Chicago was never ranked this low before Leiter came to town.

Obscene US News trolling Elie. Nobody legitimately believes Berkeley is better than Chicago.

I legitimately believe Berkeley is better than Chicago.

- Boalt '07

I do not believe that Berkeley is better than Chicago.

I'll betcha Scalia does.

4 = blatant Loyola Chicago trolling.

Chicago is better than NYU and Berkeley which are both TTT. Chicago sets the tone traditionally rather than following the pack. And btw I dont hear Chicago kids posting about recruiting trouble like the TTT Harvard lads

Chicago is better than NYU and Berkeley which are both TTT. Chicago sets the tone traditionally rather than following the pack. And btw I dont hear Chicago kids posting about recruiting trouble like the TTT Harvard lads

Chicago is better than NYU and Berkeley which are both TTT. Chicago sets the tone traditionally rather than following the pack. And btw I dont hear Chicago kids posting about recruiting trouble like the TTT Harvard lads

Chicago is better than NYU and Berkeley which are both TTT. Chicago sets the tone traditionally rather than following the pack. And btw I dont hear Chicago kids posting about recruiting trouble like the TTT Harvard lads

Chicago is better than NYU and Berkeley which are both TTT. Chicago sets the tone traditionally rather than following the pack. And btw I dont hear Chicago kids posting about recruiting trouble like the TTT Harvard lads

Did you even READ your own post about NYU, MysTTTal? I don't recall them abandoning grades, just changing the curves.

WTF?

I think this is great, it's a line in the sand. One side of the line is populated/guided by Yale and Boalt and the other side is Chicago. I'm glad that a Chicago is not simply conforming like the top 5 USNEWS schools (minus Yale, since they kind of started this whole thing).

Chicago is better than NYU and Berkeley which are both TTT. Chicago sets the tone traditionally rather than following the pack. And btw I dont hear Chicago kids posting about recruiting trouble like the TTT Harvard lads

Chicago is better than NYU and Berkeley which are both TTT. Chicago sets the tone traditionally rather than following the pack. And btw I dont hear Chicago kids posting about recruiting trouble like the TTT Harvard lads

Our strategy is this: we hit them in the mouth.

Chicago is better than NYU and Berkeley which are both TTT. Chicago sets the tone traditionally rather than following the pack. And btw I dont hear Chicago kids posting about recruiting trouble like the TTT Harvard lads

Chicago is better than NYU and Berkeley which are both TTT. Chicago sets the tone traditionally rather than following the pack. And btw I dont hear Chicago kids posting about recruiting trouble like the TTT Harvard lads

i'm nervous about berkeley being better than hofstranus

-nervous T-10 1L

8/9/10 & 12/13

Those comments just proved that Chicago is TTT. Learn to fucking post.

DUrrmrm asf..as.df Chicagos is bettearsfas

DAR!

Multiple posters should be summarily executed.

Don't forget Northeastern does the pass/fail too!

WOW I guess this blog is now officially a LAW STUDENT blog and no longer a lawyer blog. This is dumb and Elie is dumb for assuming that everybody knows all about the current Chicago grading system. What an idiot.

ATL,

Do you have any idea how easy it is to write a script that prevents multiple posting? The fact that a website with this kind of traffic and likely has some serious ad revenue coming in continues to maintain such a shoddy system is mindbogggling. Are you trying to go a "drudge-like old school this site is run by a junior high computer class" feel?

51, nobody knows about the current Chicago grading system.

i'm nervous

-nervous T-10 1L

The Chicago School believes in competition. At least the law school believes in competition still.

Elie, you're just sounding naive when you talk as if a school is the X best school based on the US News rankings.

I'm proud of Chicago holding the line, if they do. A law student's chances of getting a supreme court clerkship are already the highest at Yale and Chicago. No one knows how to read the Chicago grading system except feeder judges, and that's how they'd like to keep it.

Can someone try to explain the Chicago grading system? I'm curious.

"pedagogical backsliding" shush Elie, no one cares.

The Chicago Law School employs a unique grading system with a range from 155 to 186. These numerical grades convert to the more familiar alphabetical scale as follows: 155-159 = F, 160-167 = D, 168-173 = C, 174-179 = B, 180-186 = A. For classes of more than 50 students, the median grade is 177, and the number of As should approximately equal the number of Cs.
A student graduates "with honors" if a final average of 179 is attained, "with high honors" if a final average of 180.5 is attained, and "with highest honors" if a final average of 182 is attained. The latter achievement is rare; typically only one student every few years will attain the requisite 182 average. Additionally, the Law School awards two class-rank based honors at graduation. The top 10% are honored as "Order of the Coif," and the top 5% are honored as "Kirkland Scholars" (a designation created in 2006 by a $7 million donation from the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis). [5]
The grading scale was previously 55-86, but the school prefixed their grades with a "1" in 2003 to avoid confusion with traditional grading scales.

