Everything Wrong With Our 2019 Law School Rankings

Neoliberal era rankings in a Donald Trump world

Last week, we released our 2019 Law School Rankings. They’re the only ones to take into account the most recent ABA employment statistics. Our rankings are responsive to new trends in hiring, and definitely worth considering as you decide on law schools.

But our rankings remain frustratingly unresponsive to trends in the larger society. Our rankings are premised on the notion that most people who go to the very best and most expensive law schools are doing so to obtain good, high-paying, or highly prestigious jobs. I came up with that premise, nearly a decade ago. As we hurtle towards a new decade, I’m not even sure if that premise is valid anymore.

When they graduate next year, the Class of 2020 will be the first law school class that went through the whole process of law school after the election of Donald Trump. Unlike this year’s class, they will have applied to law school and matriculated to law school fully aware that Donald Trump would be the President of the United States.

While in law school, they’ve seen the legal horror show that is the Trump administration. They’ve seen the Muslim Ban, and the Supreme Court’s ultimate consent towards its bigotry. They’ve seen the looney-toons arguments that have led to the Trump administration being the most defeated in court in American history. They’ve seen family separation, they’ve seen the terrorizing of immigrant communities, they’re seeing concentration camps. And they’re seeing lawyers put up the first and sometimes last line of defense these children have against the forces of ethnic cleansing Trump has unleashed.

Are we still to understand that “most” of the people who have the ability to receive the best legal education this country has to offer went to law school in order to make as much money as possible?

We know, historically speaking, that 1Ls show up to top law schools wanting to “do good,” and leave wanting to be well compensated for a few years before they find something good to do. But if you came to law school in the fall of 2017 with the desire to be one of the lawyers who can actually help the people Trump despises, I can’t imagine anything has happened to dampen your commitment. Our rankings define “good job” in a way that is completely divorced from the social good. That feels almost anachronistic under the Trump regime.

And what of our “prestige” jobs? The Class of 2020 was in law school during the Brett Kavanaugh debacle. At the very best schools, they saw, firsthand, how many of their professors cravenly supported the elite boys’ network and vouched for Kavanaugh’s “character.” Long before Dr. Christine Blasey Ford came forward, we knew that Kavanaugh had serious character issues, but students saw just how cowardly elites can be at speaking truth to potential power. Are we still to believe that most people view these elite academic positions as prestigious citadels from which they can continue the fight?

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Are we still to believe that the old federal clerkship is a prestigious position, given the assortment of evil and crazy people Trump is stacking our lower courts with? Having a ranking that makes no attempt to distinguish between clerking for Merrick Garland on the D.C. Circuit from clerking for his new, pro-dwarf tossing colleague Neomi Rao, just feels off.

And it feels a bit sexist. A law school that is good at producing women and men willing to clerk for Brett Kavanaugh would be rewarded in our rankings. A law school that does not has, comparatively speaking, four fewer potential “prestigious jobs” to crow about.

Of course, I’m complaining about this thing that I’ve worked on for seven years because I don’t actually know how to fix them. Umm… suggestions are welcome, by the way. I don’t know how to define the “good jobs that do good” that I perceive the current generation of law students are looking for. And while I have the personal opinion that clerking for Kavanaugh marks you as a low-account, quasi-rape apologist for the rest of your life, it is a fact that those Kavanaugh clerks will almost certainly enjoy of life of high-paying success stretching over the next 50 years.

I also don’t know how long this legal resistance fever will last, even among the people who are actively forgoing higher-paid options. My parents used to always tell me: “Half of those (white) people growing out their hair and talking about peace and community in the sixties went onto vote for Ronald Reagan in the eighties.” Going to the law school that produces high-paying, high-prestige outcomes for its graduates is still probably the safest bet. When Trump names me an enemy-of-the-state and throws me in a gulag, I’m probably going to call in some Harvard Law connections to bring me a toothbrush.

The point of writing this column every year is to remind people that no ranking, no list-making exercise, is all that useful for any individual decision. Not ours, not theirs, not your mom’s. In this era, it just feels like that warning label needs to be in bold. If all you care about is money, these rankings will help you find some.

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But I can’t stop thinking about the children this administration is kidnapping and terrorizing, and I know that the legal community cares about a lot more than money.

EarlierTop 50 Law Schools 2019


Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and a contributor at The Nation. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.