2019 Above the Law ATL Rankings Forum

[HangingAround]

https://abovethelaw.com/law-school-rank ... ools-2019/

Yes I'm posting this b/c UNC

[cavalier1138]

It's good that you're proud of your alma mater, but that doesn't make ATL rankings any better...

[HangingAround]

It's good that you're proud of your alma mater, but that doesn't make ATL rankings any better...

You don’t think it’s an improvement over US News given its focus on outcomes and debt?

I always thought the prevailing wisdom here was, while not perfect, it is at least better.

[cavalier1138]

It's good that you're proud of your alma mater, but that doesn't make ATL rankings any better...

You don’t think it’s an improvement over US News given its focus on outcomes and debt?

I always thought the prevailing wisdom here was, while not perfect, it is at least better.

I think the prevailing wisdom around here is that ATL is a joke. But no, it's not better than USNWR (to the extent that you should put much stock in specific school ranks). ATL's methodology is mainly designed to thumb its nose at HYS without upsetting the USNWR rankings too much. It misses a whole bunch of stuff in the process.

It's important not to read USNWR too strictly, but the bands within the USNWR ranks roughly correlate to outcomes. Even if a school like UNC sees a jump in hiring (and even if that spike lasts a year or two), it's ludicrous to compare it to any of the nearby schools in ATL's absurd chart.

[HangingAround]

It's good that you're proud of your alma mater, but that doesn't make ATL rankings any better...

You don’t think it’s an improvement over US News given its focus on outcomes and debt?

I always thought the prevailing wisdom here was, while not perfect, it is at least better.

On the other hand the prevailing wisdom seems to be you have a very, very high chance of biglaw from NYU so it doesn’t make a ton of sense for it to be 13 and unc 14 because that’s just not true for UNC.

[Calbears123]

ATL’s reputation has tanked since they got rid of the comment section.

[BlackAndOrange84]

ATL’s reputation has tanked since they got rid of the comment section.

ATL's reputation was trending down long before they canceled the comments. David Lat hired awful writers and handed over a lot of editorial control sometime earlier. ATL quickly became a dumber, law-focused version of Buzzfeed, just without the real reporting that Buzzfeed occasionally does.

[kinge]

USNWR rankings aren't perfect, but just looking at the changes in ATL school ranking from last year you should know that it's not a serious list. Why would Northwestern rise 6 spots in a year from 10 to 4? Why would Boston College drop from 20 to 31? Why would Fordham rise 36 spots from 68 to 32?

[cavalier1138]

USNWR rankings aren't perfect, but just looking at the changes in ATL school ranking from last year you should know that it's not a serious list. Why would Northwestern rise 6 spots in a year from 10 to 4? Why would Boston College drop from 20 to 31? Why would Fordham rise 36 spots from 68 to 32?

It's because the "methodology" (I use the term loosely) on ATL is more closely tied to employment outcomes and ignores PI/government outcomes. So given the slight fluctuations in T13 biglaw/fedclerk numbers each year, there will be more dramatic jumps than in the USNWR.

But the USNWR suffers from the same flaw once you get out of the T20. You'll see schools routinely jumping around 10+ places between years, because in the T1/T2 areas, you have about 50 state schools that are more or less equivalent in everything except the region they serve.

[kinge]

USNWR rankings aren't perfect, but just looking at the changes in ATL school ranking from last year you should know that it's not a serious list. Why would Northwestern rise 6 spots in a year from 10 to 4? Why would Boston College drop from 20 to 31? Why would Fordham rise 36 spots from 68 to 32?

It's because the "methodology" (I use the term loosely) on ATL is more closely tied to employment outcomes and ignores PI/government outcomes. So given the slight fluctuations in T13 biglaw/fedclerk numbers each year, there will be more dramatic jumps than in the USNWR.

But the USNWR suffers from the same flaw once you get out of the T20. You'll see schools routinely jumping around 10+ places between years, because in the T1/T2 areas, you have about 50 state schools that are more or less equivalent in everything except the region they serve.

So is ATL trying to show that basically every law school on their list from 1 to 50 is almost a peer?

