. Forum

[bjsesq]

Though I recognize the flaw in the rankings, is there nonetheless more credence lent to the idea of penn being much closer to the t6 then apart from it?

It's quite the opposite: most insiders have Penn pegged as a lower T14 school by 2020.

Why is that? Lower lsat scores? Philly big law pays well and is growing. the geographical areas around it too are growing. Idt it will drop.

EVERYTHING

CHANGES

TO

190k

EXCEPT

PHILLY

[Lord Randolph McDuff]

Though I recognize the flaw in the rankings, is there nonetheless more credence lent to the idea of penn being much closer to the t6 then apart from it?

I'm not even sure ATL did their math right even with their incredibly flawed rubric. Villanova over USC? Tulsa too???? I clicked on the link for Villanova and Tulsa; not only was tuition high, but their stupid alumni survey score was bad too.

Not counting for scholarship discounted tuition is fatal, alumni surveys are easy to manipulate... The level of corporate sellout here is strong. These should be burned. This helps schools like Tulsa and Nova. Everyone loses.

[rpupkin]

Though I recognize the flaw in the rankings, is there nonetheless more credence lent to the idea of penn being much closer to the t6 then apart from it?

It's quite the opposite: most insiders have Penn pegged as a lower T14 school by 2020.

Why is that? Lower lsat scores? Philly big law pays well and is growing. the geographical areas around it too are growing. Idt it will drop.

Penn made some extremely questionable short-term decisions in an effort to obtain coveted T6 status. Those decisions will come at a long-term cost. Sure, Penn administrators are breaking out the champagne now because they've bested YLS in the ATL rankings. But the price will be paid by those in the class of 2018 and beyond, who will enter the workforce as graduates of a school that is jostling with the likes of Michigan and Northwestern just to stay in the T12. It's sad, really.

[beepboopbeep]

@abl: My reading of the factors used in ATL's rankings seems to be a bit different than your posted understanding. Percentage of federal law clerk placement & NLJ 250 law firm placement counts for 30%, whereas sitting judges comprise a portion (along with SCOTUS clerkships) of a 7.5% category. Additionally, this 7.5% category is adjusted to account for the size of the law school.

That doesn't seem inconsistent with abl's post at all. Not sure what you're correcting.

Active Fed Judges + SCOTUS clerks counting for 15% is the biggest joke, but an underrated stupid thing w/ this methodology is the "debt per job" thing. Hey - we have debt/cost and jobs as inputs already. Let's make an extra 5% reflect those two things again!

(Also: using cost as the debt metric on the one hand "because there is no real data" on actual loans, then using... actual debt data somewhere else. Huh?)

[CanadianWolf]

You're right. It is 7.5% for each.

[beepboopbeep]

You're incorrect about that category comprising 15% of the ranking formula--it is only 7.5%.

Fed judge 7.5%
SCOTUS clerk 7.5%

7.5 + 7.5 = 15

What am I missing

[MikeJD]

that list makes US news looks good..

[CanadianWolf]

You're correct. I adjusted my post above.

Nevertheless, easy to criticize, but difficult to devise a ranking & rating system.

The system gets folks talking & analyzing--which is a good thing.

[071816]

Though I recognize the flaw in the rankings, is there nonetheless more credence lent to the idea of penn being much closer to the t6 then apart from it?

I'm not even sure ATL did their math right even with their incredibly flawed rubric. Villanova over USC? Tulsa too???? I clicked on the link for Villanova and Tulsa; not only was tuition high, but their stupid alumni survey score was bad too.

Not counting for scholarship discounted tuition is fatal, alumni surveys are easy to manipulate... The level of corporate sellout here is strong. These should be burned. This helps schools like Tulsa and Nova. Everyone loses.

I can't comprehend how usc is so much more fucked than its peers (and even schools that are objectively way worse) by these rankings

[LA Spring]

In comparing ATL to USNWR, I’m leaning toward ATL’s top ten with one notable exception. UVA (with their SFJ employment ploy) should definitely be ranked below Columbia-Duke-Cornell-NYU. Other than that, their top ten looks fine.

