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Troianii

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law schools rising and falling

Post by Troianii » Wed Nov 11, 2015 1:55 pm

In recent years some law schools have risen dramatically, and some have fallen dramatically. In recent years Washington and Lee fell back quite a bit. American has largely dropped off. Northeastern has fallen quite a bit. Georgetown is now pretty definitively the 14th, and hasn't shown significant indication of changing. Iowa, Arizona State, and Notre Dame have been climbing the rankings, while William and Mary has fallen a bit. Over at the other end, UNH and Seton Hall have moved up in the rankings over the last few years, and Maine (once cracking the top 100) has fallen back quite a bit, and now has one of the top 5 worst job figures). Lewis and Clark, LSU, Seattle, and Hamlin have all taken big tumbles and fallen by a great deal in recent years (and Hamlin is merging with another unranked law school).

So what I want to know is, which schools do YOU think we will see rise or fall in the rankings in the next 5yrs? How about the next 10yrs?

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General_Tso

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Re: law schools rising and falling

Post by General_Tso » Wed Nov 11, 2015 2:09 pm

Will save you a lot of time and cut to the chase. Nobody cares about the USNWR rankings outside of the top 14 schools. Nobody gives two craps about Seton Hall moving up from #85 to #77. 10% of their grads will do fine and 90% will struggle. USNWR doesn't change that fact.

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Re: law schools rising and falling

Post by nealric » Wed Nov 11, 2015 3:56 pm

General_Tso wrote:Will save you a lot of time and cut to the chase. Nobody cares about the USNWR rankings outside of the top 14 schools. Nobody gives two craps about Seton Hall moving up from #85 to #77. 10% of their grads will do fine and 90% will struggle. USNWR doesn't change that fact.
Pretty much this. There are four basic tiers of schools in my mind:

Good schools (the best 10-18 depending on who you ask, though T14 is often used): Good chance of biglaw (or AIII clerkship, prestigious PI, etc.), near certain gainful employment as a lawyer if desired.

Respectable schools (somewhere between 20 and 50 of them): Some chance of biglaw or other prestigious position, good chance of gainful employment as a lawyer.

Bad schools (your garden variety TTT): Very little chance of biglaw or other prestigious position, coin-toss on gainful employment as a lawyer.

Degree mills (for profits, non-ABA accredited, other schools that admit academically marginal candidates): Very little chance of gainful employment as a lawyer.


Movement within those tiers is meaningless, and I can't think of any school that has moved from one to another in a generation. The USNWR generally corresponds to these categories, but that's about all it's good for.

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Re: law schools rising and falling

Post by Lord Randolph McDuff » Wed Nov 11, 2015 4:25 pm

nealric wrote:
General_Tso wrote:Will save you a lot of time and cut to the chase. Nobody cares about the USNWR rankings outside of the top 14 schools. Nobody gives two craps about Seton Hall moving up from #85 to #77. 10% of their grads will do fine and 90% will struggle. USNWR doesn't change that fact.
Pretty much this. There are four basic tiers of schools in my mind:

Good schools (the best 10-18 depending on who you ask, though T14 is often used): Good chance of biglaw (or AIII clerkship, prestigious PI, etc.), near certain gainful employment as a lawyer if desired.

Respectable schools (somewhere between 20 and 50 of them): Some chance of biglaw or other prestigious position, good chance of gainful employment as a lawyer.

Bad schools (your garden variety TTT): Very little chance of biglaw or other prestigious position, coin-toss on gainful employment as a lawyer.

Degree mills (for profits, non-ABA accredited, other schools that admit academically marginal candidates): Very little chance of gainful employment as a lawyer.


Movement within those tiers is meaningless, and I can't think of any school that has moved from one to another in a generation. The USNWR generally corresponds to these categories, but that's about all it's good for.
This is about the best summation on this topic that I have seen. Since I have been paying attention (10 years) there hasn't been one school change its position within these tiers.

