climbing the endless ladder of prestige.
leaving the U.S. News rankings is all bark, no bite
🎶 SYNESTHESIA! - YAMEII​
As I'm sure you may have heard by now, I'm publishing my book with Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Random House! I am beyond ecstatic to be able to talk openly about everything, and rest assured--I vlogged the whole book deal process that will be posted on YouTube. I always wondered what getting a book deal entailed, and now I know--a lot of crying and sitting alone, punctuated by moments of hope. I've begun lining up interviews for my project, so if you have something to say about biglaw (on- or off-the-record, it's up to you!), please fill out this form. The more I talk to people about their experiences and what they think, even if it's not for inclusion in my book, the more my thoughts crystallize and the better my book will be! The likely publication date is spring 2025, so buckle up--this is going to be a long and exciting journey!
what it really means to "leave" the law school rankings.
The U.S. News and World Report started ranking schools in 1983, starting with colleges. It began ranking law schools annually starting in 1990, and its ranking is where the term "T14," or Top 14, comes from. The problem with the U.S. News rankings, at least for law schools, is that so much of the rankings methodology is based on one thing: prestige. In fact, 61% of the U.S. News ranking can be attributed to prestige--40% from the "Quality Assessment," essentially surveys to legal academics and lawyers about the prestige of legal institutions, and 21% from the "Selectivity" of the school, essentially whether the median LSAT/GRE and GPA are high and the acceptance rate low. The dictionary definition of prestige is:
(noun) widespread respect and admiration felt for someone or something on the basis of a perception of their achievements or quality
(emphasis added). Yes, that's right--prestige is about the perception of achievements or quality.
The problem with relying on perception is that humans are incredibly susceptible to first impressions and confirmation bias, even when faced with facts or new information that contradict the initial thought. In 1975, a Stanford study presented undergraduates with pairs of written notes, telling the undergrads that one note was fake and one was real. The students were asked to sort the notes into the two categories (fake or real) and were later given a score of how many notes they had correctly identified out of the 25 pairs of notes. Some students were given a high score--24--while others were given a low score--10. The researchers, however, then revealed that the scores were fictitious. The implication was, of course, that being labeled a "high scorer" did not necessarily mean that one scored better at the task, in reality.
Despite this new information, the "high scorers" estimated that they still performed significantly better than the average student, and the "low scorers" predicted that they performed significantly worse than average. Even though the students had been told that there was no evidence to back up the initial categorizations, the positive or negative emanations from those initial categorizations still stayed with them.
Now, imagine these undergrads applying to law school. When trying to research which law schools to apply to, they consult the U.S. News rankings and read all of the online posts about the T14. They apply, go to law school, graduate, and then one day receive a survey from U.S. News asking them to rank law schools on a scale of 1 (marginal) to 5 (outstanding). The Stanford study suggests that even if the lawyers were informed that the previous U.S. News rankings were a sham, they would still generally align with the old rankings--because humans are not inclined to change their minds.
This is why, after some thought, I'm unmoved by the bevy of announcements from certain (higher-ranked) law schools about "leaving" or "boycotting" the U.S. News rankings. While the law schools may have good intentions for protesting against the rankings, it's not lost on me that the higher-ranked schools are the very ones who can afford to "leave," or "withdraw," or whatever they want to call it--they will nonetheless be buoyed by the preexisting positive emanations from their, oh, thirty-plus years of rankings dominance. Plus, they'll reap the positive PR from this superficially transgressive move.
I hope this isn't overly cynical, particularly during the holiday season, as I really do hope that my cynicism is disproven. In fact, there is a way for these ~tRaNSgReSSivE~ law schools to put more force behind their highly publicized announcements. A YouTube commenter brought up a simple yet elegant idea: "it would be impressive if those prestigious institutions that withdrew became early adopters of a new ranking system."
Bingo.
If these institutions care about the things they purport to care about, if they want to push against the ills of the current system, it isn't enough to simply "leave" the current system. After all, U.S. News announced that it fully intends to continue ranking the schools which have left, which is completely viable given the rankings' large reliance on public data. Leaving a system--throwing up one's hands in frustration and futility--does very little to correct the matters which led to the frustration and feeling of futility in the first place. (It reminds me of the "live off the grid" champions who fervently believe that by living in rural areas with no access to the outer world or electronics, they are somehow bettering the very world which they find so unbearable.) The schools that have withdrawn need to take advantage of this momentary vacuum which they have created to present and champion an alternative rankings system that takes into account the values missing from U.S. News--public interest service, diversity, financial aid, among others. The creation of an alternative rankings is necessary for, as Dean Gerken of Yale Law puts it, the legal industry to "pursue our own path forward as we work to advance legal education."
🔖 open tabs
After a crazy year for biglaw laterals in 2021 and the tech layoffs in 2022, we all probably should have expected it, but we didn't: layoffs at biglaw firms with tech clients, like Cooley. One thing I've noticed about law firms is that they can be short-sighted when it comes to things like hiring, business development, and culture. Hiring bodies when demand is high makes sense in the moment, but very little thought seems to be given by hiring partners about what to do with associates when demand is low. Biglaw in particular is a risk-averse sector by nature, making the layoffs all the more jarring to associates and law students alike. I've been thinking a lot about the business of running a law firm lately for my book, and I wonder if legal tech companies like Lawtrades and Priori might present opportunities for reimagining both how firms operate and how lawyers work.
I went to see Yameii in concert last week. Yes--inspired by the crowds waiting to see Vtubers IRL at Anime NYC, I went to see a virtual 19-year-old woman with the voice of Vocaloid AVANNA perform in real life. I'm still processing what it felt like to see a virtual person perform IRL, but I do want to say that it is amazing what technology can do. Yameii moved with all of the awkwardness of a real person onstage, and her augmented reality portrayal felt like the future. I began wondering whether virtual singers might be able to play at multiple venues every night and what that would mean for the future of music and the music industry. All food for thought, particularly as I head into teaching Intellectual Property in the Digital Age in January...
One week of my class is devoted to IP issues around celebrities--that is, right of publicity and name, image and likeness rights, among others. Historically, the NCAA's rule was that college athletes could not exploit their name, image and likeness (NIL) for profits. Starting last year, after a negative ruling at the Supreme Court, the NCAA began rolling back its prior rule. Which sounds good, right? Now college athletes will be able to profit off of their NIL rather than solely earning thousands--if not millions--of dollars for the school? Not exactly. As with all sudden rule changes, the NCAA has left a vacuum and a potential area of chaos--leaving high school athletes open to exploitation.​
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