When do the law school rankings come out? Forum

[haus]

No employer in the history of legal employment has ever looked at USNWR.

Oh come on now. I am sure some employer has reviewed the rankings for humor value.

[lakers180]

im sure at the very least most people look up their alma mater to see how it ranks, so im sure they've see in
people love knowing how good they are

[dwil770]

Dude, employers aren't carrying printouts of USNWR into interviews. They hire kids they like from schools they're familiar with. That's it.

So do you think us news needs to focus more on the reputation/prestige then? Since that is what judges/employers have in mind, not last years rankings

[twenty 8]

My general assumption, employers believe smarter students (LSAT/GPA) are recruited by elite schools, thus those are the candidates big firms pursue. However, due to ridiculously high tuition costs I elected to forgo sticker at higher ranked schools (in my case, Duke) for a full scholarship at a much less prestigious school near home.

Since I only had one big firm callback I had to make it count. During the callback I stated that I had been invited to attend Duke but I chose a less costly option. The employer called it prudent.

During the two weeks I had to wait for a decision I thought that having no debt might be detrimental (since employers might feel the pressure for an associate to pay off debt could be motivational)… but they didn’t hold it against me. Point ... I cannot say the USNWR ratings are irrelevant, given that I used a highly ranked USNWR school to help

[Hitchensian]

Pond scum > USNWR rankings

[woosah]

Consulting the USNWR is useful if you agree that their methodology is representative of how you measure the worth of a law school. Instead of having to research those factors independently, you can simply rely on the work that USNWR has done.

To say that the USNWR is bad, it seems to me that you'd have to give reasons to believe that their methodology is bad. That is, you'd have to point to which of their categories is overvalued or undervalued.

So which one(s) is it?

[Cicero76]

I think USNWR rankings are awesome. I will continue to believe so until they rank Harvard #1

[A. Nony Mouse]

Consulting the USNWR is useful if you agree that their methodology is representative of how you measure the worth of a law school. Instead of having to research those factors independently, you can simply rely on the work that USNWR has done.

To say that the USNWR is bad, it seems to me that you'd have to give reasons to believe that their methodology is bad. That is, you'd have to point to which of their categories is overvalued or undervalued.

So which one(s) is it?

Reputation (or peer assessment score), since it's literally just asking profs/deans/judges/lawyers what they think of a school without any concern about what the respondents do/don't know about the full range of law schools (plus the representativeness of the sample is highly suspect. 9% of judges/lawyers respond). Besides, it becomes an echo-chamber.

Selectivity - because schools game this by giving out fee waivers and encouraging students to apply who have no realistic shot at acceptance, and they also game the numbers by buying high LSATs with low GPAs and vice versa.

I'm also not convinced that faculty resources and things like number of books in the library are pertinent, although that constitutes a pretty small percentage of the ranking.

And the rankings don't take into consideration cost.

The rankings aren't quite as terrible now that they take job placement into account to some extent (but this is a recent development, they didn't use to).

The biggest problem I have with the rankings is not what they do at the top (the T14 schools are all great, that's fine), it's just that they encourage prospective students to obsess about stupid things. Deciding where to attend school depends a great deal on individual circumstances - where you want to practice, what you want to do, and how you're going to pay for it. The rankings encourage someone who wants to work in Texas to consider U of MN over SMU or U of H because MN is higher ranked, but going to MN if you want to work in Texas isn't a good choice for most people.

tl;dr - in most cases there isn't an objective "best" school that can be plucked off a list without considering your own personal circumstances. Maybe HYS, but for most people considering law school that's not really relevant.

[ms9]

Here is another way of looking at it.

Let's say UVA went from being ranked 7th to 101 on Tuesday, because Morse added a category "gummy bears sold in student lounge per volume of law school dean's cerebrum." I would all but promise that some firms would stop recruiting at UVA the next OCI swing because the Cravath's of the world want to say to their clients, "we only hire from top 10 schools."

I'll give one of many examples. I met with the CIA to hire students at my school. The first thing the woman from the CIA (with the made up last name) said to me was "since 9/11 we have only recruited at top 10 schools" -- and then she, with absolute precision, ranted off those schools.

I do not mean to overemphasize rankings. They are flawed, way overrated, etc. But people are highly drawn to them, including generally rational-minded adults. So they have a considerable impact on behavior, including (for some groups) employment behavior.

[Dafaq]

That is so true and so simple to comprehend. Why do some have a difficult time understanding the obvious?

[Tiago Splitter]

That is so true and so simple to comprehend. Why do some have a difficult time understanding the obvious?

Because it's absurd to believe that an employer would literally stop recruiting at a place that went from 10th to 11th in the rankings. Go check out where the "Cravath's of the world" actually hire from.

ETA: The places that only hire from the top schools were only hiring from the top schools long before USNews rankings came into existence.

[A. Nony Mouse]

That is so true and so simple to comprehend. Why do some have a difficult time understanding the obvious?

Because while it holds true for some employers, it doesn't hold true for all employers. It's no coincidence that Cravath and the CIA are at the absolute top of the employer prestige hierarchy.

[patogordo]

if a school that the CIA wanted to hire from dropped from 10 to 15 the CIA would just start saying "since 9/11 we've only recruited from schools in the top 15"

[ms9]

That is so true and so simple to comprehend. Why do some have a difficult time understanding the obvious?

Because while it holds true for some employers, it doesn't hold true for all employers. It's no coincidence that Cravath and the CIA are at the absolute top of the employer prestige hierarchy.

Yep, I very much agree the vast majority of employers don't care much about rankings, although individuals at those firms probably do to various degrees. But there is a subset of employers that do care. Or purport to for public pretenses, which also means they do.

