climbing the endless ladder of prestige.
As I'm sure you may have heard by now, I'm publishing my book with Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Random House! I am beyond ecstatic to be able to talk openly about everything, and rest assured--I vlogged the whole book deal process that will be posted on YouTube. I always wondered what getting a book deal entailed, and now I know--a lot of crying and sitting alone, punctuated by moments of hope. I've begun lining up interviews for my project, so if you have something to say about biglaw (on- or off-the-record, it's up to you!), please fill out this form. The more I talk to people about their experiences and what they think, even if it's not for inclusion in my book, the more my thoughts crystallize and the better my book will be! The likely publication date is spring 2025, so buckle up--this is going to be a long and exciting journey!
what it really means to "leave" the law school rankings.
The U.S. News and World Report started ranking schools in 1983, starting with colleges. It began ranking law schools annually starting in 1990, and its ranking is where the term "T14," or Top 14, comes from. The problem with the U.S. News rankings, at least for law schools, is that so much of the rankings methodology is based on one thing: prestige. In fact, 61% of the U.S. News ranking can be attributed to prestige--40% from the "Quality Assessment," essentially surveys to legal academics and lawyers about the prestige of legal institutions, and 21% from the "Selectivity" of the school, essentially whether the median LSAT/GRE and GPA are high and the acceptance rate low. The dictionary definition of prestige is:
(noun) widespread respect and admiration felt for someone or something on the basis of a perception of their achievements or quality
(emphasis added). Yes, that's right--prestige is about the perception of achievements or quality.
The problem with relying on perception is that humans are incredibly susceptible to first impressions and confirmation bias, even when faced with facts or new information that contradict the initial thought. In 1975, a Stanford study presented undergraduates with pairs of written notes, telling the undergrads that one note was fake and one was real. The students were asked to sort the notes into the two categories (fake or real) and were later given a score of how many notes they had correctly identified out of the 25 pairs of notes. Some students were given a high score--24--while others were given a low score--10. The researchers, however, then revealed that the scores were fictitious. The implication was, of course, that being labeled a "high scorer" did not necessarily mean that one scored better at the task, in reality.
Despite this new information, the "high scorers" estimated that they still performed significantly better than the average student, and the "low scorers" predicted that they performed significantly worse than average. Even though the students had been told that there was no evidence to back up the initial categorizations, the positive or negative emanations from those initial categorizations still stayed with them.
Now, imagine these undergrads applying to law school. When trying to research which law schools to apply to, they consult the U.S. News rankings and read all of the online posts about the T14. They apply, go to law school, graduate, and then one day receive a survey from U.S. News asking them to rank law schools on a scale of 1 (marginal) to 5 (outstanding). The Stanford study suggests that even if the lawyers were informed that the previous U.S. News rankings were a sham, they would still generally align with the old rankings--because humans are not inclined to change their minds.
This is why, after some thought, I'm unmoved by the bevy of announcements from certain (higher-ranked) law schools about "leaving" or "boycotting" the U.S. News rankings. While the law schools may have good intentions for protesting against the rankings, it's not lost on me that the higher-ranked schools are the very ones who can afford to "leave," or "withdraw," or whatever they want to call it--they will nonetheless be buoyed by the preexisting positive emanations from their, oh, thirty-plus years of rankings dominance. Plus, they'll reap the positive PR from this superficially transgressive move.
I hope this isn't overly cynical, particularly during the holiday season, as I really do hope that my cynicism is disproven. In fact, there is a way for these ~tRaNSgReSSivE~ law schools to put more force behind their highly publicized announcements. A YouTube commenter brought up a simple yet elegant idea: "it would be impressive if those prestigious institutions that withdrew became early adopters of a new ranking system."
Bingo.
If these institutions care about the things they purport to care about, if they want to push against the ills of the current system, it isn't enough to simply "leave" the current system. After all, U.S. News announced that it fully intends to continue ranking the schools which have left, which is completely viable given the rankings' large reliance on public data. Leaving a system--throwing up one's hands in frustration and futility--does very little to correct the matters which led to the frustration and feeling of futility in the first place. (It reminds me of the "live off the grid" champions who fervently believe that by living in rural areas with no access to the outer world or electronics, they are somehow bettering the very world which they find so unbearable.) The schools that have withdrawn need to take advantage of this momentary vacuum which they have created to present and champion an alternative rankings system that takes into account the values missing from U.S. News--public interest service, diversity, financial aid, among others. The creation of an alternative rankings is necessary for, as Dean Gerken of Yale Law puts it, the legal industry to "pursue our own path forward as we work to advance legal education."
✍️ ask cece
how do you juggle things in life?
Q: How you manage to service everything in your life? You seem to have a very rich, full life, and I wonder how you manage to fit in working a demanding job, a relationship, friendships, hobbies, do laundry, etc. This is something I personally really struggle with so any advice would be much appreciated.
- Anonymous
A: Being an adult is surprisingly tough! I always used to think that as long as I went to a "good" school and got a "good" job, being an adult would be fairly straightforward. But you're absolutely right that the demands of everyday life can pile up and pile up--work calls, dating or a romantic relationship, friendships, hobbies, chores, etc. No matter how much it may seem from the outside (or from social media) that someone is "doing it all," they really aren't--there are only so many hours in the day, and if someone is claiming that they worked 12 hours that day, went on a date, and did laundry, they are frankly either lying or sleeping very little. Neither of which are good.
The key to servicing everything in your life is to focus on that word--servicing. It's not about doing everything yourself, but rather ranking all of your duties/obligations from what you like to do to what you least like to do. After you've done that, place the activities into these quadrants:
excuse how unaesthetic this 5-minute Canva hack job is
For example, many biglaw attorneys do not clean their own home or do their own laundry. Some (including me) rarely cook for themselves; some do not pick up their kids from school; some do not even shop for their own clothing. These are all activities that we have decided are in Quadrant II--activities we don't like to do but still have to do, so we outsource them in order to have time to spend on activities in Quadrant I and Quadrant IV. Quadrant IV activities are particularly challenging to make time for sometimes, because they are completely voluntary and thus often fall to the wayside as you tackle the things you have to do. Being able to exchange time spent in Quadrant II for time spent in Quadrant IV will significantly help you feel like you are living a rich, fulfilling life, rather than tackling endless to-do lists that never get done. I like to schedule Quadrant IV activities as soon as I can--for example, I book all of my workout classes on Sunday for the following week, set a date to meet friends for coffee/drinks in the next few weeks the moment we talk about it, and reserve 10pm onwards for spending time with my partner. Did I manage to make it every single time, when I was in biglaw? No--but I also didn't cancel as much as I thought I would have to. Intentionality, supported by managing up, goes a long way.
Now, I recognize that Quadrant II is an immense privilege--it assumes that work is lucrative enough to be able to outsource certain obligations. That is not true for many people. When that is the case, Quadrant II will need to be scheduled into your life, as well, just as with Quadrant IV. The key here is to distinguish between what really has to get done and what doesn't really have to get done. For example, doing laundry is something that you have to do--but dealing with complicated laundering instructions and multiple loads can be minimized by relying primarily on machine washable clothes. Even business clothing comes in machine washable types--one of the reasons I was such a big fan of M.M.LaFleur dresses. Overall, recognize that you are juggling many balls at once and dropping some will be inevitable--the important thing is to know which balls are the plastic ones that you can drop and which ones are the glass ones that you should endeavor to not drop. And when you do drop the plastic balls, just keep right on juggling.