Osler's Razor

I think a lot of the frustration about the rankings from the student body may be a lack of understanding of how the rankings fall these last few years. I mean, it certainly doesn't seem like Baylor has gotten worse in the last three years I've been here. In fact, it seems Baylor has gotten better in many respects (at least with respect to how the school treats its students).
 

Winning mock trial tourneys does not help the rankings. Stetson is no. 1 in advocacy but fell into tier 3 this year. If it did, South Texas would not be in the bottom group every year.
 

I put USN&WR rankings on the same level as augury, divination, astrology and other forms of sorcery.
 

i think it's pretty clear Baylor's ranking is going to drop when you look at what the rankings value compared to what Baylor seems to value. the number of professors who went to Baylor has to be high on the list of things causing this slow drop. i think it's stupid that the rankings care about professors and where they went to school, but the fact is that is a factor and Baylor's insistence on keeping everything "in-house" is going to hurt it in the long run.

i know the rankings are flawed but i can't say that the average employer who is flipping through tons of resumes and looking at raw numbers is going to look beyond that. i just wish the school would justify PC and hiring Baylor law grads as professors to employers so that the juice was actually worth the squeeze when we actually go out there. who cares if i know i'm getting a great education when the people who are hiring me are looking at these rankings?
 

You should care, Anonymous.

Believe me, when you get out and get handed your first case, and you get it done before anyone expects you to, and it's done right the first time, your employers will wish to call your professors and thank them profusely.

You'll find a job; a lot of times it may not be where or what you expected when you came in, but Baylor grads get employed. And we do well wherever we go because of what we went through, which in turn makes us good lawyers. And five years down the road, where no one cares what your degree says, your record will speak for itself.
 

Actually, I think the rankings are a fair indication of what is going on at Baylor - the drop in bar passage rate, the state of the CSO, etc. There is more to a law school than its advocacy program, and choosing ten or twenty sparkly people and teaching them to argue (not prepare, mind you, just argue) a case is not what makes a school great. We need to not be so xenophobic. We need to look beyond Waco and criminal practice for places to employ our students. Baylor needs to broaden its community and reevaluate its program. If Baylor actually cared about its reputation outside of Waco, it could rise in the rankings and provide its students a better education.
 

I want to be clear. I don't ever want any "sparkly people" on one of my mock trial teams. That would be weird and freaky, and I don't think the judges would take to it very kindly either.

Just normal people with no visible sparkles will be fine thank you very much.
 

Lane - I'm five years down the road and, guess what, the school on my degree does still matter. I can't tell you the number of recruiters who call (or at least used to call before the entire profession fell of the cliff last fall) and, when I say I went to Baylor, tell me that "will be a very hard sell." I had to put on what amounted to a multimedia show to get the job I have. Not complaining...just know that time and distance does not necessarily make the heart grow fonder.
 

TLG, not knowing you from Adam, I can't speculate, but did you include letters of recommendation from teachers and past employers? One thing that helped me get a job at an office with zero Baylor grads and no other connections was a recommendation from a practicing attorney I tried a case with. I am not smart enough to know what trade law is, but it sounds like one of those smart-person subjects. I extrapolate that if I were able to convince employers of my viability, being among the bottom of my class, wholly lacking in personality, and in general being a bit lackluster on paper, you would probably fare much better.
 

I don't know much about how the rankings are calculated, but do they actually take into account where the profs go to school in that formula?
 

My bls degree isn't worth the paper it is printed on in the current market. Almost all my friends who graduated from BLS last year (other than top 25%) are struggling to find jobs or doing contract work. The lack of job marketability combined with the high tuition at BLS puts students in a really bad situation where they have to take whatever they get (including jobs at fast food restaurants).
 

I think the problem is that our school ranking is dropping relative to other TX law schools. I can't pinpoint why, but I think that Toben needs to convene a forum where he responds to student concerns and articulates a plan moving forward. Top 50 schools do this when they drop just two spots. This is why I'm concerned - look at the last 4 rankings (keep in mind the rankings are always one year ahead of when they are released):

In 2007, BLS tied with SMU at 52 and Houston was at 65.

In 2008, SMU 43, BLS 51, UH 70.

In 2009, SMU 46, BLS tied with UH at 55.

In 2010, SMU 49, UH 59, BLS 65.

