Rankings exist to sell magazine subscriptions…keep that in mind before you rely on them.
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The old US News methodology limited “credit” for law school funded post-grad positions, which is what Yale had originally protested. The new methodology doesn’t cap credit for those law-school funded positions, as best I can tell. There can be lots of reasons why a student might be waiting for a position and appear “unemployed” but will be employed after the cut-off for rankings purposes – some public interest jobs may be contingent on grant funding renewal or highly accomplished students may have been hired into a clerkship that begins a year after grad but were unable to find another clerkship to fill that “gap” year -(perhaps less likely, but it happens). Those students count as “unemployed” even though they will be employed – and now law schools have to consider funding some sort of interim work to get employment credit on the rankings.
US News rankings exist to get clicks on the website and to sell enhanced access subscriptions. The methodology changes each year to create drama around the “reveal.” The ranking drama has less impact on students choosing among T14 options, but could lead to some misguided decision making outside the T14.
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As someone who hires law students and new graduates, I care how smart the person is. I couldn’t care less about other factors relating to the person’s law school, and I don’t think that any of them teach practical skills that are useful on the job (at least when working with me).
So admissions standards, assuming that they correlate at least somewhat with intelligence and work ethic, are most important to me, as someone who hires.
Yale, Harvard and Stanford are still the top of the top, by what I, as someone who hires, care about.
You wrote: “…admissions standards…are most important to me, as someone who hires.”
Really ? This seems contrary to your assertion that you hire based on intelligence of the individual.
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When I was involved in hiring, Yale, Harvard and Stanford , were definitely the top cut. Many candidates in the third quartile still got fly-backs. For the next “11”, you generally needed to be in the top third of the class. Outside of the top 11, assuming we even went on campus to recruit, there might be couple of flybacks offered and you needed to be in the top 10-25%. Since we were NYC based, we did hit a lot of the law schools in the Greater NYC area and offered more callbacks. Once it got to a plane ride away, we only hit schools at the Georgetown, UCLA, UT and USC type levels. Any student who is considering big $$ for law school needs to do a deep dive into placement results as to success in placing in types of practices (private, clerkships, public, non profit), places of practices and compensation.
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In short, the higher the ranking of the law school, the deeper biglaw firms are willing to go when recruiting.
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Yes and yes.
And prospective law students need to do their homework on how people get hired into non-Biglaw as well. I hear people shrug “If I don’t do well enough to get into a top law school, I’ll go to Tier three school and just become a federal prosecutor”.
No. Does not work that way.
Or “I’ll just work in advocacy or a think tank”.
Do your homework.
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Was your post intended for me ? If so, then I do not understand.
I was agreeing with you. Top school, deeper into the class.
And adding that some students have a very unrealistic view of their employment options coming out of a “non top school”, i.e. become a federal prosecutor. Again- top school, better options even if you aren’t top 10%. Lower ranked school- Law Review or a high prestige journal if you want to compete for top government jobs.
Agreeing with you! Kids need to do their homework.
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Admissions standards are largely LSAT scores + GPA, and if you rank schools by LSAT scores and GPAs of entering classes, the ranking differs from USNews.
Assuming that LSAT scores and grades do correlate with intelligence (I know that is a topic on which people disagree), I, looking for the sharpest new hire, would ignore the US News ranking and look at a ranking of schools based on LSAT scores and grades.
Thank you for your response.
Yes, I do understand that law school admissions are primarily based on one’s LSAT/GRE score and undergraduate GPA. Recruiting should be easier/more efficient at the most selective law schools because of the higher admission standards.
An issue that I see is how deep regarding class rank does a firm go at a top 14 law school versus a top performer (top 10% to top 20%) at a lower ranked law school ?
There is truth to this but not an absolute. My daughter a rising 3L at UF (born and raised in Pittsburgh) got summer associate offers from Jones Day Pittsburgh office and Reed Smith Pittsburgh office. She is currently working at Winston & Strawn Miami office. I think the big law firms want students who they think have a connection to the location of the office so as to not waste spots on students that likely may have no interest in staying in that city. At least that was my daughters experience.
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Agree with this. Our branch offices hired separately from our NYC office, although we would consider fly-backs for candidates from on-campus recruiting visits that wanted to work or split the summer in DC.
Let me add a little perspective to this whole T14 business that people parade around here as if it were actually useful information.
First, some elite law firms recruit from schools outside of this group. Cravath is about as elite as they come, and you’ll find partners there from Emory and Boston University. It happens.