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BizBro

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Re: law schools rising and falling

Post by BizBro » Wed Nov 11, 2015 4:36 pm

Where's St. Johns, CUNY, Fordham, NY Law School, Brooklyn Law School & Cardozo fall in those buckets?

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Troianii

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Re: law schools rising and falling

Post by Troianii » Wed Nov 11, 2015 5:08 pm

General_Tso wrote:Will save you a lot of time and cut to the chase. Nobody cares about the USNWR rankings outside of the top 14 schools. Nobody gives two craps about Seton Hall moving up from #85 to #77. 10% of their grads will do fine and 90% will struggle. USNWR doesn't change that fact.

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cub1014

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Re: law schools rising and falling

Post by cub1014 » Wed Nov 11, 2015 5:42 pm

You missed a big one. Illinois law plummeted in the last few years due to an admissions scandal. I bet they will be one of the schools that rises back up.

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General_Tso

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Re: law schools rising and falling

Post by General_Tso » Wed Nov 11, 2015 5:44 pm

BizBro wrote:Where's St. Johns, CUNY, Fordham, NY Law School, Brooklyn Law School & Cardozo fall in those buckets?
Fordham = respectable school

Brooklyn, Cardozo = bad schools

Rest are diploma mills

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BizBro

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Re: law schools rising and falling

Post by BizBro » Wed Nov 11, 2015 6:08 pm

General_Tso wrote:
BizBro wrote:Where's St. Johns, CUNY, Fordham, NY Law School, Brooklyn Law School & Cardozo fall in those buckets?
Fordham = respectable school

Brooklyn, Cardozo = bad schools

Rest are diploma mills
St. Johns got to at least be on par with brooklyn / Cardozo.

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84651846190

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Re: law schools rising and falling

Post by 84651846190 » Wed Nov 11, 2015 6:46 pm

Every school in New York not named Columbia or NYU is TTT.

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Trippel

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Re: law schools rising and falling

Post by Trippel » Wed Nov 11, 2015 7:02 pm

Biglaw_Associate_V20 wrote:Every school in New York not named Columbia or NYU is TTT.
:lol: :lol: lol :lol:

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Re: law schools rising and falling

Post by wolfie_m. » Wed Nov 11, 2015 7:07 pm

Removed.
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Tiago Splitter

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Re: law schools rising and falling

Post by Tiago Splitter » Wed Nov 11, 2015 7:18 pm

wolfie_m. wrote:Personally, I worry more that some "highly ranked" schools (i.e., ones outside of the T14 + strong regionals) are over-ranked and seduce kids who don't know better. For example, Emory touts a respectable BL + FC % of 29.1% for c/o 2014, but those numbers hide the fact that 27.2% of c/o 2014 were either underemployed or employed by the school. Yet Emory is ranked #19.
But that's basically every school in nealric's second category.

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Re: law schools rising and falling

Post by wolfie_m. » Wed Nov 11, 2015 7:42 pm

Removed.
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Troianii

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Re: law schools rising and falling

Post by Troianii » Thu Nov 12, 2015 12:32 am

nealric wrote: There are four basic tiers of schools in my mind:

Good schools (the best 10-18 depending on who you ask, though T14 is often used): Good chance of biglaw (or AIII clerkship, prestigious PI, etc.), near certain gainful employment as a lawyer if desired.

Respectable schools (somewhere between 20 and 50 of them): Some chance of biglaw or other prestigious position, good chance of gainful employment as a lawyer.

Bad schools (your garden variety TTT): Very little chance of biglaw or other prestigious position, coin-toss on gainful employment as a lawyer.

Degree mills (for profits, non-ABA accredited, other schools that admit academically marginal candidates): Very little chance of gainful employment as a lawyer.


Movement within those tiers is meaningless, and I can't think of any school that has moved from one to another in a generation. The USNWR generally corresponds to these categories, but that's about all it's good for.


interesting - so, based on traditional tiering (which is nothing more than dividing into groups of 50), any 2nd tier school is pretty much a bad school? I mean I get that you're saying that there are limitations to the rankings and groupings make more sense, to which I agree.