I've heard that Northwestern is the best school in Chicago and that U of C students are just a bunch of arrogant assholes who lack personality and climb all over each other's back to get to the top.

33 - Who are you? Wikipedia?

180+ = A
174-179 = B
168-173 = C
167 and lower....you don't want to know.

I would not accept the title of "Kirkland Scholar." Who wants to be branded by some corporation right out of School?

U. Chicago nerds in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0UN_ZIaYjQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K9uGmvw8cg

Add in LeiTTTer and it only gets worse.

Re: posts 4-11 et al. and to anybody else making the case that Chicago Law is better than Berkely or NYU, I simply say--SCOREBOARD! And it's not like this just happened; NYU has been ranked higher than Chicago for at least the past 5 years. Those who still think Chicago is among the top 5 law schools in this country are the same deluded souls who think that the school's economic theories are still groundbreaking and/or credible.

Get over your TTT school in your TTT city. I'm not even sure it's the best school in Chicago anymore.

180 for Lee Corso reference.

Yale and Berkeley have turned every top school into Socialists!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"I would not accept the title of "Kirkland Scholar." Who wants to be branded by some corporation right out of School?"

But the Chicago School believes that corporations and free markets embody everything good about mankind. to them, getting branded by some corporation must be like being ordained as a holy man.

You're exactly right 39, cuz the "Chicago School of ECONOMICS" came from the law school. In fact, I remember taking Torts with Milton Friedman and Contracts with Gary Becker.

Also, your scoreboard argument is meaningless because actual legal employers (not college students applying to law school) don't really give a flick about USNews.

Okay, I admit it. I have no idea what you mean by TTT.

I would hire a Chicago grad before a Boalt grad all other things beging equal.

Okay, I admit it. I have no idea what you mean by TTT.

I would hire a Chicago grad before a Boalt grad all other things being equal.

43--true, but the law school certainly adopted the economic theory when it came about. Posner and Easterbrook taught at the LAW school, if I'm not mistaken. So it's actually even worse--the law school staked its reputation on a theory that it didn't even come up with; it was just riding the business school's coattails! What a TTT.

43--true, but the law school certainly adopted the economic theory when it came about. Posner and Easterbrook taught at the LAW school, if I'm not mistaken. So it's actually even worse--the law school staked its reputation on a theory that it didn't even come up with; it was just riding the business school's coattails! What a TTT.

41 -- agree that Yale and Berkeley turned top law schools into SOCIALISTS!

McCain-Palin '08

Chicago = GULC of the midwest

chicago WAS better than nyu or berkeley. but no longer. for now, i still see them as a very top school, but it's hard to argue that it is not on a decline.

Ask a hiring partner at any major firm where they'd rather hire from. UC is at the very top. In addition to a conservative approach to the law, UC takes a conservative approach to teaching the law, i.e., the students work and learn all three years. Legal research and writing is taught by practicing lawyers, not by law students (Harvard and others). And there's no third year vacation (everywhere else?).

For all of you comparing schools and calling one better than the other, what criteria are you using to define "better?"

This is a genuine question and not a backhand comment.

Leiter is a bonehead. He hates PEANUTS and CHEESE!

uhhh... CLS isn't seriously considering any grade reform. the survey you tanked the other day was run by the student senate -- a useless, self-aggrandizing body of egos bigger than their britches.

GULCers do not appreciate being compared to Chicago. That is worse than being compare to GW.

At U. Penn State Law we had the same grading confusion as Penn State U. Law. Because you can't have two great schools with such confusion, USPL added "+" and "-" after each grade, and eliminated the "whole" grade. So now we are just pluses and minuses. It is great. Chicago Layola should figure that out.

37,

Kirkland and Ellis is an LLP, not a corporation. And yes, it DOES make a difference.

With your attention to detail, don't even worry about being branded a Kirkland scholar. Or working at Kirkland, for that matter.

The Chicago grading system defies rational understanding? It's actually the easiest school transcript for figuring out someone's average. As an on campus recruiter, it's a lot easier to figure out a mathematical average than at some place where you have to determine how many HHs someone needs to get past the grade cutoff. My firm will actually take people with a slightly lower GPA from Chicago than from schools like Boalt or Yale where once you get below a certain threshold it is impossible to tell where exactly someone stands in relation to the median, because we can still tell that the Chicago student is in the top half or third or whatever of his or her class. This movement to squishier grading systems only hurts students' job prospects.

