Question About The National Law Journal's Annual Rankings

Maybe I've been really naive but I'm a bit confused by The National Law Journal's annual rankings based on the percentage of grads who landed first year BigLaw jobs:

Here are the Top 10 in the NLJ ranking followed by the percentage of grads who landed first-year positions at the nation’s largest firms.

1. Northwestern University School of Law - 55.9 percent
2. Columbia Law School - 54.4 percent
3. Stanford Law School - 54.1 percent
4. University of Chicago Law School – 53.1 percent
5. University of Virginia School of Law – 52.8 percent
6. University of Michigan Law School – 51 percent
7. University of Pennsylvania Law School - 50.8 percent
8. New York University School of Law – 50.1
9. UC Berkeley School of Law – 50 percent
10. Duke Law School - 49.8 percent

Harvard and Yale failed to crack the top 10 but I'm guessing that's because a lot of their grads take clerkships and government jobs. My question is: Really? Only 55.9% for the "top law school"? When I applied to law school, the T14 schools made it seem like at least 75% or more of their graduates ended up in BigLaw while the rest went onto really prestigious government and public interest jobs or clerkships. I think I even read at a T14 website while applying that 99% of graduates went onto biglaw jobs or clerkships. Even though the schools above can boast more than the vast majority of law schools out there, I think that even the top schools have been guilty of false advertising and stretching their numbers. From these numbers it looks to me that students at the top 10 schools listed above are still vulnerable to unemployment if they aren't in the top 50% of their class. Am I missing something here? What do you think?

UPDATE: The Jobless Juris Doctor alerts us to a Harvard Law School newspaper article about many Harvard 3Ls not getting job offers. It looks like the T14 is indeed no longer safe after all.

Every Elite Group Needs a Bit of Propaganda to Entice the Masses.

The National Law Journal is a bloody rag, but I read it from time to time to keep up with the propaganda machine, aka The Legal Industrial Complex.


So, I was combing through it on-line and I came upon this disgusting article--most likely written to pump up the egos of everyone in the Good Ole Boy's club and to snag OLs into the machine.  Oh yah, a third purpose is to make lawyers who haven't made it, such as myself, feel like shit.  My comments are in purple below, and they are mostly addressed to the Venable Associate that wrote this dirty diaper of an article.


"Oh no!" My wife and I were just beginning a two-week vacation when she remembered the juror questionnaire. She had recently received the notice and, naturally, the deadline to respond fell right in the middle of our vacation. Intending to submit the questionnaire before leaving, she had taken the forms to her office, but forgotten to complete and mail them.

"Call your people and have them take care of it," I said.

"My people?" she replied.

This got me about one of the benefits of working in a big firm that I had been taking for granted. After several years of practice, there are a few dozen attorneys that I know well enough to call friends. They are the kind of friends that I would trust with my assets and the well-being of my family, the kind of people I would trust to sign my name with all the attendant repercussions. 


What about the associates that will step on you on their way up the the partnership totem pole?  Yes, there are those that you can trust, but unless your wife is a solo, I don't see how your esteemed associates at Venable are any more trustworthy--especially when they are constantly looking for ways to distinguish themselves from the crowd.  In all likelihood, if they were to do something for you, it's because you are never assigned to a case by your lonesome.  Instead, every case is given a  team of attorneys--all equally responsible to make sure things are done correctly. And if things are not done correctly, i.e. one attorney forgets to file the juror questionnaire, all of you will feel the wrath of the senior partner on the case.  Stop kidding yourself.  They are all operating in CYA (cover your ass) mode.  This is not a quality that is unique to big law or successful attorneys.  People are people, wherever they end up in life. 


I started to think through the people in my firm that I know and trust. As I thought through the list, I realized that I had not known some of them for long. It was not the length of the friendships that made them reliable. It was that they were attorneys with three common qualities: they were meticulously honest, generous, and responsible.

Obviously, honesty is a trait expected of everyone, attorneys and non-attorneys alike. But for attorneys, honesty is more than a virtue; it is a professional qualification. There are professional rules of conduct addressing honesty, and all of the oaths of admission that I have taken have addressed it in one way or another. Perhaps then it is no surprise that the people I work with are meticulously honest. 


