Law Schools

OMG, The Rankings ... I Mean, Uh, Rankings Don't Matter

What could go wrong?

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Today we discuss the implications of using market screens such as U.S. News in hiring law firm associates. See, the argument goes, there is a lot of applicants, and the only way to screen potential associates and clerks is using where they went to school as a proxy.

Sounds great, right? What could go wrong? Well, let’s play a game.

For purposes of this exercise, suppose it is the year 2023, and I want to hire 10 associates who are the “best of the best.” By that, I mean “who went to the best law school and signal in all the right ways that they are, you know, elite.”

Looking at the 2020 U.S. News and World Report rankings, that would mean I would hire from Yale. Let’s assume Yale is at the top in three years as well.

Yale boasts its incoming class is 51% students of color. It is not broken down further. That by itself is telling, but I’ll let that slide. For now. Digging deeper from other sources, it looks like that breaks down this way for 2020: “7.4% Black, 11.3% Hispanic, 12.7 Asian, and 14.7% other.” Sure, those numbers don’t quite match up, but we’re never going to get at those without a lot more transparency. But, for giggles, let’s just say the class is half white.

Let’s assume that all of the top five schools are improving in their diversity. Let’s also assume that there are schools MORE diverse than Yale below top five.

A final assumption: Let’s assume a market that clears from top-down, meaning that the “best of the best” clear/get offers first.

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If law firms were screening nationally based on rankings, one might expect to find, therefore, associate hires to be around 50% minority. Right?

It hasn’t panned out that way thus far, for some reason. You see, if you read the link, you find associate representation is woefully lacking for minority law school graduates. True, this data doesn’t reflect recent hires and so it isn’t a perfect parallel. But it is telling when the total number of associates is 25% minorities while there is an increasing pool to draw from, right?

To the extent that law firms don’t just follow rankings, we would expect to find more diversity, not less. Because there are far more diverse schools once we get out of the top five.

I haven’t mentioned gender. The report for 2019 shows 46% women and “14.48% women of color.” Drill down in those numbers for more eye-popping data. Because the balance of women in law school has shifted a bit more favorably, but notice it hasn’t benefited minority women the same as it has white women. Intersectionality matters.

Some nuance that needs exploration: A hint in the report that overall minority representation declined in 2010. So, do law firms disproportionately lay off minorities during an economic downturn? That might partly track the partnership numbers for minorities and women. Because those are atrocious.

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What does this all mean? I’m just spitballing here, but:

  1. To the extent law firms use U.S. News Rankings, I can’t help but wonder if it only benefits white hires.
  2. A foot in the door for minority hires doesn’t necessarily last. The partner numbers are atrocious. And economic downturn misfortunes seem to favor the white guy on average.
  3. What are the chances that as the prestige of the law firm increases, the whiter it becomes? If that’s the case, that isn’t U.S. News rankings, that’s something else. And that something else is not good.
  4. One could argue that law firms don’t pay any attention to rankings. There are local markets that interplay with the larger national market. That’s true, but I’d want to follow up with a query about the schools from which the law firm draws, and what the demographics are from those schools.  Also, to what degree do prestigious clerkships relate to the rankings?  What degree do firms use those as signals for hiring? What do you think I’ll discover? I’m going to guess it isn’t good.
  5. It also means as elite law schools work on diversifying, we’ll have more data about SCOTUS clerks, too. If most SCOTUS clerks are white, and the population from which they are drawn isn’t, something else is going on.  And that’s not good, either.

I suppose one quick takeaway (and no, I will not be writing an article on this) is that law school rankings are a one-way trap. It appears to justify hiring whites, while doing not much at all to hire minorities.

Another quick takeaway is that the way in which law professors treat rankings isn’t healthy for their own students. And by that, I mean proclaiming “rankings don’t matter” to law students at the same time doing everything in one’s power to reaffirm, take part of, and climb the hierarchy smacks of hypocrisy (I’m sorry, I meant NUANCE). We don’t care about the rankings, but we’re going to keep hiring from just a few elite law schools. We don’t care about the rankings, but “lookie where my journal article placed!” We don’t care about the rankings, but our faculty are VERY prestigious from higher-ranked schools (and white male). All that leaves other major issues in legal employment quite lacking.

Yeah, some have to play the game for purposes of tenure and whatnot, but, something is lost when we all shrug and say “it’s all in the game.”

Oh, but did you see our admissions brochure?  So diverse!

LawProfBlawg is an anonymous professor at a top 100 law school. You can see more of his musings here. He is way funnier on social media, he claims. Please follow him on Twitter (@lawprofblawg). Email him at lawprofblawg@gmail.com.

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