But I guess to rephrase it another way - are there any schools which you think will move out of those categories you listed, up or down?

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banjo

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Re: law schools rising and falling

Post by banjo » Thu Nov 12, 2015 1:05 am

If you really think practicing lawyers care about law school rankings, consider this: how well do any of us know today's undergrad rankings? Probably not well. If we interviewed a random George Washington grad, we might know it's a good school, but none of us would know its ranking trajectory over the past 10 years. My random guess for George Washington would be #25, which is probably based on what I remember from when I applied years ago.

Looking at nealric's ranking, it's easy to tell he's a practicing lawyer because his list is accurate but fluid/approximate.

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cub1014

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Re: law schools rising and falling

Post by cub1014 » Thu Nov 12, 2015 1:32 am

banjo wrote:If you really think practicing lawyers care about law school rankings, consider this: how well do any of us know today's undergrad rankings? Probably not well. If we interviewed a random George Washington grad, we might know it's a good school, but none of us would know its ranking trajectory over the past 10 years. My random guess for George Washington would be #25, which is probably based on what I remember from when I applied years ago.

Looking at nealric's ranking, it's easy to tell he's a practicing lawyer because his list is accurate but fluid/approximate.


Just looked it up out of curiosity. Under usnwr for undergrad national universities, George Washington University is ranked tied for 57th. You just supported your point very nicely haha.

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Mack.Hambleton

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Re: law schools rising and falling

Post by Mack.Hambleton » Thu Nov 12, 2015 1:41 am

GW has never been preftigious idk where that came from

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Clemenceau

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Re: law schools rising and falling

Post by Clemenceau » Thu Nov 12, 2015 1:54 am

Mack.Hambleton wrote:GW has never been preftigious idk where that came from
Probably the mouths of rich parents paying 50k/yr in tuition so their kid doesn't have to go to state school like a plebe.

Maybe that's just where I've heard it.

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banjo

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Re: law schools rising and falling

Post by banjo » Thu Nov 12, 2015 1:58 am

GW is more TTT than I thought. I thought it was closer to NYU because of this:
Clemenceau wrote:Probably the mouths of rich parents paying 50k/yr in tuition so their kid doesn't have to go to state school like a plebe.

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Re: law schools rising and falling

Post by Nomo » Thu Nov 12, 2015 2:50 am

Troianii wrote:
nealric wrote: There are four basic tiers of schools in my mind:

Good schools (the best 10-18 depending on who you ask, though T14 is often used): Good chance of biglaw (or AIII clerkship, prestigious PI, etc.), near certain gainful employment as a lawyer if desired.

Respectable schools (somewhere between 20 and 50 of them): Some chance of biglaw or other prestigious position, good chance of gainful employment as a lawyer.

Bad schools (your garden variety TTT): Very little chance of biglaw or other prestigious position, coin-toss on gainful employment as a lawyer.

Degree mills (for profits, non-ABA accredited, other schools that admit academically marginal candidates): Very little chance of gainful employment as a lawyer.


Movement within those tiers is meaningless, and I can't think of any school that has moved from one to another in a generation. The USNWR generally corresponds to these categories, but that's about all it's good for.

interesting - so, based on traditional tiering (which is nothing more than dividing into groups of 50), any 2nd tier school is pretty much a bad school? I mean I get that you're saying that there are limitations to the rankings and groupings make more sense, to which I agree.

But I guess to rephrase it another way - are there any schools which you think will move out of those categories you listed, up or down?
I don't. I remember when I was applying to schools about 7 years ago there was a lot of talk about WUSTL and Emory making a move. It didn't materialize. Schools might be able to game the USNWR rankings, but changing employment outcomes is a very hard and slow process because employment outcomes are based on reputation and alumni networks (not median lsat, gpa, number of library books, student/faculty ratio, etc.) I would be shocked if more than a handful of schools change categories in the next 10 years.

