As I have previously written, I am not impressed by the U.S. News and World Report Rankings. See Screw U.S. News.
All of the “alternative” law school rankings are even worse. I find it truly laughable that academics, who never have so much as seen a billing pad have any say at all in how law schools are judged. There is one moron out there who has the audacity to rank “student quality.”
Enter Vault.com.
Although I generally think that rankings are trash, this is the first law school rankings system that I have ever seen that actually measures criteria that matter. Vault went out and asked 400 hiring partners, hiring committee members, interviewers, and recruiters on “which law schools best prepare their graduates to achieve in the firm environment.”
Vault surveyed only those people who directly assess the value of law school graduates in the real world once they enter the workforce- those individuals responsible for evaluating and hiring law school students. The respondents–who represent over 100 law firms– were advised to consider the following factors in their rankings: research and writing skills; knowledge of legal doctrine; possession of other relevant knowledge (e.g., science for IP lawyers); and ability to manage a calendar and work with an assistant.
My alma mater drops from #14 in the U.S. News rankings to #17 in the Vault rankings, and I’m not complaining. As a legal educator, I have to say that employability is really the only factor that should enter into law school rankings. If you want to be a legal philosopher, then go get your Ph.D. in philosophy. Law school should be for future lawyers, and future lawyers should be prepared to practice law.
I especially like the fact that Vault asked its subjects to evaluate how the students work with an assistant. This is, in my opinion, the best measure of how successful a lawyer will be — and it can’t be taught.
My one criticism of the Vault rankings is that they probably only went to big firm sources to create these rankings. While Stanford graduates might be a great fit for a mega-firm, I think that a Stanford grad might not do as well at my small firm than a hungry outside-the-box thinking graduate from a lesser-known school. But, most law students see BIGLAW as the “brass ring.” These rankings are certainly superior to the crap that U.S. News is going to spill out into the sewers any day now.
As you can see, I previously criticized the rankings as being BIGLAW biased. b>Humble Pie eating time! It appears that I was wrong about the firm size issue. Brian at Vault.com corrects me (and spares me a lashing).
A quibble with this quibble: our survey respondents’ firms represented a broad range in size (from 12 to 1,000+ attorneys) and geography (68 towns and cities).
I was mistaken. I stand by my opinion that rankings in general are garbage, but I stand even more firmly by my earlier opinion that as far as rankings go, Vault’s rankings are way superior to the dreck provided by US News. They are the only rankings that pay attention to the one factor that really matters, and they realize that the whole world is not BIGLAW. Thank you, Vault!
Here are the top 25 schools according to Vault.com. Future law students take note.
1 Stanford University Law School
2 University of Michigan – Ann Arbor Law School
3 New York University School of Law
4 University of Virginia School of Law
5 University of Chicago Law School
6 Harvard Law School
7 Columbia Law School
8 University of California, Berkeley – Boalt Hall School of Law
9 Northwestern University School of Law
10 Yale Law School
11 Vanderbilt University Law School
12 Duke University Law School
13 University of Pennsylvania Law School
14 Indiana University School of Law – Bloomington
15 Cornell University Law School
16 University of Minnesota – Twin Cities Law School
17 Georgetown University Law Center
18 University of California, Los Angeles School of Law
19 University of Iowa College of Law
20 George Washington University Law School
21 Boston University School of Law
22 University of Texas at Austin School of Law
23 University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill School of Law
24 Emory University School of Law
25 University of Wisconsin Law School
For more details see http://www.vault.com/lawschool/top25/
Related Post: What is wrong with legal education?
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The Legal Satyricon 
Sometime in the 70’s US News ran an article naming the top however many most dangerous black socialists or something like that. My friend’s father was number 3. He was right indignant – who the heck were #1 and #2 to come in ahead of him!
Why there isn’t more sports law regarding your sports law course at Barry University ? It was very interesting
“As a legal educator, I have to say that employability is really the only factor that should enter into law school rankings.” This position is clearly absurd and untenable, for a variety of reasons. One hardly knows where to start.
But then you introduce the rankings themselves by proclaiming: “Future law students take note.” Well, why should they? Michigan grads obviously do not in general have an eaisier time getting jobs than Columbia, Harvard, or Yale grads. Which students should take notice, and to what end?
Sir, you are confused.
I am confused? Wow. Because I didn’t explain the obvious — why future law students should take note of Vault’s position?
Ok, here it is… future law students should take note because the U.S. News Rankings are given way too much weight by way too many aspiring law students.
As far as my position being “absurd and untenable,” I’m willing to listen… fire away.
“future law students should take note because the U.S. News Rankings are given way too much weight by way too many aspiring law students”
Let’s assume Vault’s methodology is sound (a very large assumption) and that the rankings are meaningful in some sense. What sense would that be exactly? The vast majority of students who have the option would be foolish to choose Michigan over Yale, yet Vault ranks them 2 and 10 respectively. Similarly, most students who have the option should not choose Virginia over Harvard, or Vanderbilt over Georgetown. From a student’s perspective, ’employability’ essentially means ‘expected success in the job market’, and from this point of view Vault’s ranking do not appear useful.