Second, other very well respected law firms, like Perkins Coie, recruit from outside that group and you can do quite well for yourself as a partner at Perkins. There are more than a handful of Seattle U law school partners in that cohort. Look at the bios of the partners at the Eversheds Atlanta office. UofG, Emory, BC and other non-T14 law schools are well represented.
Third, the next tier down in law firms, call them super regionals, recruit from an even broader range of law schools.
Lastly, there are a ton of ways to make a very good living practicing law that doesn’t involve the most elite track. At one company at which I worked, there was a great need for real estate lawyers. Real estate, by its nature, is a local practice, so the firm we used was a mid-sized regional firm, and we recruited all of our “dirt” lawyers from there. When factoring in bonus, LTIP grants, 401-K match and other comp. goodies, those people all made north of $300,000 a year, many of them well north. And don’t get me started on the plaintiff’s bar. Those people are laughing all the way to the bank and really don’t care about who is looking down their nose at them.
We tend to be a little binary around here on law schools and forget there are lawyers all over the country who are worth millions of dollars who didn’t attend a T50, much less T14, law school.
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Cravath is probably not a great example as Cravath and Wachtell don’t recruit
on campus from other but the tippy top law schools.
Which makes sense since law grad salaries are bimodal, and if one attends a T2 with a lot of loans, the odds are that they won’t earn enuf to pay off those loans.
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Fair enough. But there are enough Arizona States, Emorys, USCs, Boston Universitys and similar exceptions to the rule amongst their (Cravath’s) ranks to make it interesting. I’m sure some are laterals, though those are never at the associate level. I went and asked someone who knows, and his answer was that they take associates on occasion with particular backgrounds or who offer something compelling. But, sure, those the pointy exceptions at the pointy place.
Sure, it makes sense to draw general inferences from general data. So, again, fair enough. But I think this “Top 14/Tippy Top Law Firm” make or break take has its limitations. One of them is that it misses the middle - the next step down from “elite of the elite.” Perkins Coie is a nationally respected law firm, and yet it is not a white shoe Wall Street firm of the likes of Wachtell or Cravath. First year salaries at Perkins Seattle is $215,000. Sure, Seattle is expensive (not Manhattan expensive), but it’s enough to carry a debt load. Bigger picture, partner salaries average around $800,000 there. For those who don’t want Big Law for life, Perkins associates can jump into very good in-house positions, they go on to work at PE firms, etc. etc. And Perkins has plenty of associate and partner attorneys who hail from outside the T14. There are other firms in town as well. David Wright Tremaine starts at $190,000. Again, you don’t need T14 to break in there. I think there are similar markets in many other cities as well.
That’s my main point. I’m responding to the “Top 14 or make other plans” posts I’ve seen here on the matter.
The T14 does not mean only work in NYC. (It just happens to be the easiest market to hire into.). There are big law jobs paying big law salaries in every large city. Non-NY regions prefer local ties.
I guess I don’t understand yoru reference to Perkins-Coie. They are Big Law. They recruit from the T14 like other Big Law firms. And like other BL not based in NYC, they also recruit the top law students from their local regional schools, or other with ties to the PNW. No different than Gibson Dunn hiring a top 3 student from Pepperdine Law, who I used to work with.
During a mediation when we were sitting around, I had to ask how he got from Pepperdine to Gibson, which has plenty from Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Berkeley and the local schools, UCLA & USC, and he admitted he ‘enjoyed’ undergrad college and partied quite a bit, so not too many A’s from U-Colorado. (he was also a big skier). So, when he got to Pepperdine with a small scholarship due to a good LSAT, he knew he had to be top ~5 to get to a Big firm. So, he buckled down and ended up tied for 5th.
Of course, folks would be foolish to enter any law school and assume that if they work hard they could be top 10. (As nearly everyone else is working just as hard.). The only logical thing is to assume graduating at median, and what jobs are available to the students who graduate median? And of course, look to the median salaries of those grads.
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The best way to determine a law school is to look at the bar passing rate. Rankings sell magazines, that’s about it.
I would not agree with that. What you need to look at is job placement and median salary of new graduates. The best law schools do not teach to the bar test – they expect their students to separately cram for it. Lower tier law schools tend to teach to the bar.
Also bar passage rates vary by state, so even if you use bar passage rate as a criteria, it must be student passage rates relative to the states they applied to.
Finally, the more selective law schools will have stronger students who will more likely pass the bar, correlation over causation.
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Amen to this. Almost everyone who heads off to a T2-T-4 law school plans on ending up in the top 10%. 90% of them end up being wrong. Of course, there are many successful attorneys who graduated from run of the mill law schools. There are some real horror stories too, especially amongst those who financed their JD degree by taking out loans.
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