Top Law Schools

no idea what to think of these

people who are smarter than I am, give us opinions

http://abovethelaw.com/careers/2015-law-firm-rankings/

.

shit, wachtell is #1? i knew i was an idiot for turning them down.

Any list that tries to be all things to all people is going to have issues. Seems better than Vault though. At least its methodology is less laughable.

They suffer from (one of) the same flaw(s) as their law school rankings. They rely on ATL's own "insider" survey data about firm reputation and satisfaction. Who is actually filling those things out?

.

comes down to whether a ranking of people's opinions of firms they dont work at is better than a ranking of people's opinions of their own firms. i think the latter is not as dangerous a tool in the context of biglaw because of the high degree of associate dissatisfaction. but then again... K&E is #2.

To wax poetic about how you're outcome-focused and then stick in a metric like the percent of partners who are women is misleading at best.

Better idea:

40% average associate compensation
10% average partner compensation
25% percent of incoming class making equity partner
25% reputation among in-house recruiters

If this is law firm rankings and not law firms for law student rankings, PPP should be atleast 50% of the rankings

sinfiery wrote:If this is law firm rankings and not law firms for law student rankings, PPP should be atleast 50% of the rankings

more like RPL

Monochromatic Oeuvre wrote:To wax poetic about how you're outcome-focused and then stick in a metric like the percent of partners who are women is misleading at best.

Better idea:

40% average associate compensation
10% average partner compensation
25% percent of incoming class making equity partner
25% reputation among in-house recruiters

Throw out the recruiters and add something like "percentage of alums serving as judges/tenured profs/general counsel of F500s/heads of prefstigious fed agencies" or something like that.

Recruiters are shitheads who don't know anything about anything, other than they want to sell you on any position they can possibly fit your ass into.

my law firm ranking (assuming I didn't fail the bar exam) matches my law school USN rank. The symmetry is pleasing.

Did you enjoy your time at Florida International University Law School

Yukos wrote:Any list that tries to be all things to all people is going to have issues. Seems better than Vault though. At least its methodology is less laughable.

how is this result different from vault tho. seems essentially the same. the V10 are still V10, the V20 are still V20 (w/ munger thrown in). so what if a few of the same firms traded places a few spots. doesn't seem like anyone can break away from vault

honestly lol @ ATL for pulling all these machinations and developing the same list. kind of sad since it perpetuates the unfortunate notion that prestige can proxy for anything

jbagelboy wrote:

Yukos wrote:Any list that tries to be all things to all people is going to have issues. Seems better than Vault though. At least its methodology is less laughable.

how is this result different from vault tho. seems essentially the same. the V10 are still V10, the V20 are still V20 (w/ munger thrown in). so what if a few of the same firms traded places a few spots. doesn't seem like anyone can break away from vault

honestly lol @ ATL for pulling all these machinations and developing the same list. kind of sad since it perpetuates the unfortunate notion that prestige can proxy for anything

Paul Weiss, Gibson, Skadden and Weil are all decently removed from their Vault rankings

I guess it's also just a question of how much you expect it to change. I'm sure they could find metrics to put W&C on top or not have Susman somehow down at 87, but I'm not exactly sure how you do that.

Cooley in the top 25?! Now I've seen everyTTTThing.

Sheriff wrote:Cooley in the top 25?! Now I've seen everyTTTThing.

I can't tell if you're really unfunny or just really stupid.

sideroxylon wrote:

Sheriff wrote:Cooley in the top 25?! Now I've seen everyTTTThing.

I can't tell if you're really unfunny or just really stupid.

Why does it have to be one or the other?

The firm I am going to (one of the ones sideroxlyn mentioned) went up pretty significantly, so I like them.

No Magic Circle firms in the top 100?

Seems legit.

..

sideroxylon wrote:

jbagelboy wrote:

Yukos wrote:Any list that tries to be all things to all people is going to have issues. Seems better than Vault though. At least its methodology is less laughable.

how is this result different from vault tho. seems essentially the same. the V10 are still V10, the V20 are still V20 (w/ munger thrown in). so what if a few of the same firms traded places a few spots. doesn't seem like anyone can break away from vault

honestly lol @ ATL for pulling all these machinations and developing the same list. kind of sad since it perpetuates the unfortunate notion that prestige can proxy for anything

Paul Weiss, Gibson, Skadden and Weil are all decently removed from their Vault rankings

I guess it's also just a question of how much you expect it to change. I'm sure they could find metrics to put W&C on top or not have Susman somehow down at 87, but I'm not exactly sure how you do that.

I wouldn't consider 3 places (or even 7) "decently removed," since vault floats year to year and its all a wash within those 15-20 firms. Also having a non-equity, light track partner class counting as "home grown" partners probably skews kirkland's results pretty heavily, but I doubt anyone cared to distinguish for that metric.

You could establish firms like W&C and Susman on top rather easily by adding a selectivity measure and weighting it heaviest (although this is really silly as well). You're right though, why expect more. I guess I'm just always disappointed by ATL when it tries to rank things, pretending its lists will be so much more accurate and sincere than the dominant available commercial ranking but then essentially replicating them.

..

Poor White & Case

Above the law has completely sold out. When I started reading them five years ago they correctly recognized that rankings were harmful to the legal field. Now they rank everything.