The Future elitist law schools? Forum

[d34d9823]

Not sure if S belongs on the list with state schools, but I see the point of the overall question. I only question why S is on the list because B and presumbably UCLA are going to have skyrocketing tuition over the next 5 years (at least) while the California state budget returns to balance. Also, it would seem easier for California to correct itself than Michigan, given the nature of their state economies.

Pretty sure Michigan should be looked at as a private school in this context. I believe ~3% of their funding comes from the state.

[jdstl]

I think wustl may be able to push up and get solidly entrenched around 16, 15, 14, or so. Obviously, like everyone else, I'm making a guess, but my reasons...

1. Huge (and rapidly growing) endowment that they're spending wildly to buy good students. They haven't hit the full benefit of their epic scholly spending yet: once some of these former grads start becoming judges/partners/etc. their hiring power should shoot up.

2. Most of their improvement has come really recently so (see above) their new found prestige hasn't fully infiltrated the legal community yet. In other words, the gains they've made aren't yet fully reflected in their rankings.

3. I think LS prestige tends to broadly move in concert with undergrad/other grad. program prestige, and WashU has done really well in those areas recently. It's gone from a decent Midwestern back up school to a legit top 10 undergrad in the past 15 years. Med school is elite too. These kind of things, I think, are likely to build a critical mass of cultural prestige that will help out in the long term.

Disclaimer: Not from WashU, am from St. Louis.

[sumus romani]

Ugh, I hate to get involved in a stupid thread like this. That said, and I've said this before, if the state of Michigan continues on its path towards failure, I don't see how it's possible that UM will maintain its vaunted status as a solid T10.

::UM trolls pounce:: yes, I know UM is virtually independent of the state as it relates to its funding. and, yes, I know that it places virtually all of its grads outside of Michigan. Even still, I think there will be a prestige hit to the school so long as it operates in a state that bears a disproportionate brunt of the recession. Hiring partners in Miami have alluded to such a possibility and I think it just makes sense intuitively.

Does this mean UM will fall off a cliff? no, I don't think that's fair. I do think, however, that if other peer schools situated in comparatively healthier industrial areas could leapfrog them.

Interesting. Do you make the same assertions about Stanford, Berkeley, and UCLA?

Please. Michigan's financial apocalypse isn't even remotely analogous to California's troubles.

For the past two years, Michigan's entire state budget has been less than California's budget deficit. California basically cannot raise taxes, given its current laws, so has to radically cut spending. Michigan has been bleeding so long that the recession hasn't made it much worse. So long as Detroit is bailed out, Michigan's decline will contintue slowly, but won't be a crisis of the California sort.

Edit: I meant "the state of Michigan's decline" and not the law school in that last sentence.

[holydonkey]

yes, I know UM is virtually independent of the state as it relates to its funding. and, yes, I know that it places virtually all of its grads outside of Michigan.

Great points!

Even still, I think there will be a prestige hit to the school so long as it operates in a state that bears a disproportionate brunt of the recession.

Logic fail. I hear princeton undergrad is an absolute ttt because new jersey's economy is in the crapper right now. Better go to university of north dakota since the economy is strong there.

[MJMD]

Ugh, I hate to get involved in a stupid thread like this. That said, and I've said this before, if the state of Michigan continues on its path towards failure, I don't see how it's possible that UM will maintain its vaunted status as a solid T10.

::UM trolls pounce:: yes, I know UM is virtually independent of the state as it relates to its funding. and, yes, I know that it places virtually all of its grads outside of Michigan. Even still, I think there will be a prestige hit to the school so long as it operates in a state that bears a disproportionate brunt of the recession. Hiring partners in Miami have alluded to such a possibility and I think it just makes sense intuitively.

Does this mean UM will fall off a cliff? no, I don't think that's fair. I do think, however, that if other peer schools situated in comparatively healthier industrial areas could leapfrog them.

UM is basically all Michigan has going for it right now. The state has acknowledged this fact, and is now pursuing a misguided effort to capitalize off of it by establishing a "University Research Corridor" with MSU and (shudder) Wayne State. That cannot end well. I hope that UM, if it is as independent as it's supposed to be, just tells the politicians to screw off and keeps on keeping on: a prestigious and financially solvent institution can survive in a failed state.

Again, to use a Canadian example, McGill University has remained as an extremely prestigious institution despite being located in Montreal, a city that has been turned into a crumbling economic basket-case by Quebec nationalism; and it has survived the wrath of successive nationalist provincial governments that have been extremely hostile to having an Anglo institution in their backyard, and which have insisted on having Quebec francophones pay next-to-nothing for higher education. It’s not what it once was, to be sure, but it’s still the only Canadian law school most of you Americans have ever heard of! So I think that if Michigan plays its cards right it can remain in the T14 (albeit with a lower rank).

