Speaker 1 (00:00): Hey guys, welcome back to my channel,
the best place for new and aspiring lawyers on all things, law school, the legal industry
and the lawyering life. I'm Angela Vorpahl of angelavorpahl.com And the law school network on
Facebook. I'm a law school strategy coach, helping law students get the grades and
strategically master the next three years so that you can start your life and your legal career
on your own terms. If you are in law school or interested in law school, that I definitely
invite you to check out the law school network, Facebook group. It is full of over a thousand
law students and pre law students all connecting and supporting each other. I'm so incredibly proud
of the community we've built there. And I can't wait for you to be a part of it. The link will
be in the description, so definitely check it out and I'm excited to see you inside.
Speaker 1 (00:46): Okay. So in today's video, we are tackling the
issue of law school rankings, what they are, how they're determined and why they seem to matter so
much. So when we talk about law school rankings, we're talking about the U S news and world report
rankings, because yes, it is true that there are various publications that post their own rankings
of the 200 ish ABA approved law schools in the country, but far and away, the most influential
are the us news and world report ranking. So those are going to be the ones that we dive into today.
And it's really important to know what components make up these rankings because so often law
students are sort of hit over the head by the quote unquote importance of these rankings without
really knowing what goes into it, what factors into it and how, if at all, that should influence
your decision about where to go to law school. Speaker 1 (01:35):
So we're going to take a look at that, and then we're going to talk through when and how these
rankings can or should factor in to where you apply to law school and ultimately where you
decide to go. So the U S news and world report rankings are based on four major categories,
quality assessment, selectivity, placement, success, and faculty law school and library
resources. So let's take a quick look at the breakdown of each of those categories. The quality
assessment category is based on two metrics, a quality assessment done by academics. So law
school, deans and law school, faculty chairs, and a quality assessment done by legal practitioners.
So practicing lawyers and judges, and for the individuals participating in this quality
assessment, they will rank all 200 ABA approved law schools on a scale of one to five. Now in
practice, they can base their own personal ranking on anything that they feel is important.
Speaker 1 (02:29): And so just keep in mind that this tends to
perpetuate and support the law schools that have name brand recognition that have this perception
of quality and prestige and tends to hurt law schools who have less name recognition or are
lesser known. The next category. The selectivity category is determined by three metrics. The
first is the median L sat or GRE score of a law schools students. The second is the immediate
undergraduate GPA of a law school students. And the third is the law school's acceptance rates. So
a few things to keep in mind about this category. The first is to recognize that the hard numbers
themselves are what drive the rankings. And so there is no difference built in between a college
that historically inflates its GPA's versus a college that is much more competitive. The higher
GPA is still going to be more powerful. Speaker 1 (03:20):
The same thing happens with the undergraduate major itself. And so there is nothing built
in to differentiate a soft sciences or social sciences undergraduate major from a stem major.
For example, in terms of the difficulty level of the major or the competitiveness of how those
majors are graded. The last thing to keep in mind is that acceptance rate, that selectivity rating
actually incentivizes law schools to encourage students to apply so that they can then reject
them and thereby increase. There's like Tivity ranking by decreasing their acceptance rate,
moving onto the placement success category. There are five metrics underneath this category. The
first two are the percentage of law students who were able to find jobs at graduation and
within 10 months of graduation, then there's the percentage of law students who pass the bar
and the next two are actually new this year. So one is the percentage of law students
who have incurred debt at all during the time that they were in law school and the average debt
incurred by law students at that law school, a few things to keep in mind about this category.
Speaker 1 (04:27): So the employment
percentages have actually improved over time in the sense that what law schools used to do
was for any student who wasn't able to find a job upon graduation, the law schools would hire that
student on a part-time basis so that the school could improve its employment percentage numbers,
but in line with ABA reporting rules, now law schools get much higher credit.
If the law student isn't a, full-time a long-term J D required job not funded by the law school.
The other metrics to be aware of in this category are the two new ones that were added this year.
And although there was initially an excitement of the recognition that the cost of tuition has
skyrocketed at law schools and the student loan debt has inflated over the years. And there was a
hope that adding these rankings would incentivize law schools to cut the cost of tuition or increase
scholarship opportunities. Speaker 1 (05:22):
Now there's a worry that has set in that these ranking categories will actually incentivize
law schools to recruit and admit students who are generationally wealthy, who can pay these higher
costs of tuition out of pocket, thereby not incur any student loan debt and thereby increase the law
school's rankings. And this of course is a huge problem because there's also a racial disparity
between students who incur student loan debt and the amount of student loan debt they incur
versus students who come from generationally, wealthy families that are able to pay out of
pocket. So definitely keep your eye on these two metrics and we will see how they in fact,
influence law schools, behaviors over these coming years. The last category is faculty at law school
and library resources, and the three main metrics underneath this category are amount spent on
instruction and support staff, the student to faculty ratio and library resources.
