Law Schools

Which World Cup Team Is Your Law School?

World Cup fever is upon us, and it's time to revisit our quadrennial tradition...

By  
on

Earlier this morning, the entire world cared about the opinions of Russia and Saudi Arabia almost as much as Donald Trump does on a daily basis. That’s because the World Cup, an event designed to showcase the best the world has to offer, kicked off with a match between two repressive dictatorships on a stage purchased through corruption and bribery while the United States is rendered entirely irrelevant. FIFA really knocked the allegory out of the park this year. Oh, wait, perhaps a baseball reference is less than apt here. FIFA really slogged to a nil-nil draw with the allegory this year.

Much better.

Anyway, World Cup fever is upon us, and it’s time to revisit our quadrennial tradition: Which World Cup Team Is Your Law School? Will we make it through the entire field this year? Probably not.

Yale — Germany: The defending champions. Yale owns the top spot in the annual US News rankings every year making them a favorite. And yet, for all that talent, is there anyone you can really point to on attack? Germany stakes its chances on an elite keeper — a job only one person can ever perform — just like Yale stakes its reputation on the handful of grads who go on to pack the federal judiciary. But there’s no one you really count on to be the attacker and perform the meat and potatoes (the sausage and strudel as the case may be) of the business of winning as a soccer team. Who needs to produce lawyers when you can run a country?

Harvard — England: There’s prestige. There’s tradition. There’s the way they basically invented the game. There’s the fact that whenever you think of a soccer player, you think of an English bloke just like whenever you think of a snooty lawyer, you think of a Harvard grad. And yet, no one has seriously considered them THE BEST in decades.

Columbia — Argentina: They wear light blue and should be a lot better than they are. Seriously, how does an Ivy League school in the heart of the greatest legal market in the country consistently get outdone by schools in New Haven, Boston, and Palo Alto? It doesn’t make sense. Lionel Messi may be the greatest player in history and yet… still not the top side out there.

NYU — Uruguay: They could be in the final… but they probably won’t. The upside is that even if they fail, it’ll be a moral victory to watch their neighbor fall apart.

Sponsored

Chicago — Brazil: Not just because the university created their whole crumbling economy, but it’s the perennial favorite that always falls just a bit short. But perhaps this is the year, just like Chicago climbed to the top of the ATL Law School rankings this year. But then you think about trying to compare them to Yale and… this happens:

Stanford — France: Yanks Are Coming have picked France to win it all, but few pundits have joined in that prediction. We’ve pitched Stanford as a contender to claim the top law school post from Yale’s clutches for almost a decade. And yet no one has joined us in that sentiment.

Michigan — Iceland: It’s perpetually cold, but everyone from here seems fun.

Sponsored

Virginia — South Korea: A plucky side who should make it out of their group, but that’s probably the ceiling. Both have to worry about being overrun at home by a bunch of emboldened fascists too.

Duke — Spain: Just because it would annoy everyone at the top if they won.

ASS Law — Russia: Russia bought its way into hosting the World Cup and therefore gets a team in the field that far outsizes its on-the-field credentials. Fed Soc bought a law school compromising its academic integrity in the process. And, of course, both tell the Trump administration what to do.

Cornell — Switzerland: From our 2014 preview, “It’s snowy and there are precipitous drops.” Still true.

Penn — Saudi Arabia: Amy Wax doesn’t think women should have rights either.

Northwestern — Mexico: Why not? Seriously, why can’t Mexico win this tournament, and why can’t Northwestern be one of the super-elite law schools? It’s got all the resources.

Georgetown — Japan: Befitting the school that became the first T14 school to exit the vaunted group, Japan is probably the best of the rest.

Berkeley — Nigeria: A fantastic squad that should absolutely make it out, but with this group, it’s not going to get the fair shake that it could.

Texas — Belgium: While they seem like harmless underdogs now, when you dig into their history, you know they’ve committed a war crime or two along the way. And it was probably racist.

Charlotte — United States: They pissed everyone off. Then they got shut down.

Enjoy the World Cup everyone!

Earlier: Which World Cup Team Is Your Law School (2014)?

HeadshotJoe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

Topics

, , ,