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Why U.S. News Rankings May Mislead

Posted Jan 2, 2008 7:51 AM CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss

Potential law students who want a job at a top law firm shouldn’t blindly follow the rankings of U.S. News & World Report.

Students who attend a top-tier law school are likely to get interviews at any law firm they desire, according to a Wall Street Journal op-ed (sub. req.) written by lawyer and law professor Cameron Stracher. But grades and law review are more important than school rank at lower-tier schools, he says.

“The difference between the 55th-ranked law school and the 105th law school is of little significance in determining which students are more likely to get a good job,” he says.

“At both schools, unless a student is in the top 15 percent or 20 percent of his class, he has little chance of getting a high-paying job directly upon graduation. Students might be better served by going to a lower-ranked law school and doing better, rather than going to a middling law school and not doing as well.”

The magazine’s rankings stress reputation over bar passage rates, which account for only 2 percent of a school’s rank.

Stracher concludes that law schools would better serve their constituencies if they released accurate information about numbers that matter to students—about bar passage rates, the kinds of jobs its graduates land, and average salaries after graduation.

Comments

1.

Dave
Jan 4, 2008 7:05 AM CST

I believe the rankings are a joke.  The outcome of your education is like anything else in life.  It is the result of the effort you put into it. 

I attended what was one of the law schools in the bottom 100 (I think that’s the PC name now).  During my tenure there, a new dean was hired.  He was and still is obsessed in making the school a 1st or 2nd tier, and has dramatically changed the makeup of the student body, shrunk classes to the point where there is almost a non-existent night program and other factors to bolster what the US World News Rag would rate them on.  Since the ratings take years to affect, he’ll be at his quest for the next decade. 

Although I will probably enjoy someday saying I graduated from what is a tier 1 or 2 school, professionally, no one really cares after you have your first job and have established yourself in the marketplace. 

I also believe that with the requirements the school currently has, if applying today, I likely would be rejected as an applicant thereby denying any chance I would have of attending law school.  As a 2nd career for myself following a long engineering background, I have a family and am unable to just pack up and attend school on a full time basis.  Unfortunately, the US World News folks don’t consider non-traditional students (I think that’s what us 40 yr. olds are called) when they bias the minds of potential students and encourage the law schools deans to follow their rating system.  I suppose economics have something to do with it, if you have a higher rated school you get to charge higher tuition rates, and further discriminate from the less privileged. 

I’ve been in court with folks who graduated from tier 1 schools.  To think they have a better education or will win their case based on that they graduated from a school highly rated by US World News is nuts.  They practice like anyone else does, and at the end of the day we’re all just people.  A US World News tier one rated school doesn’t make you a better lawyer, won’t help you pass the bar, it is just stylish to brag about.  Whoo Hoo.

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2.

Louie
Jan 4, 2008 8:48 AM CST

I tend to agree with Dave—the education you receive at a highly ranked school probably does not differ vastly from that received at a lower-ranked school.  I think the only reason it matters to employers is that, because higher-ranking schools are more selective, being in the top 20% means you beat 80% of people who are more (theoretically) more competent than the 90% you may beat out at a lower-ranked school.

All that having been said, it’s still (I believe) an incorrect assumption.  The skill sets required to succeed in law school and undergrad (and even on the LSAT) vary greatly.  Case in point: A friend from high school had a 3.9 at U of M undergrad, got a 170 on his LSAT, and finished in the bottom half of his class at Harvard law.  Being able to get into a top law school does not equate to being a successful law student or a successful lawyer.

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3.

Damian
Jan 4, 2008 11:57 AM CST

Uh, Louie, someone has to finish at the bottom of the class at Harvard Law (by definition).  Your friend’s peers all had similarly impressive credentials (except, perhaps, for minority students admitted with lower grades and LSAT scores).  The fact that he finished at the bottom of a class where everyone has great credentials does not show a lack of correlation between credentials and law school success.