Speaker 1 (06:16): And this kind of very tends to get quite
a bit of criticism because of the outdated newness of some of the metrics that it measures, including
the number of hours that a library is open to students or the number of books that a law school
has in its library, which tend to benefit the larger and more established law schools. So now,
you know, what goes into the law school rankings and the tougher question is how do you actually
use those law school rankings to play into your decision of where to apply to law school and
ultimately where to go to law school? So I think something that is helpful to understand is kind of
how the rankings are categorized. And so this is by no means an official delineation, but it's
generally accepted that the law schools are broken down into four tiers. So tier one are
law schools ranked one through 50 tier two law schools ranked 51 through a hundred tier
three law schools ranked 1 0 1 to one 50 and tier four law schools ranked 1 51 to 200.
Speaker 1 (07:12): And so as you're thinking through how to
categorize and prioritize the law schools, think through them in chunks of 50, because within each
tier it's far less important than number ranking of the law school. If it's within, for example, a
tier one, tier two, tier three, or tier four, they are generally viewed very, very equally in terms
of ranking. The next thing to understand about the rankings is that they T 14 law schools are in
a category all on their own. And so you probably have heard of the top 14 ranked law schools, which
are the law schools that are consistently ranked one through 14, over the course of many, many
years. And because of that perception of these law schools, they do open doors to a subset of job
opportunities that are much more difficult to get coming from a law school outside of the T 14.
Speaker 1 (08:02): So if you look at the us Supreme
court justices over the years overwhelmingly they come from two 14 law schools, the number
of us Supreme court clerks also overwhelmingly come from T 14, all schools, if you are looking
to set yourself up for a career in academia, be a law professor, for example, then yes,
coming from a T 14 law school will help. And there are certain top ranked law firms that exclusively
recruit from T 14 law schools. So for this small subset of job opportunities, yes, having that
name brand recognition in that prestige of the law school, you graduated from definitely does help.
But the problem comes when law students see that small section of job opportunities and kind of
view it as the end all be all were no other factors for any other law school in any other
part of the country should play in. Speaker 1 (08:50):
And that's just not the case because what you ultimately want from your law school degree is to
be able to build a life and build a legal career that you want. And for so many of us who already
know that we want to live and work in different parts of the country, or practice a particular
type of law or become financially independent sooner and not be buried by student loan debt,
going to a lower ranked law school in a region where we know we want to live and work is, and can
be a much better option. And so as inconvenient and frustrating, as I know it is choosing law
schools based purely on their rank is never going to give you a full picture of what a best fit law
school looks like for you. So I really encourage you guys to do that deep dive of asking yourself
these questions so that you can really choose a law school that reflects the goals that you have
for yourself, both in terms of what you want to do and what you want your life to look like.
Speaker 1 (09:47): And the last thing I'll say is that I
personally was faced with that dilemma between going to a higher rank law school for a higher
tuition price or going to a lower rank law school that was offering me more scholarship money in an
area with a stronger legal market. And I chose the latter. And I'm so incredibly glad that I
did. It was a wonderful, best fit choice on my part. But just to get you guys thinking about
those factors and the pieces that can come into play later down the road and how important those
are to really consider upfront. So unfortunately the best approach is to not blindly follow these
rankings, but use them as a tool to help you factor into your decision, to ultimately make
the best choice for you. All Speaker 2 (10:31):
Right, guys, I hope that was helpful. I hope that gave
Speaker 1 (10:33): You some insight into how the
rankings are created and how do you use them to find a best fit law school for you. If you
guys enjoyed the video and want to see more like it definitely hits subscribe to see new videos
coming out every other Tuesday, and definitely check out these two amazing videos over
Speaker 2 (10:47): Here as well. Congratulations
to all of those of you who are headed into law school, this cycle, and if you are headed that
Speaker 1 (10:55): Way or interested in
learning more, definitely check out the law school network, Facebook group in the link
below in the description. I can't wait to see all of you guys inside and that's it for this
Speaker 2 (11:04): Week. I'll see you guys next week. Bye.