[Iconoclast]

Princeton Law will be T6 within a decade.

[DanInALionsDen]

Ugh, I hate to get involved in a stupid thread like this. That said, and I've said this before, if the state of Michigan continues on its path towards failure, I don't see how it's possible that UM will maintain its vaunted status as a solid T10.

::UM trolls pounce:: yes, I know UM is virtually independent of the state as it relates to its funding. and, yes, I know that it places virtually all of its grads outside of Michigan. Even still, I think there will be a prestige hit to the school so long as it operates in a state that bears a disproportionate brunt of the recession. Hiring partners in Miami have alluded to such a possibility and I think it just makes sense intuitively.

Does this mean UM will fall off a cliff? no, I don't think that's fair. I do think, however, that if other peer schools situated in comparatively healthier industrial areas could leapfrog them.

Interesting. Do you make the same assertions about Stanford, Berkeley, and UCLA?

Please. Michigan's financial apocalypse isn't even remotely analogous to California's troubles.

That's a lot of bullshit.

[DanInALionsDen]

Not sure if S belongs on the list with state schools, but I see the point of the overall question. I only question why S is on the list because B and presumbably UCLA are going to have skyrocketing tuition over the next 5 years (at least) while the California state budget returns to balance. Also, it would seem easier for California to correct itself than Michigan, given the nature of their state economies.

Pretty sure Michigan should be looked at as a private school in this context. I believe ~3% of their funding comes from the state.

Yeah, my logic followed what d34dluk3 said.

[holydonkey]

Also, not saying Michigan's economy is anywhere near [strike]good[/strike]ok, but it's getting a little better...

Some statistics on Michigan's economy:

_Comerica Bank's Michigan Economic Activity Index was at 84 in March, up 17 percent from the same point a year ago.

_State unemployment was 14 percent in April, down from 14.5 percent in December. Unemployment is expected to drop to an annual rate of 13.3 percent in 2011.

_University of Michigan economists expect auto sales to increase to 11.6 million this year from 10.3 million last year, with sales by the Detroit Three hitting 5.1 million, compared to 4.5 million last year. They expect sales to increase to 12.9 million in 2011.

_Building permits for single-family homes in March were up 93 percent compared to a year ago and that number is expected to continue rising, according to the Michigan Association of Home Builders.

_Personal income is expected to grow by 1.9 percent in 2010 and 2.2 percent in 2011 after falling 3 percent in 2009, according to University of Michigan economists.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100601/ap_ ... g_glance_1

[Stringer Bell]

For the past two years, Michigan's entire state budget has been less than California's budget deficit. California basically cannot raise taxes, given its current laws, so has to radically cut spending. Michigan has been bleeding so long that the recession hasn't made it much worse. So long as Detroit is bailed out, Michigan's decline will contintue slowly, but won't be a crisis of the California sort.

Credited. California is an amazing state, but their political climate over the last 30 years has left them in an extraordinarily bad position and is going to be extremely difficult to bounce back from.

[bk1]

For the past two years, Michigan's entire state budget has been less than California's budget deficit. California basically cannot raise taxes, given its current laws, so has to radically cut spending. Michigan has been bleeding so long that the recession hasn't made it much worse. So long as Detroit is bailed out, Michigan's decline will contintue slowly, but won't be a crisis of the California sort.

Credited. California is an amazing state, but their political climate over the last 30 years has left them in an extraordinarily bad position and is going to be extremely difficult to bounce back from.

Direct democracy in action.

[Philo38]

Vandy will reach Gulc, Cornell levels.

Agreed...

+1, begrudgingly

I think I may turn into the OperaSoprano of GULC, but... I think people are making a lot out of one good placement year, and don't take into account that Vandy has a very small class, which makes percentages gains (and losses) in hiring seem more volatile than they are numerically. People on here have also said that Stanford will never eclipse YH, if only because S is in CA and YH are in the Northeast. I think the same logic holds for Vandy. It's in Tennessee, a state with a reputable country/rock music background, but which I doubt will ever be associated with legal intellectualism...sorry TN.
We'll see. It's funny how everyone thought Texas would be the one to overtake Georgetown, until Vandy pulled surprising placement numbers this year.