There is some reason to believe that Irvine is pulling off respectable employment outcomes without a reputation/alumni network. That seems to be based almost entirely off the Dean's unique relationship and sway with federal judges. If I had to guess I would say that Irvine's numbers will drop substantially when: (1) the Dean retires/moves on and is no longer available to make calls on the students behalf; (2) as the class size rises and the Dean is no longer able to make phone calls on behalf of nearly every student (I can't imagine that UCI is going to continue to allow the law school to admit classes of under 100 people, and lose large amounts of money due to lack of tuition revenue)

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Troianii

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Re: law schools rising and falling

Post by Troianii » Thu Nov 12, 2015 3:06 am

banjo wrote:If you really think practicing lawyers care about law school rankings, consider this
*sigh*

I don't, but it seems as if most here have acted as if I had said as much.
banjo wrote:: how well do any of us know today's undergrad rankings? Probably not well. If we interviewed a random George Washington grad, we might know it's a good school, but none of us would know its ranking trajectory over the past 10 years. My random guess for George Washington would be #25, which is probably based on what I remember from when I applied years ago.

Looking at nealric's ranking, it's easy to tell he's a practicing lawyer because his list is accurate but fluid/approximate.
Obviously, rankings - whether USNEWS, job figures, w/e - are fluid, and I'm curious what schools people think mgiht move up or down. I never said anything to the tune of "this is really important". It's interesting.

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Re: law schools rising and falling

Post by JonTheMandamus » Thu Nov 12, 2015 3:23 am

I think OP just wants a light hearted speculation. The rankings aren't the end-all. We get it.

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General_Tso

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Re: law schools rising and falling

Post by General_Tso » Thu Nov 12, 2015 3:55 am

JonTheMandamus wrote:We get it.
Good

Troianii

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Re: law schools rising and falling

Post by Troianii » Thu Nov 12, 2015 4:21 am

JonTheMandamus wrote:I think OP just wants a light hearted speculation. The rankings aren't the end-all. We get it.
ding ding ding! haha! Seriously though, what's with all the straw men on TLS? People are always super-aggressively shooting down shit that NO ONE said.

Anyways, to the actual topic, one of the obvious things to note is that the higher up in the rankings, the slower the movement is. One school can rise 25 spots in a single year when it's around 100, but it can't do that if it's in the top 50. So the higher up we go, the more significant a couple spots can be. And here are a few changes I think we might see in the next ten years - not predicting them, but I think they're likely enough to be worth noting:

Texas will move up one or two spots. Over the last few years its admissions figures have been very stable, with their median LSAT (from 2010 to 2014) staying the same and gpa dropping 0.03. Georgetown, on the other hand, has had its median LSAT drop 3pts, and its 25th drop 5 over the same period (UT's 25th dropped 1pt). So you've got admissions figures falling pretty quickly at Georgetown, while UT's stay roughly the same and (I think) will rise very, very slowly but still rise over the next ten years. Addtionally, on the jobs figures, UT has seen some pretty strong improvement, especially in its biglaw figures.

One thing that I think people largely forget, fairly since it has almost no effect in the T14, is that most of a law school's performance (out of all of them - again, this is less true of T14) is based on its region. For example, ASU recently shot up - they were 55 in 2010, and they're now 26. Some of this is due to their school funded jobs artificially boosting the rankings, but much more of it has to do with region - they're the only law school in their city, a large and fast growing city, and the only other significant law school in the state is Arizona - which is lower ranked and produces far fewer graduates. With the other TTTT in the state dropping off and likely to close down soon, ASU has a pretty decent lock on a fast growing area. This, I think, is a large part of why UT will continue to improve its position and will knock Georgetown off within the next ten years. It's by no means guaranteed to happen, and I wouldn't be money on it, but I think there's a pretty good chance of that - and what a shakeup that would be. When is the last time the T14 was occupied by a school that isn't currently in the T14?

Additionally I think we may see UNC and Colorado move up the rankings for roughly the same reason - not huge jumps or anything, but I think they'll move up in the next few years.

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