If the rankings are meaningful at all it would appear to be not from the perspective of students but rather employers. Perhaps employers would be better off if they gave more weight to factors like the ones Vault purports to measure. But until they do (and let’s be honest, we shouldn’t hold our breath), and until a Michigan grad can expect more success in the job market than a Harvard grad, I cannot see why future law students should take serious note of Vault’s rankings.
Obviously there is a lot of noise in the analysis. For example, for some purposes we might want to hypothesize how a given student would fare whether he went to School A or School B, while for other purposes our concern would be merely to measure how actual students from those schools fare. But I cannot see any isolation based on Vault’s rankings that would be particularly useful for aspiring law students.
I’m willing to believe that Vault’s methodology is flawed. I think it is obvious that I am no fan of *any* school rankings. However, is Vault’s methodology for ranking which school is “better” any better than US News? What about the laughable Leiter rankings?
Why exactly would one be foolish to choose Michigan over Yale? Do you get a better education at Yale? In my experience with Yale educated attorneys, I’ve met some of them that are the most professional and competent attorneys I’ve ever met. On the other hand, I’ve met more Yalies that I wouldn’t hire to take out my trash, let alone work with me.
Your argument seems to be, essentially, that more people believe in the U.S. News rankings (which place Harvard over Michigan, for example) therefore we should continue to do so.
My argument is that Vault is the only ranking system that looks at factors that matter. The other systems rank based on “academic reputation,” by asking professors what they think, average LSAT score, and other absurd criteria.
Law is a profession, not a pasture. U.S. News treats it like a pasture and is nothing more than taking the halo effect and shuffling each year. Vault is at least asking the right questions of the right people.
I do not understand your comments regarding Yale. They may be true, but why are they interesting? First, no thinking person believes that everyone coming out of Yale will be a star. Like most schools, Yale graduates some good attorneys and some duds. Second, your analysis fails to consider confounding factors. For example, with regard to the Yale graduates you wouldn’t want to work with, did their education at Yale ruin them for legal work, or were they simply not well-suited in the first place? To put it another way, do we have reason to believe that Michigan will tend to turn Joe into a good lawyer while Yale will tend to turn him into a bad one, or is there instead a strong selection bias at work here? From a prospective student’s point of view, this is obviously a very important distinction.
You say that Vault is the only ranking system that looks at factors that matter. But again I ask, ‘matter’ for which purposes? Prospective students have different concerns among themselves and different concerns again from employers and law schools. I imagine you and I agree that this is one of the reasons any broad ranking system is bound to be crippled from the get-go. But it also seems to me to render immediately dubious any broad claim that one has identified which factors do and do not matter. The range of interests at stake is simply too broad. Just as a piece of putative evidence may be admissible for some purposes and not for other purposes, factors ostensibly bearing on the quality of a law school will be useful for some purposes but not others. Even if I were to concede that Vault is asking the questions that really ‘matter’ in some platonic sense, this would do little or nothing to show that a prospective student (which is, after all, what we’re talking about, no?) would be well served by using the Vault rankings.
Lastly, in your original post you suggest that ability to work with an assistant is “the best measure of how successful a lawyer will be – and it can’t be taught.” I find the claim suspect on many levels, but for now I’m willing to take it at face value. Now, what are the implications legal education? More, how does this component of the Vault rankings serve prospective *students*?
It serves them by demonstrating that the US News rankings are utterly worthless. That I think we agree upon.
I’m not championing Vault as where every student should look before accepting an offer of admission. It only ranks the top 25 anyhow, so most students will not really have any use for it.
As far as what might make Michigan students superior to Yale students? Meh… not sure. Maybe a higher percentage of douchebags apply to Yale, maybe a higher percentage get in, maybe their faculty turns them that way. I don’t know. But, lets stop comparing Yale and Michigan… lets compare Yale and Massachusetts College of Law (Andover, MA). Not even ABA accredited. I think that a Mass Law grad is more suited to practice law on day one than a Yale grad.
The “brand names” of law schools are just that. Brand names.
Bottom line, again, I think the Vault rankings are the only ones that ask the right questions of the right people. Their value is in showing students that they should completely disregard the US News rankings. Because honestly, who gives a flying crap what academics think of other schools? I sure don’t. Academics are the LEAST qualified people to discuss the quality of students, schools, and employment prospects.
Even if true that a Mass Law grad is more suited to practice law on day one than a Yale Law grad, I bet that’s little consolation to him if he can’t get a job or pass the bar. (As an aside, why the focus on day one? Are you suggesting that the Yale grad doesn’t pull ahead?) Brand names may be over-fetishized in the legal profession and LSAT scores may be imperfect proxies for lawerly aptitude, but that doesn’t make them worthless.