Here are the leaked rankings:
http://legalgeekery.com/2009/04/19/leaked-2010-us-news-top-law-schools/

The relative rank of BLS in relation to UH was one of the reasons I chose it. I'm not saying that the rankings are the best measure of a school's reputation, but many incoming students do. Surely, the rankings are causing some concern up on the second floor, because I guarantee with the legal market what it is in TX right now that students sure aren't happy about this.

Sorry to keep this anonymous.
 

Railing against the way the rankings are calculated seems to be missing the point. Whether you like them are not, they're important -- for potential students deciding which school to attend and for employers deciding which recent grads to hire. To say "you'll see how BLS is when you get handed your first case" doesn't mean much if your first case comes ten years down the line because you've been stuck doing contract work.

I don't think Baylor's a bad school, but it needs to pull its head out of the sand. And like the previous commenter mentioned, the administration should be actively doing something to stop this free-fall and reassure students.
 

Every year when the rankings have come out there is a loud chorus of anti-rankings rhetoric on this blog, which cite bar passage and advocacy training, which aren't measured by the rankings. While these are good points, perhaps we can form a coalition of schools to petition US NEWS to include these factors in their rankings. Just railing against the rankings gets us nowhere.

If most schools think hiring professors from among your alumni is a bad thing, then don't do it. I'm not saying our BLS-grad profs are sub-standard, its just not looked at very kindly by other schools. The rankings reflect this.

What good is our distinctive approach to legal education if no one outside of Waco holds it in high esteem?

We need to convince the outside world that our school is top-notch, but we must also analyze what we're doing to determine how to better improve our reputation. The rankings matter, both in the quality of students we attract and in the quality of jobs our graduates are offered.

At the very least, slipping 10 spots should merit a response from Dean Toben - and not one that dismisses the rankings.
 

But what to do? Do we capitulate and play the USN&WR game, soliciting favorable comments from the good ol' boy network of established schools? Open up advocacy teams to pre-PC students? Make interscholastic competitions mandatory? Establish non-trial tracks or offer a purely academic law degree?

I'm worried that if Baylor tries to compete with the bigger law schools on the US News turf, it'll lose because of location, size, and the distaste people from other institutions have for Baylor undergrad. Better to be the rigorous, principled iconoclast than the boot-licking lackey of tier 1 schools.
 

Are you serious? If the administration thinks that we don't have to "Play the USN&WR game" we're in big trouble. We should at least play the game to hold our spot - the point is that we have lost ground in the rankings. Why is that? We had a pretty good spot for a school of our size and location for the last decade before the last two years. What has changed? We need the respect of the "USN&WR game" which is the only objective measure of a school's reputation, whether a purely academic-focused school, a night school, a historically-minority school, or an advocacy-centered school.

If we want to keep attracting young talent to our school and send our graduates to prestigious firms and clerkships, we need to hold our place in the rankings. To advocate otherwise is to embrace an extremely insular mode of thinking that will lead to decline.
 

Yes, I'm serious. I think students put more emphasis on the rankings than others do. Baylor will continue to attract those it always has (though I would like to see a more ethnically and ideologically diverse student body). I know plenty of law students with impressive resumes, test scores, personal achievements, etc. I have friends in tier 1 schools from coast to coast. Dollars to donuts, when it comes to legal reasoning I'd put my friends from Baylor on my staff before my friends from other schools. Talent only gets you so far, and I've seen too many of my friends not develop that talent and coast on the prestige of their degree.

Consequently, I'm not impressed by their ability.

However, any time I've spoken to employers or professors that have worked with Baylor students, they've been amazed by the Baylor students' competence, reasoning, and knowledge.

I think we sell our degrees short if we worry too much about what a magazine says they're worth.
 

Lane - that's all well and good, but it's the Tier 1 students who get offers of employment first and from the likes of Baker Botts, V&E, Skadden, etc. Now, to be sure, AmLaw 100 is not the bee's knees (I work at one), but it is the name on these kids' diplomas that gets them in the door for an interview and it's their grades at these schools that gets them the job. That's the fact, as much as I hate it.

And no, you don't know me from Adam and, yes, I had a LOT of other stuff that got me my job (I was probably twice your age when I graduated with a commensurate resume), yet I still had to overcome the Baylor bias. What's that tell you?

I think USN&WR rankings are stupid - but we're stuck with them. Rail all you want, but unless and until the BLS powers that be decide to play by the rules that others have written we, as graduates, will face significant challenges obtaining employment.
 