What? Why does the state's economic base in the music industry hold it back? I mean, I guess I don't understand the general point of this statement in the first place, Vanderbilt will be the one with the reputation not the state; I don't ever hear people walking around talking about how Connecticut is such a legally intellectual state.

Granted, the location of a school can matter in terms of its proximity to a desireable place to live/legal market, but I don't think law schools improve or don't improve based on abstract associations of the state they are located in with legal intellectualism.

[sumus romani]

holydonkey, the data in your link nothwithstanding, the state of Michigan is going to continue to decline for the next few decades. First, it's high-school graduation population peaked around 3-4 years ago--it is a slowly shrinking, rapidly aging (sp?) state. Second, a huge number of its citizens are just not in a position to switch to tech jobs. Third, Michigan has tried all sorts of things, from dot.coms to film making to green energy, and none of these are by and large helping.

Every few months for a decade now articles of the sort you mention run in some publication or website. I am not suggesting that the state decline will result in the law school decline, but the state is going to hurt badly for years to come.

[DanInALionsDen]

I think I may turn into the OperaSoprano of GULC, but... I think people are making a lot out of one good placement year, and don't take into account that Vandy has a very small class, which makes percentages gains (and losses) in hiring seem more volatile than they are numerically. People on here have also said that Stanford will never eclipse YH, if only because S is in CA and YH are in the Northeast. I think the same logic holds for Vandy. It's in Tennessee, a state with a reputable country/rock music background, but which I doubt will ever be associated with legal intellectualism...sorry TN.
We'll see. It's funny how everyone thought Texas would be the one to overtake Georgetown, until Vandy pulled surprising placement numbers this year.

What? Why does the state's economic base in the music industry hold it back? I mean, I guess I don't understand the general point of this statement in the first place, Vanderbilt will be the one with the reputation not the state; I don't ever hear people walking around talking about how Connecticut is such a legally intellectual state.

Granted, the location of a school can matter in terms of its proximity to a desireable place to live/legal market, but I don't think law schools improve or don't improve based on abstract associations of the state they are located in with legal intellectualism.

First: reading comprehension fail: I didn't say one reputation caused, prevented, or was in any way related to the other.

Second: 'twas a joke.

[miamiman]

Logic fail. I hear princeton undergrad is an absolute ttt because new jersey's economy is in the crapper right now. Better go to university of north dakota since the economy is strong there.

obvious michigan trolls are obvious? michigan is not princeton.

For the past two years, Michigan's entire state budget has been less than California's budget deficit. California basically cannot raise taxes, given its current laws, so has to radically cut spending. Michigan has been bleeding so long that the recession hasn't made it much worse. So long as Detroit is bailed out, Michigan's decline will contintue slowly, but won't be a crisis of the California sort.

Two things and then I'll rest because Michigan trolling knows no limits. 1) California has been in financial arrears before and has overcome them. That's partly due to the fact that California has an economy larger than France (8th largest globally IIRC?) and, tying into 2), one that is diversified and yet still the undisputed leader in knowledge-based industry. If anyone is positioned to rebound at a rate outpacing the overall economy, it's California. Michigan has nothing at this point. They have a reinvestment plan based upon allocation into the services sector and engineering, an economy still leveraged heavily in favor of a dead domestic auto industry, Jeff Daniels from Dumb and Dumber pitching the state on CNBC, and the University of Michigan.

I'm putting my money on California.

[Philo38]

I think I may turn into the OperaSoprano of GULC, but... I think people are making a lot out of one good placement year, and don't take into account that Vandy has a very small class, which makes percentages gains (and losses) in hiring seem more volatile than they are numerically. People on here have also said that Stanford will never eclipse YH, if only because S is in CA and YH are in the Northeast. I think the same logic holds for Vandy. It's in Tennessee, a state with a reputable country/rock music background, but which I doubt will ever be associated with legal intellectualism...sorry TN.
We'll see. It's funny how everyone thought Texas would be the one to overtake Georgetown, until Vandy pulled surprising placement numbers this year.

What? Why does the state's economic base in the music industry hold it back? I mean, I guess I don't understand the general point of this statement in the first place, Vanderbilt will be the one with the reputation not the state; I don't ever hear people walking around talking about how Connecticut is such a legally intellectual state.

Granted, the location of a school can matter in terms of its proximity to a desireable place to live/legal market, but I don't think law schools improve or don't improve based on abstract associations of the state they are located in with legal intellectualism.

First: reading comprehension fail: I didn't say one reputation caused, prevented, or was in any way related to the other.

Second: 'twas a joke.

