April 10, 2003
Endorsement!
My earlier advice on school selection and rankings has been endorsed by an actual lawyer. This is quite exciting. Greengourd's post is quite excellent and so you should go read it.
Ambivalent Imbroglio (not yet a lawyer, but sure to be a good one) was obviously much helped by visiting the law schools on his. He agrees that talking to as many random people as possible is a good way to find out about the school. And no, not the weird random-type folk, but ones stochastically selected from the general law student population. Ambivalent Imbroglio also passes along the location of the full U.S. News Rankings, so you are no longer stuck with just the ordinal list. I'd imagine that it won't be there for long. Personally, I think the reason that U.S. News uses fuzzy methodology:
To arrive at a school's rank, we examined the distribution of the data for each quality indicator. Where the data deviated significantly from the normal distribution, we used standard statistical techniques to make the distribution of the values closer to that of a normal curve. We then standardized the value of these indicators about its mean. The weights applied to the indicators reflect the relative importance of the indicators, as developed in consultation with experts in each field. . . .
is that it makes it easier to make out an infringement claim on the data. But that's just my take.
Liable chats a bit about the
importance of rankings to firm recruiters, while
Andrew Sinclair denies they have any power in enticing recruiters to come on campus whatsoever (no permalinks, scroll down).*
Law Student's Journal makes a
good point about bias (which I alluded to briefly in my original post): no matter how good you are, and why you did it, the lower ranked the school you attend is, the harder you're going to have to work to prove yourself.
* This post was not in response to mine -- in fact it was earlier. I thought I'd link to it anyway.
UPDATE: If you have problems getting to the full rankings above, try this
site. [Via
Lawschool.com. And looky! I got a link!]
UPDATE II: And looky,
another link, from JD2B! Let's just say that visitors to the site are at an all-time high.
UPDATE III: Oopsy. I forgot to publish the entry.