By the way, the lead-in to the article is misleading - if you go to a top-10 law school in the U.S. News rankings, you can work anywhere you want.  Stracher makes that clear in his discussion.  U.S. News rankings should not be followed blindly outside of the top 10 schools, but the fact that a school is within or without the top 10 (or 14, if that’s your argument) is highly relevant.

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4.

Dave
Jan 4, 2008 12:01 PM CST

Louie - Your reasoning is flawed with your “case in point”. This story is not about admissions standards and if it creates the best law school class, it’s about the importance of doing well.

I would argue that your friend’s credentials for getting into Harvard actually did show how he/she would do there, since 170 and 3.9 are where the lower half of entrants are in the class.

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5.

Louie
Jan 4, 2008 1:04 PM CST

Damian/Dave: Fair point, didn’t look at the GPA/LSAT ranges for entering classes at Harvard.

Dave: I think the question of admissions standards and the importance of doing well are intertwined.  You need to do better at a lower-ranked school than a highly ranked one, because employers will take your competency on faith if you go to Yale, but not if you go to Chicago-Kent.  They do this because of the assumption that admissions standards at highly ranked schools create pools of highly qualified and competent students. Class rank is not as much of a concern—to paraphrase Damian, someone has to finish at the bottom, even at top schools.  But as school rank decreases, selectivity decreases, and the reasoning doesn’t carry as much weight.  Thus, employers insist on more demonstration of individual ability—e.g., finishing with a high rank in your class. 

If admissions standards at top schools do not necessarily create a stronger class than those at lower-ranked schools, then the assumptions about the qualifications of students from Yale versus those from Kent are false.  In that case, there is no reason why doing well in your class should be any *more* or *less* important at a second-tier school than a first-tier, etc.

That’s my take, anyway.

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6.

Tim
Jan 4, 2008 2:15 PM CST

USN is unreliable?  Who knew?

Seriously, the real problem is more subversive than that, and this “analysis” is a perfect example.  While Stracher’s conclusion may be correct, the recommendation that “[s]tudents might be better served by going to a lower-ranked law school and doing better, rather than going to a middling law school and not doing as well” still assumes that students will per se have an easier time achieving higher GPA and making law review at that lower-ranked school.  So, at the same time he is criticizing reliance on the ranking system, Stracher is assuming it is a viable indication of how difficult a school’s curriculum and competition will be.

If, as the report states, law schools are on similar footing outside the top 20 or so, might it be (at least in part) because the quality - and stringent grading practices - of professors and deans are just as difficult, regardless of where the school is ranked?  And yet, we don’t question the rank/education/competition connection (even in the comments to this post, e.g. Louie’s 20% v. 10% analysis). 

Why assume that high admission standards, class size, or # of books in the library (Cooley, I’m looking at you…) have anything to do with a school’s talent pool on either side of the podium?  You can’t increase your chances of success by going to a lower-ranked school.  EVERY school curves differently, encourages collaboration or competition differently, and has different levels of expectation for their career services offices in assisting students. 

The people I know who transferred from my Tier 4 school to a Tier 2 school (and there were more than a few) did not instantaneously lost their ranks at their new schools.  They did just as well.  Why?  Because 20-somethings learning law are all having a hard time with the material.  The sooner recruiters, reporters, and even professors writing op-ed pieces realize (admit?) this equality exists, the better for all of us.

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7.

awg
Jan 4, 2008 6:33 PM CST

I started law school 15 years after college with a family and an already successful career.  I couldn’t subject my family to $100K in student loans.  I wasn’t even contemplating practicing law.  I just wanted to study law and enhance my career.  So, I attended a non ABA school that I could afford.  Now I work with many graduates from top tier schools who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to get where I am.  I probably spent less for my JD than most of them spent in a semester.  But, I went to law school because I enjoyed it and was passionate about the law.  With this background, here are my observations.

