their lives away at one in-house job or another after they wash out from firm life. The average compensation for HYSCCN lawyers mid-career is $200kish. Most of those people followed the "prestigious" track, and I'd hazard to guess that most V5 guys wind up with the same pay grade as the V100 guys. If you follow this track, you're going to wind up in the same grey vat of mush (if you're lucky ITE). If you avoided econ and finance classes all your life, went to a prestigious law school, are headed into a "prestigious" law firm, and have convinced yourself you're some kind of genius for having done it, I pity you because you're probably headed for a hard fall.

The problem with law school in general is that it attracts these "dreamer" types who are usually only intelligent in one way but have tons of arrogance, bullshit distinctions in humanities from undergrad, and parents who blow sunshine up their asses for writing great essays about Chaucer. It's just one step after another in doing things that you are 100% sure you will succeed at, just for the sake of success. So many people have required the approval of others for their whole lives, and as a result have never done something worthwhile that they might fail at, or taken a risk to see what they might actually enjoy or surprisingly get the hang of. Picking a firm based on Vault is just another link in the same chain. If you need the approval of others badly enough to look to a poorly vetted list to decide how to live your life, you're never going to be happy, and probably won't be successful.

Damn bro.

Though I'm with you on the whole "arrogance-prestige whoring-being unhappy part." But why'd you have to go there with Chaucer?

Sorry man, nothing against Chaucer, I love to read and one of my majors in college was in the humanities. I'm just saying that people in law school generally have this odd combination of really high regard for their own intellects and an extreme sense of intellectual insecurity. They convince themselves they are much brighter than they are because they set themselves up on academic tracks that played to their strengths, but deep down they also know that this is the truth so they feel a need to prove themselves constantly. Humanities are great, but I'll say from experience that it's a hell of a lot easier to come up with a decent lit thesis than it is to get a good grade in a calculus class.

[guano]

I love these debates about the prestigiousness of prestige.

It's an excellent topic for a scholarly article

yo guano, arent you completely unaffiliated with the legal profession?

I have no skin in the game, no