Top Law Schools

I hope this is in the right section, but I was just thinking. Stanford is ranked really high, and I know they’re grouped with HYS, but how’s come they never really are talked about in particular? For example, there have only been two Stanford SCOTUS justices. So I guess what makes them so great and also why does “a Stanford grad” sound not as impressive as “a Harvard grad”?

And this isn’t a troll question or anything. I’m just a measly TT law student, so if this offends anyone from Stanford, sorry lol. That’s just my observations. Maybe I’m just ignorant, but I just don’t feel like I hear about them for what they’re actually worth.

They're a relative newcomer to the top tier - for a long time there was a noticeable prestige gap between HY and the rest, and Stanford has only consistently been in that conversation for a decade or two.

Also, it's a smaller school that focuses on the West Coast, so there's just not much penetration into DC fedgov, or NYC corporate firms, etc.; social circles which dominate a lot of these conversations.

I'm pretty sure most SLS grads are okay with this.

The Lsat Airbender wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 26, 2020 10:46 pm

They're a relative newcomer to the top tier - for a long time there was a noticeable prestige gap between HY and the rest, and Stanford has only consistently been in that conversation for a decade or two.

Also, it's a smaller school that focuses on the West Coast, so there's just not much penetration into DC fedgov, or NYC corporate firms, etc.; social circles which dominate a lot of these conversations.

I'm pretty sure most SLS grads are okay with this.

Thanks! So what do you think made them climb to the top given the long-standing tradition of just Harvard and Yale?

proudgunner wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 26, 2020 11:12 pm

The Lsat Airbender wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 26, 2020 10:46 pm

They're a relative newcomer to the top tier - for a long time there was a noticeable prestige gap between HY and the rest, and Stanford has only consistently been in that conversation for a decade or two.

Also, it's a smaller school that focuses on the West Coast, so there's just not much penetration into DC fedgov, or NYC corporate firms, etc.; social circles which dominate a lot of these conversations.

I'm pretty sure most SLS grads are okay with this.

Thanks! So what do you think made them climb to the top given the long-standing tradition of just Harvard and Yale?

Tons of spending per-student, consistently the 3rd-best LSAT/GPA medians in the game (I guess Columbia has an argument in its 173 years, but those are rare), and leveraging the reputation of the Stanford name, which has done very well in the past half-century astride Silicon Valley and which many people sincerely believe is the most prestigious university on Earth.

Those three things, together, hit pretty much all of the US News rankings formula. Small class size helps a lot with the first two factors and also makes the school seem way more selective/desirable than Harvard despite only getting about 50% of cross-admits. Being insanely hard to get into has a self-perpetuating Veblen effect where people assume your students are the cream of the crop, even if the 1L class is weaker on paper than Harvard's.

There are Chicago/Columbia homers, like Brian Leiter, who would argue that this is all more reputation than substance, and that there isn't anything intrinsic about SLS that warrants putting it at #2 or even in the top 5, but they're a faint minority at this point.

Many decades ago, Harvard, Yale, and Michigan were considered to be in a class by themselves among law schools. Stanford's rise has a lot to do with the success of Silicon Valley technology firms and with Stanford's surging endowment.

Currently, I agree with the post above that places significance on the difference between Stanford's West coast location and focus on Silicon Valley tech firms versus Harvard and Yale's Northeast corridor focus.

CanadianWolf wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 28, 2020 12:03 pm

Many decades ago, Harvard, Yale, and Michigan were considered to be in a class by themselves among law schools. Stanford's rise has a lot to do with the success of Silicon Valley technology firms and with Stanford's surging endowment.

Currently, I agree with the post above that places significance on the difference between Stanford's West coast location and focus on Silicon Valley tech firms versus Harvard and Yale's Northeast corridor focus.

An interesting corollary question here is “what happened to Michigan?” Does a parallel explanation (smaller Relative endowment, less spending per student, the decline of Detroit as an economic center) suffice to explain the decline, or is something else going on?

Hog wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 28, 2020 1:55 pm

CanadianWolf wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 28, 2020 12:03 pm

Many decades ago, Harvard, Yale, and Michigan were considered to be in a class by themselves among law schools. Stanford's rise has a lot to do with the success of Silicon Valley technology firms and with Stanford's surging endowment.

Currently, I agree with the post above that places significance on the difference between Stanford's West coast location and focus on Silicon Valley tech firms versus Harvard and Yale's Northeast corridor focus.

An interesting corollary question here is “what happened to Michigan?” Does a parallel explanation (smaller Relative endowment, less spending per student, the decline of Detroit as an economic center) suffice to explain the decline, or is something else going on?

There aren't a lot of formal rankings prior to the USNWR, but back in 1974 somebody did a poll of law school deans, and the top schools (in order) were: Harvard, Yale, Michigan, Columbia, Chicago, Stanford. See source.

USNWR started ranking in 1987, and the numbers are pretty well documented. In 1987 the top schools were Harvard/Yale (tied #1), Michigan (#3), Stanford/Columbia (tied #4), and Chicago (#6). The second USNWR rankings were in 1990. You had some jumbled up variant of the current T6, with Harvard down at #5 and Chicago at #2.

At that point the rankings became an annual thing. Michigan cropped up at #6 in 1991/1992. But since ~1993 it's been locked in with Yale at 1, Harvard/Stanford filling 2-3, and some permutation of CCN at 4-6.

It may be a coincidence that Michigan dropped in prestige around the time that USNWR started consistently rankings schools. But the other explanation is that having a consistent/annual ranking system becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, and Michigan was on the losing end.

dvlthndr wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 28, 2020 4:52 pm

It may be a coincidence that Michigan dropped in prestige around the time that USNWR started consistently rankings schools. But the other explanation is that having a consistent/annual ranking system becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, and Michigan was on the losing end.

This, imo, is exactly what happens with rankings. Very few (no?) students bank on a school's future reputation. Nobody is picking Cornell today because they think Cornell is going to be a T6 in 2040. So, when a ranking comes out and says [insert school] is [insert rank], it's bound to attract the type of students you'd expect to find at that rank. Then, an amassing of those types of students shapes the school's incoming statistics, peer reputation, etc. going forward and it largely stagnates in ranking.

You only see crazy movement outside of the T20 because those law schools are much more regional and are subject to the ebbs and flows of residents in their particular region applying to law school and/or state funding; whereas, the T14 and to a lesser extent the T20, have a national pool of talent that applies every year and large endowments.

Some schools are also going to move up and down in the rankings long-term due to the geographic strength of their state (I expect this negatively affected Michigan). As TX continues to boom as both a legal market and a population, I wouldn't be surprised if UT becomes a stronger player over the next twenty years. The Midwest was hot shit in the 60s-80s. Detroit was a bustling, prosperous urban center, and then it went on decades of economic decline. Right now, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, etc. are all struggling to maintain populations. If those legal markets start to decline, it's hard to think that the employment statistics, reputation, and ranking of schools in the region won't take a hit.