1. Lawyers are a pedigree conscious lot.  I have over 20 years of professional experience, 10 of them practicing law.  Yet, even now, when I meet a lawyer one of the first questions I get is, “where did you go to law school?”  Over the years I’ve come to realize the obsession with pedigrees is nonsense.  I’ve chewed up top tier graduates from top tier schools and spat them out in adversarial proceedings.  And, I’ve interviewed lawyers from top tier schools; some were very bright, others not so bright.  This doesn’t surprise me.  I’ve known people who lived and died by the scores they received on exams, but who couldn’t explain or apply what they were being tested on.  If you can memorize the rule from Hadley v. Baxendale, you can get credit on the test.  Unfortunately, memorizing the rule isn’t the same thing as being able to comprehend the role foreseeability has in assigning damages.  Exams (including the bar exam) reward memorization more than comprehension.  Yet, my career is limited by virtue of the fact that law firms want to post impressive resumes on their websites.  So, I am less employable with more than 20 years of experience including 10 years of law practice, than a 22 year old I hire and mentor.  I once responded to a job posting put out by a legal recruiter in Atlanta, Special Counsel, and was told without so much as a polite salutation, that they had no use for anyone with my credentials.  So, it is error to conclude going to a top tier school has no benefit as long as law partners focus more on resumes than results.  But, school ranking has nothing to do with competence as far as I can discern.

2. Top tier schools accept only top performers from undergraduate schools.  Where is the value added?  Their only claim is compliance with the Hippocratic oath, “we did no harm.”  Or, put another way, “our students leave here no dumber than they were when they arrived.”  To measure the quality of a school, you should look at how much it improves the abilities of its students.  Taking a population that, by conventional wisdom, should not be successful, then equiping them to succeed should be the mark of excellence, not taking the wealthiest and smartest in, then taking credit for producing the wealthiest and smartest.  That’s just marketing.  In the real world, the measure of success is how much value you add.  I have no pedigree.  My school doesn’t even enable me to sit for a bar exam out of state.  Our profession thinks a 10 year lawyer is less qualified to sit for any states’ bar exam than a 22 year old who just finished an ABA accredited law school with a barely passing GPA.  We used the same books the “real” law schools used.  And, my professors included practicing lawyers and sitting judges, whereas I’ve known law school professors who spent little to no time in the actual practice of law.  I have to acknowledge that we had a far lower bar pass rate than any of the ABA schools.  But, you need only attend a lecture to understand.  The students were mothers, TV weather men, doctors, dentists, and people who didn’t have the grades or money to get into the ABA accredited schools.  Those that were serious, had the skills, and the inclination mostly went on to pass the bar.  Others who didn’t plan to practice or didn’t have the means “dabbled” with the bar by self-studying.  I’ve often said that a top 10 graduate from Yale law without benefit of a review course has a worse chance of passing the bar than my wife without ever attending law school, if she took a full bar review course.

Unfortunately, there are an awful lot of places where it still matters more how you look on paper, than how capable you are.  If you want to be a Supreme Court justice or a DA, or senator or president, or partner at one of the many ego-centric firms, then there are unfortunately big benefits from attending one of those top ranked schools.  But, if you want to be a good lawyer and effectively represent your client, then where you went to school matters far less than what you learned while you were there. 

I didn’t need a news article to tell me USN rankings mislead.  I just read the article because I wondered if someone else out there finally got a clue.

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8.

Aaron
Jan 5, 2008 1:52 AM CST

Maybe ranking doesn’t mean everything, but there’s definately an equilibrium argument saying you’re better off at the top ranked law schools, essentially the people who have the highest scores get the first choice of which school to attend, and will pick the school that offers the most for the money, if the rankings didn’t matter everyone would be going to public school (or maybe this equilibrium doesn’t hold for the rankings)

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9.

William Vlasek
Jan 5, 2008 7:18 AM CST

At Last the bonds of elitism created by USN≀ assisted by the testers,those who prepare students for the tests and THE ABA ?(yes you’re part of this)  are begining to crumble.
This started with some of the really big schools refusing to participate (Uof C -Yale- Stanford). Maybe Just maybe the idea that steady achievement through consistent hard work will again become the benchmark of success as opposed to a great morning with the LSAT and a No. 2 pencil.