Similarly, prospective law students do and should care what academics think of other schools because many legal employers care (even if only by proxie through US News.) Absolutely we can question whether, pragmatics of the current legal job market aside, it makes sense to care what academics think. But that is another question.
The Yale grad might (MIGHT) pull ahead. It depends on who mentors him.
And it is true that some legal employers care where you went to school. Hell, some legal employers care what you got for a grade in your first year of law school — even a decade later. Some legal employers care if you are black, a woman, or if your dad attended the right prep school.
If you want to select your law school based on U.S. News rankings, go ahead. I did. I wish that I hadn’t. I had the opportunity to take classes at U.F. law during a post JD master’s program, and got MUCH better instruction, MUCH better mentoring, MUCH better classmates, and actually got prepared to practice there. At Gtown, I got little more than a brand name.
The only reason the US News rankings mean a thing is because people with an inability to think for themselves (like hiring partners who give a shit about how U.S. News ranked an applicant’s school) allow them to have meaning.
Vault’s survey threatens that. I can see how it might upset some people.
You seem to eschew analysis in favor of anecdote, subjective observation, and gut reaction. I wonder whether you consider this a useful and proper method of debate.
Ok, provide me with your statistical analysis of why the US News rankings are more useful to a prospective law student than the Vault rankings.
Then provide me with your statistical data that back up the position that what a group of professors, who never practiced law in their lives (or at least not for the past decade), think really matters.
Better yet, come out from behind your anonymity so that we can figure out your motivation for clutching your US News rankings as if they were ashes found inside the ark of the covenant.
Statistical analysis (or, more broadly, empirical evidence generally) is not the only antidote to bad analysis.
My position on the value of professors’ opinions is not that they *really* matter. Nor is my position on traffic signals premised on some belief that green and red *really* mean go and stop. Of course there is a key difference between the two cases, namely that a priori the decision to assign the meaning ‘go’ to the color green and ‘stop’ to red is more or less arbitrary, while the decision to assign meaning to professors’ opinions regarding the quality of law schools is based in part on a supposed a priori correlation. Now we can question the existence of that a priori correlation, but we also must take the world as we find it. If we want to judge the quality of law schools based in part on employment prospects, and if for whatever reason employment prospects actually correlate with professors’ opinions, then the quality of law schools actually correlates with professors’ opinions.
I think the US News rankings are deeply flawed, that they provide unfortunate incentives to law schools to game the system, and that people should take them less seriously. But flawed does not equal meaningless.
I am a non-practicing law school graduate. I attended a middling university and a law school that is highly ranked by both US News and Vault. I think rankings are inherently and practically flawed, but clearly I benefit by their being taken seriously. In any event I think my analysis speaks for itself, but you may impute motivation if you wish.
Ahhh…. we have found common ground after all, AND, I think that you finally drilled your point through my thick skull with the traffic signal analogy. (thanks for not giving up on me!)
You wrote: I think the US News rankings are deeply flawed, that they provide unfortunate incentives to law schools to game the system, and that people should take them less seriously. But flawed does not equal meaningless.
On that I agree. They are flawed. And I will concede that they are meaningful in as much as we give them meaning. I love the traffic signal analogy!
Let me offer a little twist on it. Although green for go is arbitrary, the world does work better if we all agree that something needs to stand for “go.” Otherwise we all crash into each other, right? So there is a social good in us all getting together and agreeing that green and red mean go and stop.
The US News rankings are more akin to us all agreeing to follow a certain superstition. Just because it is superstition doesn’t mean it is meaningless.
I think that perhaps we can agree that the U.S. News rankings are a convenient superstition that most, if not virtually all, of the profession follows. I accept this. And, with this acceptance I recognize that I must concede the point that the rankings are not, “meaningless.” In fact, it is probably wise for a prospective student to follow them, because you are right… a Yale grad will have more opportunities presented to him than a Michigan grad… simply because of the superstitious belief in the US News rankings.
Just like it is a good idea for an Atheist who wants to run for public office to show up at church and profess at least a passing belief in god. Maybe there is no god, maybe god is a superstition, but one can not discount the impact of a professed belief in the prevailing superstition.
So, as I try and encourage others to drop harmful superstitions like religion… I try and encourage others to drop harmful superstitious beliefs in the US News rankings.
In my personal opinion, we would all be better off without either.
So, I guess I have to conclude by saying that a) you’re right, and b) you’ve helped me to better articulate what it is I was trying to say.
Thanks!
I’m so happy we were able to find our way to some understanding! Of course, I think there’s probably still much we disagree about, but perhaps it’s best to go out on a high note? Nice chatting with you.
I have always learned more from those who disagree with me than those who agree with me. Please come back to argue any time!