[rpupkin]

In comparing ATL to USNWR, I’m leaning toward ATL’s top ten with one notable exception. UVA (with their SFJ employment ploy) should definitely be ranked below Columbia-Duke-Cornell-NYU. Other than that, their top ten looks fine.

Yeah, it looks great. I mean, we all know that if your choices are Penn and YLS at equal cost, the correct answer is Penn.

[MikeJD]

Though I recognize the flaw in the rankings, is there nonetheless more credence lent to the idea of penn being much closer to the t6 then apart from it?

I'm not even sure ATL did their math right even with their incredibly flawed rubric. Villanova over USC? Tulsa too???? I clicked on the link for Villanova and Tulsa; not only was tuition high, but their stupid alumni survey score was bad too.

Not counting for scholarship discounted tuition is fatal, alumni surveys are easy to manipulate... The level of corporate sellout here is strong. These should be burned. This helps schools like Tulsa and Nova. Everyone loses.

I can't comprehend how usc is so much more fucked than its peers (and even schools that are objectively way worse) by these rankings

USC expensive sticker is probably why but it makes no sense, USC is 16th in big law plus ++ clerkship behind only the T-14 and Texas.

[abl]

You're correct. I adjusted my post above.

Nevertheless, easy to criticize, but difficult to devise a ranking & rating system.

The system gets folks talking & analyzing--which is a good thing.

It's not that difficult.

If you want to measure prestigious top-tier outcomes, look at Article III clerkships (possibly in combination with Skaddens and some other elite outcomes). You could probably put together a list of several well-published elite post-grad outcomes like clerkships and Skadden fellowships that'd give you a pretty good sense of how well these top schools do at placing grads in the most sought-after positions. Hell, you could even include Bristows and SCOTUS clerkships, effectively double-counting folks who reach the highest level of early career legal success. The problem with using only SCOTUS clerkships is that the numbers are too small and vary too much year-by-year to yield much statistically useful (especially when we're talking about comparing schools outside of HYS--where the difference between placing 2 clerks and 3 clerks over a five-year span might make a real impact on rankings but reflects nothing more than noise and a small sample size). And the problem with using Article III judgeships is that they're a lagging indicator more representative of political factors than the quality or even reputation of a school. I'm sure that all things being equal, going to a substantially better law school helps get an Article III nomination (so I'm sure HYS folks are more likely to get nominated than GW folks), but that effect is rough at best and it is foolish to assume that differences in Art. III judgeship numbers between Michigan and UVA and Cornell represent anything meaningful about the schools today.

If you want to measure effective cost, look at indebtedness on graduation (which I believe is generally available data). There's no reason why a school with a low sticker should have an advantage over a school with a high sticker if the latter school ultimately ends up actually costing less to most students. (See below, also, for why I don't think that we should be including cost in these rankings.)

I think it's hard to come up with a weighting that everyone will agree measures what is important. Some folks will argue that employment should be emphasized over prestige, or that alumni satisfaction deserves more or less overall weight. For example, I would argue that LSAT/GPAs are useful in evaluating the differences in quality between schools: the quality of the education that one receives in law school is at least in part a function of the quality of your fellow students, and LSAT/GPAs are probably the best indicators of this quality that we have available. If I was designing my own ranking, I don't know that I'd weigh things like LSAT/GPA as heavily as USNews, but I would definitely include them as ranking factors. Others might disagree with this decision.

What's not as hard is coming up with a ranking system that actually measures what it sets out to measure. ATL may have done an ok job of the former--correctly identifying what factors are important in differentiating between schools--but they have done an abysmal job of the latter--actually measuring those factors.

(Incidentally, I don't think that ATL has done a good job of weighing what's important. Cost, for example, is incredibly important, but only insofar as it influences each individual student's debt. I think it's wrong to say that USC, for example, is a worse school than UCLA because its students graduate with more debt on average--but that's exactly what ATL's survey does. For an individual decision making student, your fellow students' debt loan shouldn't matter. The only number that should matter is *your* anticipated indebtedness on graduation.)

[UpandDown97]

Though I recognize the flaw in the rankings, is there nonetheless more credence lent to the idea of penn being much closer to the t6 then apart from it?