The problem is, if you're looking at law schools, unless you're 100% certain you're going to be in the top 10-25% of your class, you should in no way choose Baylor if you also get into UH.
Why? First- my Baylor tuition was 37k last year. UH? Half that.
Second- Have you ever heard of PC? You have? And you're still thinking about it? Why?
Third- One of the fundamental problems Baylor has is that it's basically all Baylor. Wilson begat Muldrow, Muldrow begat Dawson, and Dawson begat Powell, and Powell shall be succeeded by Counseller. Baylor-Baylor, all. Not exactly a diversity of perspectives.
Finally, the rankings. As far as employers concerned, you just paid twice as much and worked about four times as hard for the a worse degree.

So unless you have a keen sense of masochism, you should probably stay far away. I say this as one of the lucky few who actually has a 'biglaw' job. If you want to be, say a prosecutor, good luck paying back those loans you took out to get the crap kicked out of you at Baylor. Oh, also, we only have one journal, and if you're not top 10, you're out of luck. So sorry. We'd have more but you'd never have time to do them.
Something has got to give. Probably PC, but definitely something.
 

Here is the problem as I see it: Baylor is stubborn in many ways that are not condusive to the rankings. I think that the rankings are arbitrary to a certain degree, but at the end of the day, its a self fulfilling prophecy. The schools that are considered the best will have the best graduates. I feel like Baylor is a little short sighted in their reasoning that they would prefer to have the most intense program so that they can have the best lawyers graduate. While Baylor lawyers may be more prepared when they graduate, they aren't the best lawyers because the best lawyers go to better schools. Because the intensity of the program is not inticing (especially the prospects of practice court and the quarter system), students who are naturally smarter go to schools that are easier and have a better ranking (UT). Therefore, when they graduate and haven't gone through practice court, they will have the mental capacity to figure it all out pretty quickly. At the end of the day, they may be a year behind, but once they figure things out, they'll be just as prepared and have more potential because of their superior intelligence. In a way, the intensity that Baylor so values results in worse lawyers graduating from the school overall.

I know that this reasoning is flawed in that the "smartest" students will choose the best ranked school regardless of how easy or hard schools below them are, but there are many things at Baylor that aren't condusive to attracting students, and because there are now three schools pretty close together, many students will choose the other two over Baylor. The school should think about altering the grading system, practice court, and the quarter system because they are not attractive to most students, and employers don't seem to take them into consideration when hiring. Therefore, they don't help our reputation or starting salaries, and thus, don't help in the rankings.
 

I understand the advantage the name on the degree carries. I think, for instance, I would definitely lose a job to a Harvard or Columbia grad. And that's fine. They did sonething I didn't. But does that same inequality apply to Baylor vs. U of H or SMU? they're both ranked higher. But they have roughly similar entrance criteria to Baylor.
 

This is a classic example of a debate between people who don't know exactly what they are talking about but are good at argument. Congratulations, you will do well in the courtroom.

With respect to the rankings - I think the calculus for getting jobs is much more complex than a fall of 10, 15, or even 25 spots. First and foremost, at this point, Baylor is ranked back of 50. Jumping back to 51 would be a good thing and would be progress but really won't make a tangible difference in any of your job prospects.

And with respect to UH - I would challenge any of you to fight your way into a Dallas firm with a UH degree. Good luck. On the other hand, in a Houston office, you would have likely have the edge. The truth is, people hire their own grads to the extent they can. Sure, tradelawguy is right, in a tough economy, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Texas, etc., are going to have a definite edge in the big firm context in any city. When the firm is only hiring 6 lawyers and has 12 ivy applicants -- lower ranked schools are out of luck. But Baylor would be out of luck if it was ranked 51, or 75, or 40 for that matter. But this year is the exceptional circumstance. Most of the time that same firm would hire 40 lawyers and you can bet that a good chunk of them will be from Baylor (assuming a Texas firm). Now if you came to Baylor and were certain you were headed to NY to start climbing the rungs at Wachtel, you may be out of luck -- but you were out of luck on Baylor's best ranking year.

I guess I would sum up all of this with two points:

1. The sky isn't falling. The legal market is rough right now but things will stabilize and this ranking issue will not matter in your actual employment prospects. The difference in Baylor's position is not material to those making the hiring decisions. In fact, I can tell you that those I know on hiring committees at big firms don't know Baylor's ranking or anyone else's for the most part. They do know that Harvard is more prestigious than Baylor. I don't think that's revolutionary or in any way changed by the current ranking. The debate about SMU and Baylor grads in Dallas will rage on despite the rankings. SMU people think Baylor people are overvalued and Baylor people think SMU people aren't worth their salt. This discussion has been ongoing for about 15 years, according to those who have been around, and will continue. The tension actually gets more of both hired, I think, because both camps fight vigorously for their respective candidates.