Oh yah, sure... attorneys are more honest than most.  That's why Mark Drier, founder of Drier LLP, and probably a millionaire several times over, created a Ponzi scheme that would have been the main news if Bernie Madoff didn't create a bigger one.  I'm not going to say that lawyers are more likely to be crooks than other people--but to say that you and your associates in BigLaw are MORE honest than most because of oaths and bullshit is just that, BULLSHIT.  I'm wondering if you're trying to fix our BAD reputation, or trying to distinguish the Good Ole Boys from the shyster solos.  Why would you even write this nonsense down and publish it, like it's fact. It's not.  BigLaw attorneys are just as conniving and greedy as the soloshit lawyers.  They just have the resources to not get caught.

So what about generosity?

Law firms are among the largest contributors to various charitable causes, and pro bono work is only one way in which attorneys are generous to society at large. Within the firm, there is also a wealth of generosity on an interpersonal level. Hardly a week goes by where one coworker or another does not offer to buy me lunch, or vice versa. Even more compelling is the overarching generosity with time. Despite high billing requirements and the pressures of large firm life, I have rarely been turned away when seeking help or advice from another. 


Haven't you heard of tax breaks based on charitable contribution?  Are you seriously trying to say that BigLaw gives out of the goodness of their hearts.  BULLSHIT.  Also, if you seek out advice and it is freely given, it's because all of the attorneys at the firm are responsible for getting this right.  If the firm doesn't, it won't get paid.

Which brings me to responsibility.

Naturally, it takes a certain level of responsibility to make it through college and law school with the level of performance required to get a job in a large firm. Meeting the demands of large firm clients requires even more responsibility – with time, money, and deadlines – if an attorney is simply to survive. This makes a big firm attorney the perfect friend to have when you need to be confident that something will get done – such as a fax response to a juror questionnaire.

Twice in the last week I have forgotten an important document related to personal business outside the office. Each time, I have been relieved to know that I had people I could trust to go through my personal documents, whom I knew would take the time to do it simply because I had asked them to, and whom I could rely on to send it to me quickly, just as they had promised. 


I think this little nugget was put in here to make all of the lemming think that those who don't succeed in law school are irresponsible people.  That's not true.  Most, if not all, of law students were always responsible good students and they falsely assume that this trend will continue in law school.  And the flunkies of law school don't change once they get there.  They are still responsible.  They are still attending class.  They are still doing the the assignments.  They are still studying.  However, they fail despite all of that.  It's a crap shoot.  I would argue, at least in my law school, that the best students weren't more responsible than the others.  Sometimes, they were more underhanded.  Books would be missing from the Library Shelf when you needed them for the ONE MEMO that you draft first semester.  These same Law School superstars would lie and say things like, "I haven't even opened a book yet" to throw off the others and make them think it's too early to be studying for finals.  I had an awful experience once where this BITCH frenemy called me and said she wanted to study with me at Borders. I told her that's fine, but I am studying Property and I'm not prepared to talk to her about Constitutional Law.  So, she could sit there and study ConLaw, but don't distract me by talking about it.  What did she do?  She sat there and quizzed me for hours on ConLaw to make herself feel better about all that she studied and to distract me from studying for my intended subject.  Is that responsible, or is that strategic??

It's easy to take something for granted when we have never known it to be any other way. For my part, I'm glad that my wife's comment prompted me to stop and take the time to appreciate how fortunate I am to be surrounded not only by professional colleagues, but also by trusted friends. 


Life must be great on top, huh?  My point is, after reading this article, don't think that you belong in big law if you are honest, generous and responsible.  It means nothing.  I am all of those things and I'm unemployed.

The ABA Doing a Whole Lot of Nothing about Law School Rankings...

Let me start off by saying that I absolutely hate the ABA and everything it does and doesn't stand for.  What angers me more than its mere existence, are stories published by the ABA that almost fool me into believing that the ABA is concerned about lawyers--only to find out that they are hiding the ace.  The primary concern always comes back to BigLaw.  Sorry, I don't do card analogies--but you catch my drift.

