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<p>You realize US News doesn’t survey laymen in coming up with their reputation scores, right? Practicing lawyers and judges nationally have a higher opinion of UT than Vandy.</p>
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<p>Significantly more California firms recruit at UT than Vandy, and UT almost certainly has more alumni in the state. Sure, some of this may be a product of their significantly larger size, but it certainly doesn’t suggest that Vandy grads would have an easier time getting a job in Cali.</p>
<p>[Top</a> 15 Law Schools From Which Elite U.S. Law Firms Hire New Lawyers](<a href=“http://www.leiterrankings.com/jobs/2008job_biglaw.shtml]Top”>Top 15 Law Schools From Which Elite U.S. Law Firms Hire New Lawyers)</p>
<p>Thats for you, considering you clearly don’t understand how US news works in terms of its rankings. That is the most recent statistical data of the top vault firms and percentage of people in them from each school. Vandy 32% - Texas 22%. And Houston is the fifth biggest legal market in the country. /discussion.</p>
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<p>Here is what they say:</p>
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<p>This score reflects “lay prestige” how? </p>
<p>I don’t know where to start with this study. For one thing, you have the arbitrary methodology; choosing 15 firms (why not 10? Or 20?), for no discernible reason, but then only ending up with 15 of the top 24 because some firms didn’t have an appropriate search engine. So that would cast doubt on the validity of the results, but what I really can’t get over is the way the third paragraph completely eviscerates the entire point you’re trying to make:</p>
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<p>Did you even read this before you posted?</p>
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<p>No, that’s not at all what the table is showing. It’s not a percentage at all; it’s the number of associates a school has at the 15 firms divided by the number of students in the average class at each school. Notice that UT has 101 associates compared to 64 for Vandy.</p>
<p>Granted, I didn’t read the part about houston firms only being in the forties. </p>
<p>But you clearly aren’t understanding a few things. Firstly, I never stated that US news was based on lay prestige. Second, US news largely uses self reported employement statistics that are widely accepted to be misleading and made up. This study is the best data we have because well, school don’t give us this data. There are lists of NLJ250 employment but you have to do a lot of research yourself to go through that which I am not willing to do. Attacking an arbitrary number of vault firms doesn’t help your argument btw. </p>
<p>Next, about how that paragraph goes against my point, actually there is no point where that paragraph goes against vandy having better national reach then UT. In fact, in LSAT terms, that would be out of scope. And like I said, just because UT could have had greater national reach, doesn’t mean it does. Yes, like I said before, students are self selecting into texas. BUT that disallows future students from having the same options to select outside of texas. </p>
<p>Lastly, yes texas has more people in those firms because, as already stated OFTEN, texas has much larger class size. Same would be true if you looked at Georgetown vs. Cornell. But no one really believes Georgetown gives you a better chance at biglaw then cornell does. Your confusing raw numbers with percentages. Vandy, percentage chance, from that data, has a better possibility of placing you into those firms. All of which are outside Texas. Since this is the best data we have, we have to use it to make our deductions. And CLEARLY, WITHOUT DOUBT, this data suggests that Vandy, percentage wise, has a better chance of putting you into a top national level vault firm.</p>
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<p>Well, when I brought up UT’s higher reputation score, you responded with something about “lay prestige” and are now bringing up employment data. None of which explains why UT’s higher score in a national survey doesn’t suggest that it has a stronger national reputation.</p>
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<p>I have trouble putting much stock in a study that purports to look at “elite firm” placement, but has no justification for its definition of “elite firm” and actually excludes almost half of the firms it designates as “elite” because data wasn’t available.</p>
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<p>No; again, read the third paragraph. Vandy doesn’t have a strong in-state legal market. Texas does. The fact that UT’s placement at these arbitrarily-selected non-Texas firms is close proportionally and significantly greater in absolute terms certainly doesn’t suggest that Vandy irrefutably gives you a better chance of working in out-of-state markets. Considering 1) UT has more alumni in those markets; 2) more firms from those markets recruit at UT, despite proportionally lower demand; and 3) UT has a higher reputation ranking, the opposite conclusion seems more likely.</p>
<p>In either case the term T14 is based on rankings and not on prestige. UT and UCLA ranks higher than Vandy. This is a fact.</p>
<p>To argue that Vandy has better national prestige than UT and UCLA is a hard one to make, since it’s so arbitrary.</p>
<p>This is not to say that UT and UCLA is better than Vandy. These 3 schools are very similar in prestige and academic quality. After them, there’s a gap.</p>