Rankings Insanity:

For all the talk, including by me, of the excessive weight given by prospective law students to U.S. News rankings, I heard a rankings story last Summer that was much worse than anything I’ve heard about prospective law students. I was chatting with a Yale Law student, and I asked him where Yale grads work nowadays when they graduate, recalling that in my day (early nineties) the majority were split about evently between D.C. and New York, a few in L.A., Chicago, and San Francisco, and the rest scattered around the country. This student told me that almost everyone, really almost everyone, goes to work in New York. I was taken aback; if anything, there should be fewer grads going to New York because the old first-year salary gap between New York and other cities, which used to be gaping in the case of D.C., has now largely closed. He explained, however, that Vault.com now ranks law firms by prestige, and almost all of the “top ranked” law firms are in New York, so that’s where Yalies go. I couldn’t believe mature adult graduates of an elite law school could be this foolish, but he insisted it was true, and, in fact, that recent Harvard and Yale grads were known to turn very attractive offers from excellent firms in Los Angeles, Chicago, D.C., and other major cities in favor of seemingly less attractive offers from top ten Vault.com firms.

UPDATE: Quare has some thoughts on “status fools.”

FURTHER UPDATE: A correspondent who I’m sure would prefer anonymity writes:

I graduated in ’02. The idea that “almost everyone” goes to New York firms is nonsense. I would say something like “only the losers go to NYC firms,” but that would be a little too cruel to the few of my friends who did choose that path. :)

Many/most of the competitive, prestige-minded students aim for DC. They prefer the DC appellate litigation firms like Jenner, Wilmer, Kirkland, etc. Those kinds of jobs are seen as better precursors to teaching and politics.

And obviously, lots of us avoid firms altogether. Career Services at YLS has statistics on this. In the first year out, over half clerk. In the second year, over half are at firms — but as I recall, it’s something like 60-70%, meaning a large remainder chooses something else (typically: criminal work for the govt, fellowships, more school, business jobs, etc.). Of the 60-70% who do firms, I don’t know what % of those are in NYC. I’d be surprised if it were much more than half. Moreover, if you look a few years down the road, the % at firms drops substantially…. Not everyone follows Vault.com to Skadden.