Still, lame. Sorry, I always have to defend Nashville against people who wrongfully brand us as a bunch of uneducated racist hicks. It is a fairly liberal, intellectual city. I'm a bit sensitive . . .

[DanInALionsDen]

I think I may turn into the OperaSoprano of GULC, but... I think people are making a lot out of one good placement year, and don't take into account that Vandy has a very small class, which makes percentages gains (and losses) in hiring seem more volatile than they are numerically. People on here have also said that Stanford will never eclipse YH, if only because S is in CA and YH are in the Northeast. I think the same logic holds for Vandy. It's in Tennessee, a state with a reputable country/rock music background, but which I doubt will ever be associated with legal intellectualism...sorry TN.
We'll see. It's funny how everyone thought Texas would be the one to overtake Georgetown, until Vandy pulled surprising placement numbers this year.

What? Why does the state's economic base in the music industry hold it back? I mean, I guess I don't understand the general point of this statement in the first place, Vanderbilt will be the one with the reputation not the state; I don't ever hear people walking around talking about how Connecticut is such a legally intellectual state.

Granted, the location of a school can matter in terms of its proximity to a desireable place to live/legal market, but I don't think law schools improve or don't improve based on abstract associations of the state they are located in with legal intellectualism.

First: reading comprehension fail: I didn't say one reputation caused, prevented, or was in any way related to the other.

Second: 'twas a joke.

Still, lame. Sorry, I always have to defend Nashville against people who wrongfully brand us as a bunch of uneducated racist hicks. It is a fairly liberal, intellectual city. I'm a bit sensitive . . .

Oh wah. I live in New Jersey. The most bashed state in the union. Toughen up.

[hoopsguy6]

The one thing that California has over Michigan is the throngs of people willing to pay obscenely high taxes just to live there.

[bk1]

The one thing that California has over Michigan is the throngs of people willing to pay obscenely high taxes just to live there.

And yet our taxes aren't high enough...

[Philo38]

Oh wah. I live in New Jersey. The most bashed state in the union. Toughen up.

I thought that was tough . . . I mean, I was defensive. This isn't Jersey, its not like I can just prison-shank you for disrespecting me.

[sdv]

What? Why does the state's economic base in the music industry hold it back? I mean, I guess I don't understand the general point of this statement in the first place, Vanderbilt will be the one with the reputation not the state; I don't ever hear people walking around talking about how Connecticut is such a legally intellectual state.

Granted, the location of a school can matter in terms of its proximity to a desireable place to live/legal market, but I don't think law schools improve or don't improve based on abstract associations of the state they are located in with legal intellectualism.

This. It doesn't come off as a joke when attacking TN comes in your rhetoric as a reason Vanderbilt won't move up.

I think the larger point, though, is that it makes no difference where any of these schools are located. The point of being one of the national elite is that graduates should be able to place anywhere in the country. Hiring lawyers now and 10 years from now will look at Vandy, Georgetown, Michigan, etc and say "oh, that's a good school" and I doubt they'll read much more into that unless they have a personal connection with the school, for better or worse. A law school MIGHT suffer if the region where its located experiences tough economic times, if only because local firms will always make up much of OCI and any school's reputation will always be strongest in its home region (except Emory and perhaps some other strange cases like that), but the schools being discussed must be able to transcend their home region in order to qualify for discussion.

Beyond Vandy, though, any other school that wants to break upwards is going to have to newly demonstrate nationwide placement ability, since for schools like WUSTL and Emory to "move up" as regional schools they'll have to displace schools that place nationally - no easy task.

[Philo38]

What? Why does the state's economic base in the music industry hold it back? I mean, I guess I don't understand the general point of this statement in the first place, Vanderbilt will be the one with the reputation not the state; I don't ever hear people walking around talking about how Connecticut is such a legally intellectual state.

Granted, the location of a school can matter in terms of its proximity to a desireable place to live/legal market, but I don't think law schools improve or don't improve based on abstract associations of the state they are located in with legal intellectualism.

This. It doesn't come off as a joke when attacking TN comes in your rhetoric as a reason Vanderbilt won't move up.
I think the larger point, though, is that it makes no difference where any of these schools are located. The point of being one of the national elite is that graduates should be able to place anywhere in the country. Hiring lawyers now and 10 years from now will look at Vandy, Georgetown, Michigan, etc and say "oh, that's a good school" and I doubt they'll read much more into that unless they have a personal connection with the school, for better or worse. A law school MIGHT suffer if the region where its located experiences tough economic times, if only because local firms will always make up much of OCI and any school's reputation will always be strongest in its home region (except Emory and perhaps some other strange cases like that), but the schools being discussed must be able to transcend their home region in order to qualify for discussion.

