Top Law Schools

Hey all,

Sorry if this topic has already been done, or is in the wrong place (couldn't find a subforum where it seemed to fit better).

I was talking with a few non ls friends recently and was surprised by some of the premonitions they had regarding the quality of different schools (very little relation to actual rankings), which sparked my curiosity enough to crowdsource this question.

Which law schools have the most lay prestige out of the top echelon? Does this vary much by region? Which schools have the biggest gap between ratings and lay reputation?

Not saying lay prestige is an important thing to consider when deciding, just legitimately curious about this.

I would say that Chicago is under valued by the lay population

Not sure if it would be proper to call it 'lay prestige' but BYU has great pull regardless of its rank in the right places.

Georgetown has a lot of lay prestige where I'm from (Northeast)

Maybe I'm bias because of my location, but I feel like Georgetown, Cornell, Vanderbilt, WashU, William and Mary would all be overrated by laymen standards, while UChicago and NYU would be underrated by laymen standards

I think being in the region the school is in is huge in getting recognition from the average person, even for schools that are generally well-regarded (I.e. t14).

Also, duke really has cache bc of the bball team.

Also also, Harvard really is in a league of its own here

I find Lay Prestige correlates highly to undergraduate prestige. Way more people know about and have attended undergrad institutions and thus know prestige of a school solely on that. Say northwestern vs. michigan. Northwestern has higher lay prestige as an obvious nerd institution, whereas Michigan is a football school

Probably schools that have big names for undergrad have the most lay prestige. So not NYU for example. But really, any lawyer has a decent amount of lay prestige. Which is sad really.

WhiteHouse wrote:Maybe I'm bias because of my location, but I feel like Georgetown, Cornell, Vanderbilt, WashU, William and Mary would all be overrated by laymen standards, while UChicago and NYU would be underrated by laymen standards

Nobody knows WashU on the east coast. But again because of undergrad prestige I think NYU is seriously underrated as a law school (in New York), but UChicago is only underrated by those who don't know great schools. Before I started looking at law schools if you told me you went to Chicago I would still have a lot of respect, not so much for NYU

pppp wrote:

WhiteHouse wrote:Maybe I'm bias because of my location, but I feel like Georgetown, Cornell, Vanderbilt, WashU, William and Mary would all be overrated by laymen standards, while UChicago and NYU would be underrated by laymen standards

Nobody knows WashU on the east coast. But again because of undergrad prestige I think NYU is seriously underrated as a law school (in New York), but UChicago is only underrated by those who don't know great schools. Before I started looking at law schools if you told me you went to Chicago I would still have a lot of respect, not so much for NYU

Depends on where you are I guess. Where I am from, if you told literally anyone that you went to University of Chicago, they would think you meant a state school in Illinois, no diff than U Illinois. But then again, I come from a relatively blue collar town, so anything aside from the Ivy schools and MIT they aren't going to know about.

There's a ton of info on this if you search in the forums, but here's my 2 cents:

1. Harvard
2. Yale, Stanford, Columbia
3. Georgetown, Cornell
4. Duke (if you're in the South or East Coast), Berkeley (West Coast)
5. U Penn, Chicago
6. Northwestern
7. UVA, Michigan, NYU

dumb fucking thread.

ticklemesilly wrote:There's a ton of info on this if you search in the forums, but here's my 2 cents:

1. Harvard
2. Yale, Stanford, Columbia
3. Georgetown, Cornell
4. Duke (if you're in the South or East Coast), Berkeley (West Coast)
5. U Penn, Chicago
6. Northwestern
7. UVA, Michigan, NYU

I'd at least put Duke up with Georgetown/Cornell.

Missing Princeton Law and Brown University Law Center.

This thread has been made numerous times, but I'll bite. As another poster previously mentioned, lay prestige does not only account for the law school, but all of the institutions' schools (undergrad, business, law, medical, dental, etc).
My rankings (I'm from the Northeast, fwiw)
1. Harvard
2. Yale and Stanford
3. Columbia and Chicago
4. Duke and Penn
5. Northwestern
6. Cornell
7. Georgetown and Berkeley

non-prestigious T14 law schools: Michigan, NYU and UVA

pppp wrote:

WhiteHouse wrote:Maybe I'm bias because of my location, but I feel like Georgetown, Cornell, Vanderbilt, WashU, William and Mary would all be overrated by laymen standards, while UChicago and NYU would be underrated by laymen standards

Nobody knows WashU on the east coast. But again because of undergrad prestige I think NYU is seriously underrated as a law school (in New York), but UChicago is only underrated by those who don't know great schools. Before I started looking at law schools if you told me you went to Chicago I would still have a lot of respect, not so much for NYU

How is NYU underrated when it's undergrad school is not even in the top 30? Just about all of Chicago's schools are top 5. There's no comparison. Chicago is one of the most elite schools in the country and NYU is not. NYU is a "good" school, but it's not in the elite category.

a93212 wrote:This thread has been made numerous times, but I'll bite. As another poster previously mentioned, lay prestige does not only account for the law school, but all of the institutions' schools (undergrad, business, law, medical, dental, etc).
My rankings (I'm from the Northeast, fwiw)
1. Harvard
2. Yale and Stanford
3. Columbia and Chicago
4. Duke and Penn
5. Northwestern
6. Cornell
7. Georgetown and Berkeley

non-prestigious T14 law schools: Michigan, NYU and UVA

I don't think Berkeley has any more prestige than Michigan/UVA.

pancakes3 wrote:dumb fucking thread.

+1000

These are the dumbest of threads. This topic has been hashed to death over the past 10 years. Lay prestige is meaningless for your future--if you want lay prestige, go to an elite college or prep school.

The more or less definitive ranking of lay prestige is established by BusinessInsider: http://uk.businessinsider.com/law-schoo ... ?r=US&IR=T.

Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, Duke, Berkeley, Georgetown, Cornell, Chicago, NYU. Ivies, Duke, and Georgetown overrated, NYU and Chi underrated.

It's not an inherently dumb thread as the stated purpose is not for finding out future legal employment success.

a93212 wrote:
non-prestigious T14 law schools: Michigan, NYU and UVA

I'm dating myself big time, but Theo Huxtable went to NYU, so it was always a little prestigious in my mind.

fliptrip wrote:

a93212 wrote:
non-prestigious T14 law schools: Michigan, NYU and UVA

I'm dating myself big time, but Theo Huxtable went to NYU, so it was always a little prestigious in my mind.

Your prof pic:
Im down w it.

Alive97 wrote:It's not an inherently dumb thread as the stated purpose is not for finding out future legal employment success.

The stated purpose is dumb.

jbagelboy wrote:

Alive97 wrote:It's not an inherently dumb thread as the stated purpose is not for finding out future legal employment success.

The stated purpose is dumb.

And I agree with you, in the parlance of our times.