<p>From WSJ Law Blog- Super Lawyers rankings. </p>
<p>"Most law school rankings look at things like bar passage rates, professor-to-student ratios and the number of books in the library, but ignore the end product - the quality of lawyers produced. It's like ranking football teams based on athletic facilities, player size and equipment without considering who wins the games.</p>
<p>In the real world - the world of clients and juries and judges - no one cares about your GPA or LSAT score. All that matters is how good and ethical a lawyer you are. That's the focus of Super Lawyers.</p>
<p>Okay, fair enough. So how'd the schools line up?</p>
<p>One of the lawyers in my suite was offered the chance to be a Super Lawyer. He said it costs. You don’t get named unless you pay for an ad in the publication. At least that’s what he told me as he was making up his mind whether to accept the offer. He declined to pay and is not listed.</p>
<p>When you normalize that, you can set the top ranked school (Texas, actually) to 100% and then you get…</p>
<p>1.) Texas (calibrated to 100%)
2.) Harvard (99%)
3.) Yale (93%)
4.) Michigan (91%)
5.) Virginia (81%)
6.) Berkeley (68%)
7.) Columbia (57%)
8.) NYU (50%)
9.) Georgetown (42%)</p>
<hr>
<p>Three notes. (1) I didn’t have Florida’s class size, so I didn’t correct their ranking. (2) The raw numbers seem to indicate that Texas has more “SuperLawyers” (2616) than Michigan (2061). I’m not sure what happened here with the rankings.</p>
<p>(3) Obviously there are a lot of other flaws with this methodology for rankings. But this corrects the most obvious flaw.</p>
<p>The whole SuperLawyers thing is kind of a joke. Certainly, there are some lawyers who are named who are indeed well known and respected. However, there are plenty who are named because they agreed with other lawyers to nominate each other and to shout out each other’s virtues. Yes, it also to buy ad space in the magazine. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t measure the experience and excellence of a law firm on how many of its lawyers are named “SuperLawyers”, and I certainly wouldn’t judge law schools this way either.</p>
<p>What you need is a lot of friends to vote for you, and a public relations firm also helps to become listed as a “Super Lawyer”. I get by e-mail a notification each year which gives me the opportunity to log into a website and “nominate” upto 10 attorneys other than myself. The “nomination” is actually a vote. So, like American Idol, if you have enough friends who will vote for you, you will be a “Super Lawyer”. Alternatively, all you need is one computer science geek who can arrange to send in a few thousand votes himself for you. The “Super Lawyers” people do not perform any kind of analysis of court decisions or client feedback. There are attorneys in my firm whose “Super Lawyer” annointment is more than flattering. As for Martindale Hubble’s “A” “rating”, it’s pretty much the same thing, if you have a lot of voting friends, that will give you an “A” rating. Everyone listed in MH periodically gets a ballot of a few (2 dozen) lawyers to express an opinion. The listed lawyers are in the recipient’s geographical area, so if you practice in Federal Courts all over the US, it is not likely that the attorneys that you work for/against will get a ballot. So, I would not base any opinions about anything if you are using the “Super Lawyers” list, likewise for MH’s “rating” system.</p>
<p>I think the Vault Rankings are 10x better than this.</p>
<p>JK</p>
<p>I like to think that as we transition into the professional world, rankings become less and less relevant. Poor career choices abound when based on them. For instance, those who took an offer at Latham & Watkins back when it was in the V10 are probably burned at the moment. I worry for those who chose Weil Gotshal or Skadden Arps for the rankings purposes. I truly wonder where Weil’s revenue stream will come from when the bankruptcies stop rolling in as frequently. I have a little more faith in Skadden, but they’re so poorly leveraged that I always worry for them.</p>
<p>I think it’s all pretty absurd. How many rankings do we have?
Preschool Rankings (?)
Elementary School Rankings (?)
Middle School Rankings (?)
High School Rankings
College Rankings (USNews, Times Rankings, Shanghai rankings, etc.)
Law School Rankings (USNews, Leiter, Vault, Gourman or whatever)
Ph.D Rankings for certain disciplines
Med School Rankings (USNews)
Business School Rankings (USNews, Forbes?)
Law Firm Rankings (Vault, Chambers, AmLaw)
Accounting Firm Rankings
Investment Bank Rankings
It never ends…</p>
<p>I thought (and prayed) that I was leaving this silly little rat race the moment I matriculated at a “highly ranked” law school. Unfortunately, the thirst for prestige only increases here.</p>
![http://www.law.com/img/nlj/charts/20080414gotoschools.jpg[/url]](http://www.law.com/img/nlj/charts/20080414gotoschools.jpg%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