[VirginiaFan]

The biggest problem with these rankings (and why they should be disregarded by potential law students) is that they take into account the average cost of attendance and average debt load. So, if your classmates have poorer families and have to take out debt, your rank on ATL goes down. Worse still, if a school charges 100,000 a year but you get a full tuition scholarship, ATL will still rank your school as worse. Why would you care about what your classmates are paying if you're getting a scholarship?

Overall, US News is 100x better than these rankings. At least those rankings roughly correlate to job placement, and allow potential students to factor in personal considerations like cost. Sure, they're still dumb, but at least you can be fairly certain that the 10th best US News law school is better than the 20th. I can't really say the same for ATL's rankings.

[objctnyrhnr]

USNWR rankings aren't perfect, but just looking at the changes in ATL school ranking from last year you should know that it's not a serious list. Why would Northwestern rise 6 spots in a year from 10 to 4? Why would Boston College drop from 20 to 31? Why would Fordham rise 36 spots from 68 to 32?

Both rankings should put them in tiers (ie fordham = bc = Gw = Bu), but for some reason, none of them do.

Thoughts as to why?

[QContinuum]

USNWR rankings aren't perfect, but just looking at the changes in ATL school ranking from last year you should know that it's not a serious list. Why would Northwestern rise 6 spots in a year from 10 to 4? Why would Boston College drop from 20 to 31? Why would Fordham rise 36 spots from 68 to 32?

Both rankings should put them in tiers (ie fordham = bc = Gw = Bu), but for some reason, none of them do.

Thoughts as to why?

USNWR probably thinks laypeople would scoff at a ranking that went from 1 to 20, then lumped the remaining schools into four (T1, T2, T3, T4) buckets. A granular ranking from 1 to 200 looks much more impressive.

[Bingo_Bongo]

Honestly, they could cut out the fancy algorithms and keep it simple by just ranking the schools by median starting salary, and that would probably be the best indicator of where to go if you want to make money (which is 90% of everybody's endgame)

[kinge]

USNWR rankings aren't perfect, but just looking at the changes in ATL school ranking from last year you should know that it's not a serious list. Why would Northwestern rise 6 spots in a year from 10 to 4? Why would Boston College drop from 20 to 31? Why would Fordham rise 36 spots from 68 to 32?

Both rankings should put them in tiers (ie fordham = bc = Gw = Bu), but for some reason, none of them do.

Thoughts as to why?

I think part of the reason is that it creates drama so people talk about the list more. Plus they wouldn't have an excuse for writing a new one every year. Aside from the occasional shuffling around in the T14/T20 or a school moving from T2 -> T1 or vice versa, the rankings wouldn't change at all from year-to-year.

[cavalier1138]

USNWR rankings aren't perfect, but just looking at the changes in ATL school ranking from last year you should know that it's not a serious list. Why would Northwestern rise 6 spots in a year from 10 to 4? Why would Boston College drop from 20 to 31? Why would Fordham rise 36 spots from 68 to 32?

It's because the "methodology" (I use the term loosely) on ATL is more closely tied to employment outcomes and ignores PI/government outcomes. So given the slight fluctuations in T13 biglaw/fedclerk numbers each year, there will be more dramatic jumps than in the USNWR.

But the USNWR suffers from the same flaw once you get out of the T20. You'll see schools routinely jumping around 10+ places between years, because in the T1/T2 areas, you have about 50 state schools that are more or less equivalent in everything except the region they serve.

So is ATL trying to show that basically every law school on their list from 1 to 50 is almost a peer?

I think they're mostly trying to generate page views.

[icansortofmath]

Honestly, they could cut out the fancy algorithms and keep it simple by just ranking the schools by median starting salary, and that would probably be the best indicator of where to go if you want to make money (which is 90% of everybody's endgame)

I think this basically creates a T1 where median = Cravath and we just end up with T13/14/15 (whatever it is now)

[Dahl]

These rankings are amusing, and terribly wrong.

ATL has been crap since Lat sold it and lost creative control, so I'm surprised no one else has stepped in and created a better site for legal gossip.