It's quite the opposite: most insiders have Penn pegged as a lower T14 school by 2020.

Why is that? Lower lsat scores? Philly big law pays well and is growing. the geographical areas around it too are growing. Idt it will drop.

Penn made some extremely questionable short-term decisions in an effort to obtain coveted T6 status. Those decisions will come at a long-term cost. Sure, Penn administrators are breaking out the champagne now because they've bested YLS in the ATL rankings. But the price will be paid by those in the class of 2018 and beyond, who will enter the workforce as graduates of a school that is jostling with the likes of Michigan and Northwestern just to stay in the T12. It's sad, really.

Like what? give me some proof. I suspect sarcasm but I can't tell.

[HalfStudent]

Though I recognize the flaw in the rankings, is there nonetheless more credence lent to the idea of penn being much closer to the t6 then apart from it?

It's quite the opposite: most insiders have Penn pegged as a lower T14 school by 2020.

Why is that? Lower lsat scores? Philly big law pays well and is growing. the geographical areas around it too are growing. Idt it will drop.

Penn made some extremely questionable short-term decisions in an effort to obtain coveted T6 status. Those decisions will come at a long-term cost. Sure, Penn administrators are breaking out the champagne now because they've bested YLS in the ATL rankings. But the price will be paid by those in the class of 2018 and beyond, who will enter the workforce as graduates of a school that is jostling with the likes of Michigan and Northwestern just to stay in the T12. It's sad, really.

Like what? give me some proof. I suspect sarcasm but I can't tell.

YEah it's obviously a joke.

[LA Spring]

In comparing ATL to USNWR, I’m leaning toward ATL’s top ten with one notable exception. UVA (with their SFJ employment ploy) should definitely be ranked below Columbia-Duke-Cornell-NYU. Other than that, their top ten looks fine.

Yeah, it looks great. I mean, we all know that if your choices are Penn and YLS at equal cost, the correct answer is Penn.

True. It is, especially if you're looking for employment. But if you're out to impress your Uber driver, Yale might be the way to go.

[rpupkin]

In comparing ATL to USNWR, I’m leaning toward ATL’s top ten with one notable exception. UVA (with their SFJ employment ploy) should definitely be ranked below Columbia-Duke-Cornell-NYU. Other than that, their top ten looks fine.

Yeah, it looks great. I mean, we all know that if your choices are Penn and YLS at equal cost, the correct answer is Penn.

True. It is, especially if you're looking for employment. But if you're out to impress your Uber driver, Yale might be the way to go.

With posts like this one, TLS has become impossible to satirize. Are folks really so dumb that they don't know why Penn (or Cornell or Fordham or whatever) has "better" employment stats than YLS? Do people actually think that going to Penn gives them a better chance at legal employment than YLS?

[smaug]

Are folks really so dumb

Yes.

[jbagelboy]

No one cares

[03152016]

lol gulc trolling

[03152016]

in other news atl has resurrected ccnb

[Robb]

There is a lot to criticize about Brian Leiter, but he has right what every other ranking, including ATL, has wrong: recognition that a single ranking will not apply to every prospective law student.

People crave the single rankings because they're so much simpler. But what they offer in simplicity they pay for in depth.

[NorCalLaw]

Yale suffers by this metric due to the number of its students that become professors and obtain other non-traditional but sought-after employment. Otherwise, the T14 looks pretty solid.

Giving SCOTUS clerks 7.5% weight is still silly. Why not 5% circuit court clerks and 2.5% SCOTUS clerks or something less swingy and dumb?

GULC deserves to get shafted.

USC falling outside the top 50 is equal parts absurd and hilarious.

Overall, for its flaws, it's clearly superior to the US News rankings.

Edit: And equally useless outside the top 20 or so schools.

[RunnerRunner]

Overall, for its flaws, it's clearly superior to the US News rankings.

Idk about that. I have trouble respecting a ranking that tells me to go to Cornell over NYU/Berkeley...

[RSN]

Wait a minute is there actually an ad for debt refinancing in the middle of the "methodology"



I think that tells you all you need to know about the worth and credibility of ATL on this