CALI's Pre-Law Blog

16 Oct, 2007

TaxProf Blog posted some more good stuff based on the Princeton Review data.

This time Prof. Caron offers up the schools where students study the least and where students study the most. Click below to read more analysis.

Interestingly (and probably intuitively if you know much about the hierarchy of law school), "[t]he data show that students at lower-ranked law schools study harder (a median 5.13 hours per day) than students at higher ranked schools (a median 3.56 hours per day)."

This data reflects the theory that students at lower reputation schools work harder and are more competitive because a lot of them want to transfer or want to have a shot at being in the top 5% (or whatever) of the class who have an outside shot at those high paying jobs we all hear about.

What does this mean to me? These are some of the misconceptions I see coming from pre-laws that I think this helps to debunk:

1. "Everyone at (this nationally recognized school I will be attending) is probably more motivated/smarter than me so I won't be able to compete." Ok, I never really hear this. As a whole, future law students are some (at least outwardly) overly confident people. But if you do think this, don't. It looks to me like a lot of students at high ranking schools will slack off once they've made it into a top school, probably thinking that because the school's brand name is so great that they will have plenty of job opportunities regardless (and they may be right). Anyway, hard work and discipline should pay off more at these top schools with some of the students slacking off and just happy to be there, as opposed to lower ranked schools where most everyone is working hard.
2. "I'm going to outperform everyone at this (low reputation) school because my LSAT is relatively high." Going to a lower ranked school with relatively higher admissions numbers than your peers at that school doesn't mean you're going to outperform them. It doesn't mean you can plan on being in the top x percentile. If you go to a lower ranked school, be prepared to work. Because law school isn't all about natural ability or intelligence, a lot of it is discipline and work ethic.
3. "I'm settling on (a lower reputation school) and plan to transfer to (a high reputation school)." In the same vein as above, going to a lower reputation school and expecting to transfer up is a bad, bad strategy. As a reminder, generally only the very top students at lower reputation schools have a chance to transfer up. Hoping to transfer up? Maybe. Counting on transferring? Bad idea. I think you should go to a school from which you would be comfortable graduating.

Here's the graph with a list of the schools where students study the most and least.