Biglaw, Law Schools

Why Lawyers Are Obsessed with Rankings

Law firm and law school rankings can feed egos at the expense of perspective.

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(Image via Getty)

Isn’t it nice knowing when you’re objectively better than someone else?

That’s the implicit promise of the ranking systems that we lawyers love so much. Whether you prefer Am Law, Vault, U.S. News & World Report, or even Above The Law’s own humble ranking system, there’s no shortage of “definitive” lists of which law firms and law schools are hot, and which are not.

You don’t get this many competitors in a single space without a strong appetite in the market. By all appearances, we lawyers want desperately to be ranked against one another. There are likely several reasons for this, but a large part of it, I suspect, is how difficult it is to otherwise get any sense of where someone’s firm or school stands in the industry as a whole. We deal in an abstract space, with very few clear indicators of who’s standing out consistently, who’s falling behind the pack, and who may have just had a particularly good or bad year.

Given how hard it is to accurately assess how our peers are performing, it can be comforting to look at a very long, very official, very objective list and know that everyone sitting lower on the list than yourself is a lost soul who isn’t #winning at life nearly as hard as you are.

Our jobs are stressful, and I’m not here to take away anything that gives someone pleasure or relief from a notoriously difficult career path. But may I also suggest we take a deep breath and think about what a high ranking in the narrow legal world means against the larger backdrop of our business and culture?

Lessons From Bull

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A long time ago, just at the edges of living memory, Kevin Costner was a bankable movie star. One of his early breakout roles was in Bull Durham, starring Costner as a long-serving catcher in baseball’s minor leagues. By the end of the movie, Costner sets the record for most home runs hit by a minor league player. The moment is bittersweet in the movie, however, because it highlighted the length of time Costner spent failing to make it to the majors.

I mention this movie not just because it’s a stone cold 80s classic, but because it highlights the point that being the top in your field might not mean all that much in the larger picture. The legal industry, made up of thousands of law firms, is a small piece of American productivity. The biggest firms in the world make just over $3B in revenue a year, and the top 200 largest law firms combined come to about $136B. That’s just over half of what one company, Apple, made in 2018. The fact that one company on its own nearly doubles the performance of an industry that charges hundreds of dollars an hour should be a sobering reminder that the world does not begin and end with law.

Consider also, many people will read this article on an Apple device, and millions more will use an Apple product today to stream music, conduct business, or flick birds at a precarious tower constructed by ill-tempered pigs. Whereas we lawyers will mostly move paper and emails around until someone pays someone else money.

The Other Kind Of Bull

Apart from our fancy clothing and general failure to sweat during work hours, there are surprisingly few structural differences between a lawyer and a plumber, ditch digger, or any other blue collar contractor. We are laborers, generally paid by the hour. We’re constantly in search of our next gig or our next regular client. Our customers aren’t qualified to do what we do, but nevertheless think they know our jobs better than we do.

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The biggest difference between a lawyer and a blue collar worker is that at the end of the day, a plumber can point to a newly working toilet and say they made a physical difference in the world. As lawyers, the world at 5 p.m. generally looks about the same as it did at 8 a.m., give or take a few slips of paper.

The world needs lawyers, just like it needs plumbers. If the apocalypse strikes tomorrow, though, which category of laborer would you rather have in your crew? Brief-writing skills and finely honed arguments aren’t going to be quite as valuable as someone who can keep the water flowing.

Changing The World… Or Not

There are few, very few, lawyers and law firms out there working to change the world on a daily basis. Most of them are underpaid and underappreciated, working in the government or at NGOs. Biglaw firms, apart from the tiny fraction of hours they spend on pro bono work, aren’t generally innovating the next great steps of human and business achievement. We’re usually a step or two removed, working for those great innovators and risk takers, helping that next big step happen.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s real value in what lawyers do. The world needs facilitators and middlemen, and lawyers are highly skilled, highly trained, and many are highly paid. Bull Durham wasn’t a movie about Kevin Costner hitting home runs in the minors. At its heart it was a story about Costner’s character mentoring a young, talented pitcher and getting him ready for the big leagues.

Know Your Role

The law is a grand and justly hallowed thing. The legal industry, not so much. We tend to make a lot of money, and we get some pretty good movies made about us, but our market sector as a whole could often use a bit of an ego check. At our best, we help make the larger, more impactful parts of the world work better. The biggest law firms in the world are still just bit players in the overall market.

So feel free to read the rankings and be proud when your firm or school moves up. Absolutely email your friends when their law school drops below yours. Enjoy them for what they’re worth, which isn’t much. Then pick up your golden wrench and get back to work. There’s pipe to lay and clogs to clear, and we’re lucky to be the ones who get to do it.

James Goodnow

James Goodnow is an attorney, commentator, and Above the Law columnist. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and is the managing partner of NLJ 250 firm Fennemore Craig. He is the co-author of Motivating Millennials, which hit number one on Amazon in the business management new release category. You can connect with James on Twitter (@JamesGoodnow) or by emailing him at James@JamesGoodnow.com.

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