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10.

Jonathan Edwards
Jan 5, 2008 8:16 PM CST

every Supreme Court justice in my state’s Supreme Court graduated from a 4th tier law school.  And they are DAMN GOOD justices.  It may be the school for you, but after a military career, a second life doing other stuff, then law school, I like my little law school where as soon as finals are done in the fall, I hop in the pickup truck, and go hunting.  Next year, when I am running my own solo firm, I will hop in the pickup truck after work, and go hunting.  It’s a good life, and I won’t be working those 2000 billable hours to get there.

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11.

Joe
Jan 6, 2008 7:30 AM CST

These publications have law students brainwashed into thinking if they don’t get a job working in a huge, prestigious law firm they are a failure.  It would be nice if someone acknowledged that students can become successful lawyers even if they work in a small firm.  I spent the summer working for a solo practitioner in a small midwestern town.  I loved it so much I am going back next summer.  Money isn’t everything, and you can still have a successful and rewarding career even if you are in a small firm.  Just because you didn’t graduate in the top 10% of your class doesn’t mean your worthless.  The fact that you graduate at all says something since even the bottom 10% of a law class is a pretty exclusive club (think about all the people who applied and didn’t even get into law school)  I wish publications would focus on small firms for once and acknowledge that some students may not want to practice in a huge firm no matter how good the money is.

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12.

Majmaj
Jan 6, 2008 12:11 PM CST

What ticks me off more than the silly USN rankings is looking at job postings for Big Law that still require “excellent academic credentials” for attorneys with 5-10 years of experience. Are you kidding? You’re still looking for top tier schools and GPA’s after that long? Big Law is clearly only interested in having “name brand” schools show up on their attorney bios for their websites.

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13.

Victoria
Jan 6, 2008 1:47 PM CST

Interestingly, the school I am currently attending is smack dab in the middle of the 2nd tier.  However, when looking at the makeup of the ranking before I began attending the school, I discovered that students rated the school far lower than lawyers and judges already practicing.  This lower ranking by students definitely skewed the overall results, but says a lot about what practitioners feel about the level of education graduates actually receive.  I think a lot of it simply has to do with the size of the school - relatively small and not as well known to students looking for a school to attend.  Other similar factors can definitely affect results.  In my opinion they have little real bearing on the quality of the education other than increasing the competition level in better known schools.

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14.

Houston Lawyer
Jan 7, 2008 8:58 AM CST

I think the article is absolutely correct that you need to be in the top of your class at a lower tier law school to get a job at a big firm.  I attended a Tier 2 (according to US News) law school because it was substantially less expensive and my employer paid for me to go to night school (the Tier 1 schools in my area didn’t have night programs).  I had a good GPA from a school ranked in the top 10 of US News National Liberal Arts Colleges and an LSAT of 42 (when the scale was up to 46).  Those grades and GPA could have gotten me into a Top Tier school, but for financial reasons, I chose not to waste my money.  I graduated 2nd in my night class (didn’t want to kill myself to be No. 1) and landed a job at a Top Tier Chicago law firm.  I was still looked at by the lawyers there as a “lower” class summer associate and got reviews where people said they were surprised at how good I was being from night school and a Tier 2 school.  It’s all about reputation with law firms.  I couldn’t run around with my LSAT score pasted to my forehead, so I had to work harder to prove myself than my Ivy League colleagues, who probably had lesser undergraduate grades and LSAT scores than I did.  Law is just a super snobby profession when it comes right down to it.

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15.

Cynic
Jan 8, 2008 4:11 PM CST

“Snobby” profession, at least with the so-called elite, isn’t the proper word.  “Socially and intellectually insecure” would be far more accurate.  The starched collar types are just too insecure to ever admit that someone could be just as capable (or, perish the thought, even better) than they are.  We may be a so-called egalitarian society in theory, but there are oh so many who have aristocratic pretensions.

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