Comments on: Dispelling the myths of lawyer education

By: Carolyn Elefant

Carolyn Elefant — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 04:01:53 +0000

Jordan,
While I agree 100 percent that law schools and firms misplace priorities, the truth is that many law firms do place much more emphasis on class rank than grades. That is why firms will often hire the top 4-5 people from even the so-called 2nd and 3rd tier law schools. And on a local level, firms will give preference to the top 5 percent of local grads over middle of the road grads at top schools. My point is that even this study suggests that class rank is an indicator of performance and thus, in some respects, it does support a conclusion opposite to what some have gleaned from it, i.e., that grades don’t matter.
Second, though this is anectodal, I should also add that when I graduated college, one of the top 10 law schools definitely favored grades over LSAT scores. Two of my college classmates had rather mediocre LSAT scores, well below the reported average for that school,. However, both were summa grads, and ranked #1 in their respective departments and were both accepted (and went on to successful albeit conventional legal careers). So I think that there are some law schools that recognize do acknowlege that LSATs are pretty worthless.

By: Doug Jasinski

Doug Jasinski — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 21:56:19 +0000

Very topical post – I came across another article on the ABA Journal website this morning about law school rank and GPA not being very good indicators of success at biglaw. Instead, the study identified 12 other factors that are better predictors of success. They play a bit of cat-and-mouse with what those 12 factors are but one is participation in group hobbies and collegiate level athletics. athletics.http://www.abajournal.com/weekly/school_rank_and_gpa_arent_the_best_predictors_of_biglaw_success
It’s interesting fodder for anyone involved in lawyer and law student recruitment.

By: Anne

Anne — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:46:07 +0000

This has to be one of the more depressing articles I’ve read recently — not yours, Jordan, but Barton’s. It’s truly disheartening to discover that the connection between research and teaching appears to be totally chimerical. And worse, the findings by Barton (and Marsh and Hattie) support both academic administration’s contention that we’re teaching about as well as we ever will, so that scholarship in teaching is a big fat waste of time, and academic teachers’ contention that if they’d only give us a bit of a break from teaching we’d be much more productive researchers, regardless of how well (or ill) we’re teaching. The prospect that teaching and research really are “same planet, different worlds” offers a challenge that goes well beyond law schools; every institution of higher learning should confront these findings, follow them up, and decide what they mean for the future of university education. The temptation will be to continue the balkanisation of the university — let the teachers teach, the researchers research (and bring in the big money), and the administrators confirm the absolute division between them (with the rewards and perks going to the researchers, of course, while the teachers slog away in the trenches). But a finding of negative correlation between “time spent on teaching” and “improvement in teaching evaluations” also suggests that those of us who value teaching can relax, at least a little, and let our teaching personalities find their own level, turn our attention away from the in loco parentis tendency, and focus on what makes our working lives meaningful … and bearable. Still, knowing how these findings could be used, and feeling perhaps that all the time I spend on my students may have minimal impact, is a bitter pill to swallow half way through the term!