Vault's first-ever law school rankings!

Vault's first-ever law school rankings have been released and can be viewed here. What makes our survey unique in the cluttered world of law school rankings is its focus on the employers' perspective. We surveyed nearly 400 hiring partners, associate interviewers and professional recruiting staff on the 'employability' of the various schools' graduates. We asked respondents to consider the following factors under the rubric of 'employability': research and writing skills; knowledge of legal doctrine; possession of other relevant knowledge (e.g., science for IP lawyers); and ability to manage a calendar and work with an assistant.

While the schools appearing on list aren't surprising (there is an 8 out of 10 overlap with the US News top 10), the order in which they appear is interesting: Stanford comes in at No. 1, while perennial by-every-other-measure prestige leader Yale barely makes the top 10. Among our respondents there was a widely-held opinion that YLS grads are "great lawyers if you can get them to focus on real world business issues instead of how they'd run the country."

In reacting to our rankings, the abovethelaw commentariat range from the predictably sneering (though these mostly appear not to have read our methodology) to the hilarious ("

"As much as 'elite' law schools might not like these rankings, they are probably more accurate at predicting who will be good lawyers. Long & rigorous policy debates, as well as multidisciplinary academic theses, are not going to do much good for you in a firm. The question is: how good are you at working in a team, researching & writing, and managing workload? 'Elite' law schools will always be in the top 10 or so, because their grads are so damn smart, but other law schools will outrank them because they churn out worldly, practical grads that are going to be better firm lawyers."

Couldn't have put it better myself.

-posted by brian