| Topic Name: |
Top Law Schools |
| Message Name: |
Top 15 Still the Best |
| Date Posted: |
11/08/2000 |
| In Reply To: |
I think these rankings are lame. Any fair ranking depends on what sector one asks. Are we talking about prestige in law firms? By judges? By the business world? In the West? In the Midwest? In the East?
I would bet that a partner at Ropes & Gray would have a much different ranking than a partner at Wilson Sonsini, who would have a different ranking from Judge Posner, who would have a different ranking from a MD at Morgan Stanley.
Harvard, Yale, Columbia and NYU rule the East because Easterners are more familiar with their graduates and they are disproportionately represented in these ranking surveys. Likewise, Michigan, Chicago and Northwestern would benefit from many Chicago respondents. Stanford and Boalt on the West, etc.
Any claims that "Yale is a ways" above everyone else is ludicrous. Do smart human beings matriculate there? Yes. Do equally smart human beings matriculate elsewhere? Yes. Please don't tell me that 1 LSAT point means anything. Do Yalies get great jobs after graduation? Absolutely. But you would be hard pressed to convince me that Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, Boalt, NYU, etc. students don't get the same opportunities.
Let's just stop trying to make ourselves feel good about our intellect and just admit that we're all happy and lucky to be where we are . . . and that's a result of our winning personalities, acute intelligence and hard work, not a reflection of what our diplomas say.
To any future applicants: don't base your decision purely on "prestige." Go where you would be happiest and work to differentiate yourself from your classmates. A top-ranking student at "Number10" beats a bottom-ranked student at "Number1." |
| Message: |
I feel compelled to add my two cents and say that, granted, credentials from a top 15 law school and top flight firm don't mean you're a great lawyer, and are only somewhat useful as a shorthand method of determining whether someone is at least presumptively intelligent -- and even then it doesn't always work. We all know smart people, and good lawyers, who went to second rate schools and don't practice in the AmLaw 100. The point of the ever-mutating Top 15 list, however, is to throw the brightest (on paper) bunch of students together and let them fight it out on the somewhat suspect battlefields of the classroom. While this doesn't ensure production of the best lawyers, the law firms view it as a shortcut (just as you and I do) to finding good people. You've got smart people from good schools who competed against other smart folk from equally good schools to get into law school, who then competed against this even more select group, from which the law firms skim what they percieve to be the cream. Elitist? Sure. But who cares? Can anyone think of a better shorthand way of going about getting new employees that are going to be acceptable to corporations who are equally lineage conscious? While the difference between any of the top 15 law scholls may not make a dramatic difference to you, careerwise, the risks of going to a lesser school (i.e., less well regarded) is that the same doors won't open for you. In a sense, the contest between Harvard and Yale, or Michigan and Northwestern, doesn't matter. Everyone there can get great jobs. What really matters is that you (the generic you) get into a top 15 program, because it makes it all so much easier. Everybody loves to hire the Harvard boy, right? Nuff said.
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