Tuesday, March 27, 2007 3:25 PM
Hat tip to MoneyLaw for pointing out a post at Empirical Legal Studies entitled Vault Top 25 Underrated Schools: What Does It Mean?
You may have seen headlines this week related to Vault's Top 25 Most Underrated Law Schools. According to Vault,
It's decision time for aspiring lawyers who are choosing where to get their JDs in the coming months.
To help Vault members identify potential under-the-radar gems, we asked legal recruiters to tell us which schools they think are most underrated. We've taken their responses and compiled our inagural ranking of Vault's Top 25 Most Underrated Law Schools...
...Vault's Top 25 Most Underrated Law Schools is derived from 512 votes this past January and February cast by legal recruiting professionals (including law firm recruiting managers, law firm hiring partners and corporate counsel) throughout the United States.
Recruiters were asked to name law schools that, based on their experience as hiring managers, are underrated.
Writing at Empirical Legal Studies, Bill Henderson noted
As I read the list, I wondered, what is the practical implication of a law school being underrated by the people who make hiring decisions for entry level lawyers? Presumably, it means that graduates of certain law schools tend to perform better than their school's U.S. News ranking would suggest; thus, legal employers are more likely to hire them.
If this is true, what is the source of superior performance? Here are two possibilities:
- Stronger Students. Some schools may enroll a stronger student body than their rank might suggest.
- Better Education. Some law schools may equip graduates with more or better skills than other schools of comparable rank
Based on some preliminary statistical analysis, there is fairly clear quantitative evidence for the first hypothesis. There is also some qualitative evidence for the second--enough to warrant some additional research.
These research questions are really important to the ranking debate because their answers could reveal a mechanism by which some students will discount USN. If an "underrated" school offers a better entree to coveted legal employers, why go to the higher ranked school, especially if the underrated school costs significantly less? Law schools that understand these dynamics are in a better overall competitive position.
Mr. Henderson then elaborates on these comments in a well thought out post that concludes with some thoughts on possible relationships between "underrated" rankings like Vault's list and the U.S. News ranking. Great stuff. Click any of the links above or here, Vault Top 25 Underrated Schools: What Does It Mean?, to dive in.