And, believe me, firms don't go by U.S. News. It's kind of a joke.

i'm nervous about getting a job with kirkland.

-nervous T-10 1L

Do you think Fat Boy Ellie gets really stinky by dinner time after the sweat in his fat rolls ferments all day?

i'm nervous that nervous T-10 1L will get a better sa position than me

- nervous T-20 1L

54 = still sad about losing a minimally contested election

Chicago got GULCed by USNews!

The real untold story is that Northeastern School of Law has been sans a A-F grading system since 1968, and that all of the so-called elite law schools are really following in its footsteps. Maybe this will mean that Northeastern students might finally start to get decent jobs now?

I thought they just figured out who the biggest assholes in the class were and labeled them Kirkland scholars. Seems like that would be more appropriate.

Chicago still has the great Richard Epstein and Cass Sunstein as professors, so eat it, T5 (and Berkeley, too).

Chicago's actual ranking hasn't changed in 35 years:
http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2008/09/the-more-things.html

Nervous Top 10:

You are not funny. Your posts are bland. Your posts lack any wit. Your posts lead one to believe you are a person devoid of any real humor. Buddy, get a clue: you are NOT funny and witty. Your parents and their friends only laugh at your jokes at little dinner parties to be nice. I am sure you boring in real life as well.

Now, get nervous about having no legitimate sense of humor.

I had a great experience at Boalt. Though I personally respect UC, I know a lot of Californians who went to UC because they could not get into Boalt. "Better" is subjective when you are talking about T10 schools other than YSH.

Go to Boalt if you want nice weather, laid back students, and nona**hole professors.

Elie, you are off-base on NYU, as has been *extensively* pointed out over and over again. You are so horrible it pains me.

Chicago is better than NYU and Berkeley which are both TTT. Chicago sets the tone traditionally rather than following the pack. And btw I dont hear Chicago kids posting about recruiting trouble like the TTT Harvard lads

i'm *extremely* nervous

-extremely nervous HYS 0L

Yeah, the Chicago grading system is pretty simple to grasp for anyone who still knows how to read numbers and letters and can refer to a scale that is printed on the transcript itself. Maybe that qualification excludes the graduates of pass/fail schools.

Oxford and Cambridge are both better than Harvard

Oxford and Cambridge are both better than Harvard

51, HLS doesn't have law students teach legal writing and research.

66 - epstein teaches at nyu every year and sunstein is actually a harvard prof now

Chicago >>> Berkeley.
Expect to see a dramatic decline in Berkeley's rank this year.

USNWR also thinks that NYU is better than Chicago, that Chicago and Penn are equivalent, and that Northwestern is better than Michigan and Virginia. It would be ridiculous for USNWR not to place Berkeley above Chicago, because then it be somehow tethered to reality.

78 & 79 = Chicago TTTrolls.

UPenn State >>> Chicago

lol @ 80

Honestly, I am a law student and am even fed up with the constant stream of grade and summer associate stories (i.e., the same story over and over again). I can't imagine how boring it must be for graduates. Let's make this thread into suggestions for better blogs.

NYU is not considering getting rid of grades, just changing it's curve.

And 66, NYU gets Epstein every fall:-) Contracts with Epstein was a...unique... experience. The man is awesome.

The recruiters at my old firm (Latham) liked the Chicago system a lot. Made it pretty easy to pick out the very top students as well as those in the top half.

NYU is not going to pass/fail. Just make the curve easier. Still letter grades.

University of Chig

The U of C Law Grading system is very easy to decipher. the grading scale, with the equivalent letter grade on the back of the transcript. it's a no-brainer. any half-way intelligent recruiter can read a grading scale! It is a problem and U of C needs to move on with it. Dean Levmore who makes light of the pass/fail system benefited from that very system himself at Yale Law!

Dear Voters,

Please pick the dumbest thing posted on this thread

1- Free market economics are TTT and outdated (39, 42, 43)
2- The U of C grading system is hard to figure out (OP)
3- The top 5% of Chicago students are "assholes."

CLS IS NOT MOVING TO A PASS/FAIL SYSTEM. GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT ATL!!

berkeley will probably not remain ranked above chicago in next year's rankings. we'll live, but it was kind of fun to watch insecure UC students harp on the switchup ALL.. YEAR.. LONG. talk about your nervous t-10 students!

-- relaxed boalt student

76, last time I did OCI at HLS, they did. But it's been a few years. If they now have practicing lawyers teaching reserach and writing (instead of 2nd years), that's a great development. Many schools have yet to make that change.