2. Big firms are in flux. You don't want to work at one anyway right now. For those who are going to the big firm, hold on to your hat and things will settle down in the next couple.

My vote is that Baylor should be what it is -- a great law school that trains great lawyers who are respected and successful across the state and nation. If US News doesn't measure that, then maybe it should look in the mirror.
 

Anonymous 8:50:

I was on a mock trial team, so I feel qualified to offer comment. First of all, many of us weren't the same "ten or twenty" people - for most of us on the team, that was our only shot at a team. As far as my teammates who'd been on other teams, I was glad to have them.

Second, we didn't just learn to argue on our team...we learned to prepare a case beyond what would matter to a mock trial judge. Sure, we wanted to win - hell, what group of lawyers doesn't - but the focus was more on "let's do this like we're going to a real trial, not a competition." That meant that some of the "sparkly" competition stuff went out the window in favor of more realistic training. Say what you like (and maybe you had a different experience on your team) but damn it, we prepared big time.

Third, I am not sparkly.
 

Something that rates comment is the purpose behind the USNews rankings themselves. They are designed to provide a national look at where all law schools stand in relation to one another. The key consideration for image purposes is whether as a school you want to focus more on your national reputation or your local reputation.

Few schools offer degrees that can be taken anywhere in the nation and have instant name recognition and respect attached. The USNews rankings basically confirm this principle. Law schools for the most part generally offer at most an in-state job pool and in some cases (UH) an in-city job pool. I think Baylor would do well to focus on being the Best in Texas especially considering the size of Texas' economy and all of the potential opportunities that exist for attorney's and law students in Texas.

National rankings are really a sidenote. I'll admit that someday it may be nice to take my BLS degree and walk into some law office in Alaska and have instant recognition and respect but I think Baylor is doing pretty well when I can accomplish that same thing in Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, Houston, or San Antonio.

As far as big firms go. Yes they are national and sometimes international in their operations, but as most of us know already, most local offices do their own hiring. The Texas offices generally pull the best law students out of the best Texas Schools just as the Boston offices will head down the street to Harvard. It doesn't really make sense to judge Baylor's ability to get people jobs in big firms based on national rankings when those firms usually rely on local offices doing their own hiring locally.
 

Roughly the same leaves a big gap- I'm pretty sure plenty of people get in at Baylor- especialy in the spring/summer, that otherwise wouldn't get into UH or SMU (I'm a spring starter myself)

I think the problem is that our course model models South Texas and Stetson (except much harder) than it does Harvard. And we have no interest in changing that. (no more laptops in PC/first year, even more required courses, advocacy above all else). Until we develop an interest, well, we should get ready for Tier 3 and start preparing to compare ourselves to TTU and South Texas rather than UH and SMU.
 

All this talk about bls being an 'advocacy' school...how are we doing in those advocacy rankings?
 

Well, I am a prosecutor (or at least, I work in the DA's office. I don't actually get to prosecute the cases, but instead clean up afterward. Yay appeals!), and it's true that money doesn't make my friends with big firm jobs green with envy, but that's OK. I've seen their workloads.

Someone mentioned a big NYC firm, and I happen to know a person that will work for them. This person got the job without ever stepping foot in a law school (yet). Quite literally, the prestige of this person's degree didn't help so much as opportunities taken while an undegrad that placed this person in a position to meet the right people.

My own job I got out of pure fortuitous chance after being rejected at the first few places I applied. I'm sure had I gone to Harvard or Yale I'd have had a job faster (assuming I passed the Bar), but if I'd taken my acceptances to SMU, U. of Colorado, Wake Forest or U. of H.? That I can't say.
 

You should've gone to Wake Forest. Unless you got a scholarship to come here. Besides, they're our baptist brethren.
 

"Our top-10 trial advocacy ranking improved, while our overall ranking declined 10 spots." ROFL
 

Interesting. I've been 'out' since '90, and i am a career litigator. My first hearing, AND my first trial (4 months out o law school) occurred before Judge McBride. YIKES.

Suddenly, all the 'abuse' from Muldrow had purpose...