[Dafaq]

Could I correctly assume that a hundred or so top firms do care but after a certain level it’s mostly moot? At the LS level when does OCI activity truly thin out (assuming USNWR plays a significant role in OCI firm interest). Are we saying that LS #30 is somewhat good-to-go, but LS 50, not so much?

[californiauser]

On an ATL job posting:

Description:
Prestigious law firm has a need for a Senior Banking Associate with 7-10 years of experience at a large law firm representing borrowers/lenders in a broad variety of financings, loans, and LBOs. Candidates must have substantial experience drafting, reviewing and negotiating a broad variety of loan documents including credit and security agreements. The successful candidate will have a JD from a Top 20 law school and a 3.5+ gpa. Please submit resume/transcript to be considered. [Your resume will never be submitted anywhere without your authorization.]

I can't imagine that this indicates that this firm would refuse to interview a candidate from a now ranked 21st school who otherwise meets all other criteria. This does imply that firms are relatively aware of the current rankings, though.

[rpupkin]

Here is another way of looking at it.

Let's say UVA went from being ranked 7th to 101 on Tuesday, because Morse added a category "gummy bears sold in student lounge per volume of law school dean's cerebrum." I would all but promise that some firms would stop recruiting at UVA the next OCI swing because the Cravath's of the world want to say to their clients, "we only hire from top 10 schools."

I, too, have heard lawyers say things like "we prefer to hire from top 10 schools." But I don't share Mr. Spivey's assumption that those lawyers are referring to the law school rankings in the US News and World Report. I think those lawyers are referring to the widely shared view of what the legal community has long thought were the top 10 law schools.

Here are the results of the Blau-Margulies Reputational Rankings, which surveyed 104 law school deans. This is from 1974:

1. Harvard Law School
2. Yale Law School
3. University of Michigan Law School
4. Columbia Law School
5. University of Chicago Law School
6. Stanford Law School
7. University of California, Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law
8. New York University School of Law
9. university of pennsylvania law school
10. University of Virginia School of Law


It's the same 10 schools that make up the current USNWR top 10. This is from 40 years ago, and nearly 20 years before USNWR started regularly ranking the law schools.

So, no, I do not agree that it would matter to any employer—even a super-selective employer—if UVA went from 7 to 101 in the rankings. Those employers would still think of UVA as a "top 10" school even if some magazine's arbitrary ranking system had concluded otherwise.

[Paul Campos]

Here is another way of looking at it.

Let's say UVA went from being ranked 7th to 101 on Tuesday, because Morse added a category "gummy bears sold in student lounge per volume of law school dean's cerebrum." I would all but promise that some firms would stop recruiting at UVA the next OCI swing because the Cravath's of the world want to say to their clients, "we only hire from top 10 schools."

I, too, have heard lawyers say things like "we prefer to hire from top 10 schools." But I don't share Mr. Spivey's assumption that those lawyers are referring to the law school rankings in the US News and World Report. I think those lawyers are referring to the widely shared view of what the legal community has long thought were the top 10 law schools.

Here are the results of the Blau-Margulies Reputational Rankings, which surveyed 104 law school deans. This is from 1974:

1. Harvard Law School
2. Yale Law School
3. University of Michigan Law School
4. Columbia Law School
5. University of Chicago Law School
6. Stanford Law School
7. University of California, Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law
8. New York University School of Law
9. University of Pennsylvania Law School
10. University of Virginia School of Law


It's the same 10 schools that make up the current USNWR top 10. This is from 40 years ago, and nearly 20 years before USNWR started regularly ranking the law schools.

So, no, I do not agree that it would matter to any employer—even a super-selective employer—if UVA went from 7 to 101 in the rankings. Those employers would still think of UVA as a "top 10" school even if some magazine's arbitrary ranking system had concluded otherwise.

It's nice to see the roughly $500 billion NYU Law School has spent in the last 40 years to improve its reputation have produced such spectacular results. (BTW the school's tuition has more than quadrupled in real terms over that stretch).

Obviously the claim that no employer ever looks at rankings is hyperbole. But the rankings merely reflect reputation in an incredibly heirarachical and status-obsessed field, which as several people ITT have pointed out makes both reputation and rankings extremely sticky among elite schools, which is the only place that rankings actually count for anything.

[hayman]

http://www.wlrk.com/summerassociates/

[Hitchensian]

http://www.wlrk.com/summerassociates/

Notice that they skip over UVA (7th) to Berkeley (9th) and omit Michigan (also 9th). Interesting.

[North]

http://www.wlrk.com/summerassociates/

Notice that they skip over UVA (7th) to Berkeley (9th) and omit Michigan (also 9th). Interesting.

Watchell obviously cancelled its USNWR subscription after 2009 and just pulls that old edition off the firm waiting room coffee table every year to make its hiring decisions. There's absolutely no other way to explain it.

[A. Nony Mouse]

http://www.wlrk.com/summerassociates/

Just because that's where the firm does OCI doesn't mean those are the only schools that the firm hires from, though. (I'm not saying Wachtell's going to dip very low, but it's not an exclusive list of hires, just locations where they do formal OCI.)

[xRON MEXiCOx]

Why doesn't everyone get hyped about the new vault rankings? Is there a contest for that that I am not seeing.

[North]

Why doesn't everyone get hyped about the new vault rankings? Is there a contest for that that I am not seeing.

I can only make so much pepper sauce

[rpupkin]

Why doesn't everyone get hyped about the new vault rankings? Is there a contest for that that I am not seeing.

Probably because the Vault rankings are even more meaningless than the USNWR law school rankings. The Vault rankings are like a speciality ranking for corporate practices in NYC.