Top Law Schools

Statistically speaking, Yale produces the most people for Clerkship/Academia/and other super competitive PI positions, by far.

I am just wondering how much this has to do with the people they chose to start with rather than the program itself

One can easily imagine due to the "soft requirement" of Yale, students of Yale are more "employable"

I thought this would be a relevant question to ask because there is a thread asking for Yale vs Columbia/Chicago full ride, and I would imagine many more like that would come soon.

If most of the Yale factor is a self-selection issue to start with, then taking Yale over full ride at CCN seems silly

If the Yale factor is due to the program itself, I wonder what makes it so special? From what I can observe online, it does not seem to be significantly different from other top law school programs.

A big part is probably the people they select for each class, I also think Yale has some institutional advantages. Because of the small class, Yale can spend a lot more resources on each student. It's debatable whether this truly has an impact on legal education, but I imagine it can't hurt at all.

Another big reasons is probably the connections you are going to make since YLS already has a lot alumni who were clerks or working in academia. If a judge likes a YLS clerk, then he/she may be inclined to hire more clerks from YLS. Connections probably matter even more for academia since people tend to trust the quality of education you get at Yale. All things considered, prestige and the YLS diploma are pretty big pluses.

flyingboy wrote:A big part is probably the people they select for each class, I also think Yale has some institutional advantages. Because of the small class, Yale can spend a lot more resources on each student. It's debatable whether this truly has an impact on legal education, but I imagine it can't hurt at all.

Another big reasons is probably the connections you are going to make since YLS already has a lot alumni who were clerks or working in academia. If a judge likes a YLS clerk, then he/she may be inclined to hire more clerks from YLS. Connections probably matter even more for academia since people tend to trust the quality of education you get at Yale. All things considered, prestige and the YLS diploma are pretty big pluses.

Chicago/Stanford both has comparable faculty to student ratio

In terms of pure # Alumni for clerks and Academia, Harvard's Alumni list is just as large.

So from those aspects I cant see the clear superiority of Yale

You're talking about why a school has an advantage in clerkships, the most Letter of Recommendation/Professor driven job in all the legal world, and you don't think Yale's 7:1 student-faculty ratio is a relevant advantage? There's lots of reasons that Yale dominates clerkships, including its student body, but the faculty are huge.

Cicero76 wrote:You're talking about why a school has an advantage in clerkships, the most Letter of Recommendation/Professor driven job in all the legal world, and you don't think Yale's 7:1 student-faculty ratio is a relevant advantage? There's lots of reasons that Yale dominates clerkships, including its student body, but the faculty are huge.

Well Chicago is 7.5:1, so it doesnt seem like it is likely the explanation for Yale's domination