My take on ratings (and why they seem to matter so much)

As several of the links on this blog profess, I spend a decent amount of time skimming through the forums on TLS. I'm always amazed at how much of the focus is on the ranking of a particular school. I know everybody on that site wants Big Law so they can make Big Money (and work Big Hours) and they think the best way to achieve that goal is to attend a T14 law school (why it's the top 14 and not the top 16 or 19 or any other random number is something that I have yet to figure out). I'm sure there is some justification for this. On campus interviews and all of that are more likely to be focused on the top schools, maybe? I do have an idea about why there is so much emphasis on rankings in law school.

The curriculum at one law school is not likely to be much different from the curriculum at another. They all teach basically the same information to students who are all about the same age who have similar backgrounds, at least in terms of professional experience. All things being equal, how else can you tell the difference between one candidate and another other than looking at where they went to law school and how well they did while they were there? Graduates from a chemistry program have several levels of differentiation, what area did they do research in? lab skills? how many publications? which journals? how involved were they in preparing the manuscripts? grades (like any one really cares about PhD grades, it's all about the research)? Grades and school are the best way to differentiate law school grades. That's also why people are so eager to make law review or do moot court of something like that. You need something like that to make you stand out in the crowd.

No matter where you attend law school, success will be a function of how much effort you put in while you are there. Simply attending Harvard, Yale, or Stanford will not write your ticket to that plush Big Law job. It might make it easier to get there, but somebody who attends a school a little down the rankings of USNWR who worked very hard and was committed to making law school a successful endeavor could out-hustle somebody from a "better" school for the same job. What you get out of anything is ultimately a product of what you put in.