pkpapn wrote: 1. I did not argue a completely irrelevant point. I argued the point that a study from USN found that Des Moines was a rich metropolitan area when he argued that only a "shitboomer Iowan" would say that. I proved his statement false. He did not exclusively bold "the legal market" he bolded "the rich metropolitan area" part of my statement as well. Thus, this is relevant.
The point that's relevant to the discussion is whether a lawyer can get a good job, not how rich the area is. Just because Sun Valley is rich doesn't mean it's a good legal argument. Stop poking the straw man.
2. I am not telling anybody what they "should be trusting". I am demonstrating that my source was the same as the source that is promoted by this site. Just because your opinion is vastly different does not make my logic poor.
The site does not "promote" the rankings nor does it "trust" them. It presents them because it's the most common way to order the schools. That does not mean that order is the most important way to rank the schools. Even though you've backed off from your original claim that a specific poster or group of poster "trusts" USNWR, you're still incorrect.
3. Again, you completely ignored part of my post. My justification for Des Moines being a wealthy area was not "I know a couple kids", it was the study on USN as I have clearly pointed out.
Then what you wrote about knowing a couple millionaires from Des Moines was completely irrelevant. Sounds like we agree.
4. I said I would pardon his ignorance because he was ignorant. He said "only a shitboomer Iowan" would say that Des Moines was a wealthy metropolitan area and I proved that is not true as USN would also say that.
Same straw man. The focus is on the legal market, because no one really cares about how wealthy the city is otherwise. On the important critieron, you were wrong.
5. Your example is terrible because you say "3 feet tall". More like I am saying that Des Moines is "5ft 10in" and is taller than a lot of people. This is true. However, you immediately bring up Chicago and DC, the "6ft 7in" NBA superstars. The implication of my statement did NOT imply that Des Moines was up there with the NBA superstars. It implied that it was taller than a good number of people you would see on the street.
Des Moines isn't the 5'10" of the legal world. Here's the list of markets with a higher median starting salary than Des Moines, per NALP:
Atlanta, Austin, Birmingham, Boston, Charleston (WV), Charlotte, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Hartford, Houston, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Louisville, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Orleans, New York, Oakland, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Richmond, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Silicon Valley, St. Louis, Tampa, Washington.
It's not that everyone else is tall, it's that you're short.
To simplify all this further, If you were to pick a city at random from the United States (like out of a hat that has the name of every city in the country), the odds would strongly favor Des Moines having a better legal market than that city. Odds are you are not going to pick a huge city like Chicago or DC.
This is one of the stupidest things I've ever read. People don't pick where to live out of a hat. Bigger markets carry more weight because, you know, there are more lawyers. The cities listed above contain probably 90% of the country's six-figure legal jobs. Picking a city "at random" without weighting via market size communicates effectively zero information. That's like being called three feet tall and then turning around and saying that if you picked an organism at random, you're probably taller than it because there are a lot more bacteria than humans.