Beyond Vandy, though, any other school that wants to break upwards is going to have to newly demonstrate nationwide placement ability, since for schools like WUSTL and Emory to "move up" as regional schools they'll have to displace schools that place nationally - no easy task.

+1

[d34d9823]

I'll rest because Michigan trolling knows no limits.

Because branding us all as Michigan trolls is easier than admitting your argument makes no sense?

[miamiman]

I'll rest because Michigan trolling knows no limits.

Because branding us all as Michigan trolls is easier than admitting your argument makes no sense?

Please. It's patently absurd to compare the hardships of Michigan and California. Michigan was a state almost entirely supported by an industry that is, for all intents and purposes, dead. Maybe Ford makes it out of this alive. Maybe.

California's economy is much more diversified and orders of magnitude larger. Their expenditures exceed their tax revenue? Fine, austerity measure the shit out of the state, kill off welfare programs, furlough employees, and tax the citizens/companies (including the 600,000+ millionaires and 50+ Fortune 500 HQs) a little more. That's precisely what they're doing.

[Rawlsian]

I think both Vandy and UT will overtake GULC precisely because of their location: their markets have more room for growth than the oversaturated places GULC tends to place.

Then again, at the rate we're going the federal government will be pretty much the entirety of the economy, making DC the go-to, and only, market.

Hmm. According to Vandy's ABA data 59 out of 152 took the bar in NY and CA, (with a bar passage rate ~5.5% below the state average in NY). I would expect that the number of Vandy grads looking for employment in the major markets will increase, not decrease, as the school tries to climb the rankings ladder. I don't see a major shift in huge corporate or government interests away from NYC, Philly, DC, Chicago and LA, so I'm not sure I understand your "room for growth" argument. Vandy grads are going to have to go to biglaw just like everyone else, biglaw isn't going to come to them.

As you said, I think that if any city is going to see an expansion of its legal market in the future, it's DC.

UT is a thing unto itself, but I don't see it surpassing GULC, at least in terms of rankings any time soon, if ever. I think Vandy has a stronger case. UT places worse by every metric that I've read, even in the Leitner rankings.

By the way, in the scholarly impact section of the Leitner rankings, Leitner discusses flaws in ranking systems that have to compare large schools like GULC to small schools like Vandy (although he is speaking specifically about professorial citation rankings as a measure of faculty distinction). He says:

"Needless to say, citation studies are but one measure of the scholarly distinction of faculties. They tend to favor smaller faculties over larger faculties, which no doubt explains why schools like Texas and Virginia and Georgetown come out behind schools like Vanderbilt and Cornell, even though I don’t think any informed scholarly judgment would rate them that way."

I've wondered what Leiter means by this: are citations per professor weighted to the size of the student body? If so, just because citation studies favor a smaller student body doesn't take away the significance of this kind of study--at least from a student's perspective. After all, it would mean the student would (more than likely) have better access to the cited faculty. Do larger schools suffer because they have to fill in more of the faculty space with adjuncts and visiting professors? If that's the case, this kind of study doesn't seem to give an unfair bias; it merely reflects an objective benefit to a smaller school.

About Vandy: The school has certainly improved over the last ten years. Kent D. Syverud (now at WUSTL) did a remarkable job during his tenor: upgraded facilities, he grew the endowment, applications increased by 1000+, ect. The last couple of years, the school's placement statistics improved dramatically (relative to other schools) in NLJ hiring and art. III clerkships. I think a big part of the boost in 2009 came from cutting the class size dramatically--from 225 for the class of 2008 to around 190 for the class of 2009. Job offers remained constant while supply of students decreased. But still, that shrewd move helped current students and has helped them attract better students. Over the last 5 years the class medians have gone up, nearly ever year, with this year looking to be no exception (I think class of 2013 will be around 169, 3.7). Will the school capitalize on this momentum? I'm not sure, but I have no reason to believe they won't.

I believe the suggestion about the South and Southwest growing does hold some relevance. I think it's important to note, that over the last five years Vandy has actually had progressively fewer students who went on to practice in the South (the majority now leave for other regions), but as the Southern markets grow, it will certainly help Southern schools for a couple reasons. First, Southern and Southwest markets--counter-distinguished to the traditional legal hot spots--tend to be somewhat insulated, and certainly more predisposed to hire their own. Second, even though to be considered elite, a school must have national placement, it's important to realize that backup markets for sub-median students are probably going to be more local. So as a school's regional legal market grows, the "safety net" becomes more attractive.