Ran into this story put out by the ABA. Apparently, the ABA is thinking about... getting to the point where... they may want to study how Law Schools and Law Firms are ranked. It's called: ABA to Study How Law Firms & Schools Are Ranked.  Notice the strategic placing of "Law School" first.

Let me give you the background.  U.S. News & World Report [hereinafter USN&WR] has decided to rank Law Firms in the same manner that they have always ranked Law Schools.  Well, this isn't going to happen until the ABA takes a good long look at their methods.  The ABA was alerted to the fact that rankings could be detrimental, because of its affect on the Law School Community:

“[The U.S. News] rankings have a profound impact on the law schools. The deans hate it,” said past New York bar President Vincent Buzard to the NLJ. “It seemed to us that the ABA should look into the methodology of these rankings and ensure that they are reliable and aren’t based on inadequate data.”

(As a side note, the ADA does NOT allow USN&WR to rank Dental Schools.--I need the source, but I know that to be true from my dealings with the dental community.)

 Apparently, the debate about Resolution 10A was FIERCE. But they voted in favor of the resolution stating "that the American Bar Association examine efforts to publish a national, state, territorial and local ranking of law firms and law schools." And this resolution passed by a narrow margin. This resolution is filled with empty language, promises and inaction, it's almost a non-resolution.  However, contrary to my sixth sense which told me that the ABA is a lying, cheating, scumbag, I felt my heart rate go up at the idea that the resolution might have some bearing on the Law School Industrial Complex.  But then I read on to see that the ABA's primary concern was 'whether “law firms will be induced to change their methods of operations and drive up the cost of legal services to the public in the same way that the cost of legal education has been distorted” based on LAW FIRM rankings. 

So, this isn't about Law Schools at all.  Rather, it's about Law Firms.  But implicit in that statement is acknowledgement that Law Schools have fraudulently driven up the cost of legal education based on rankings.  I have to sort this out in my head. They know about the effects that rankings have on the cost of Law School tuition and they are concerned that Law Firm rankings might have the same effect on the cost of Big Law to Big Business?  Let's solve the problem by dealing with Rankings as it relates to both Law Schools and Law Firms. So, the ABA stands for "American Business Association"???????  Or, are the ABA cronies working as partners in firms that may not make the First Tier Law Firm cut?  Would they still be entitled to T14 law grads--when they start hiring again in a few years?  I frankly don't understand (a) why they are feigning concern about rankings and Law School tuition on this late date and (b) why they are so against ranking Big Law.  What's good for the goose is good for the gander in my opinion.

"In a report accompanying the resolution, the measure’s sponsor—the New York State Bar Association—said “we know, based upon the experience of the U.S. News & World Report’s ranking of law schools, that there will be significant issues regarding the validity of the rankings.”"

Never mind the fact that I don't agree that the rankings propel Law School tuition into the sky.  These guys really need to get off the LSD. Even fourth year toilets are outrageously expensive.  Rankings are based on fraudulent data and even the lowest of the law/low, (i.e. Tom M. Cooley School of Law or Charlotte School of Law) seem to be a good option for law students.  After all, not one law school comes out and says, "30% of our last graduating class found employment.  But of that, 15% are waiting tables, driving cabs, baby-sitting, homeless panhandling."  Fraud... Like this "rankings" section of the Tom M. Cooley where it ranks #12 in the Nation.  I can't even make heads or tails of that Ranking Chart.  Can you?  And don't be fooled by Charlotte's cheap tuition.   They list the tuition per semester.  Is that fraud? I think so. 
 
And when it gets to self-reporting and the USN&WR, it's even worse. 
 
So, although the ABA article was entitled: ABA to Study How Law Firms & Schools Are Ranked--It should have been entitled: "ABA PUTS GAVEL DOWN AT RANKING LAW FIRMS AFTER ACKNOWLEDGING THAT THE SYSTEM OF RANKING LAW SCHOOLS IS RAMPANT WITH FRAUD."