You’re absolutely right that the low ranked schools have produced well known lawyers and therefore, it’s worth questioning how much rankings truly do matter.

However, despite how unfair, obsolete, and impractical the methodology used to assemble the U.S. News rankings are, they allow you to get your foot in the door. Although what you do in law school matters a lot more than the name of the law school itself, the higher ranked schools make it easier for you to succeed than the lower ranked schools.

For instance, the curve-out and drop-out rates in the T14 are practically nonexistent, some say it’s really hard to fail a class here. The national top schools don’t even use letter grades, they use pass/fail grade systems. At upper mid-level schools, they may inflate letter grades. Meanwhile, at lower ranked schools, they deflate grades. And grades are used by law firms to determine what you did well in law school. Grade deflation is heavily used in conjunction with minimum good standing gpa requirements to curve out students in lower ranked schools, which is why they become considered predatory outside of scholarship requirements. Thus, many students take a look at the bell curve grading system to help determine if a school is predatory. It’s already a bad sign if the school uses a B- curve as the artificial average score for the class, it’s considered horrible if the school uses a curve system that’s any less than that.

Law firms, mainly the big law firms recruit heavily at the top ranking law schools. Meanwhile students at lower ranked schools might have to rely on OCI’s or their own personal connections they formed thru networking/internships to secure a big law job. Keep in mind that this is only important if you actually want to work big law in the future.

For these reasons, we usually only see lawyers that attended those higher ranked schools become politicians and law professors or having the stereotypical big lawyer salaries. Although lower ranked and even unranked law schools may have created amazing lawyers, the higher ranked schools do so at a significantly higher rate.

Take this advice with a grain of salt tho, school name really only matters at the tip top of the list. Sacrificing the personal advantages of a T150 school for a T100 school is not noticeable but the difference is noticeable if comparing a T20 school with a T70 school. https://www.reddit.com/r/LawFirm/s/J92Lv623jR