My academic credentials are unimpressive to say the least. I graduated from a mediocre college before finishing near the bottom of my class at a fourth-tier law school. (If you care to know, I went to Roger Williams University School of Law in Rhode Island.)
Nevertheless, I managed to pass the bar exam, open my own law office (no one else would hire me!), and practice law with some success for the past 15 years.
During that time, I’ve dealt with hundreds of lawyers, each with his own unique educational background.
Here’s what I’ve learned about law degrees and the lawyers who’ve earned them.
In the rough-and-tumble world of the law, first-tier and/or Ivy League law graduates are usually indistinguishable from their fourth-tier colleagues.
I should emphasize that this is from my perspective as a practitioner. I have no experience dealing with lawyers in any other setting, e.g., academia, government bureaucracy, etc.
I practice in western Massachusetts where there’s only one law school—Western New England University.
Ranked 180 of 196 in U.S. News’ global rankings, WNEU is planted firmly in the fourth tier.
(For the record, I earned my B.A. at WNEU and I taught sociology/criminology there as an adjunct professor for a couple years.)
I’d guess about four in every five practicing lawyers that I encounter on a regular basis graduated from WNEU.
Occasionally I’ll run into a lawyer—often from central or eastern Mass—who graduated from an elite institution.
Yale is about an hour’s drive south from my area and Harvard is not much farther heading east. So Ivy Leaguers do appear with some regularity.
Massachusetts is also home to the top-tier law schools at Boston College and Boston University.
Their graduates wander into western Massachusetts from time to time.
Nothing about these academically elite lawyers makes them readily stand out.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve worked with a lawyer—either handling a business transaction or sorting out a legal dispute—and not realized that he held a prestigious degree.
Admittedly, there are some outliners.
It’s rare, but on occasion I’ll see a lawyer in action and wonder how on Earth he or she earned a juris doctorate and got past the bar exam. These lawyers almost invariably come from low-ranking schools.
Conversely, you will, from time to time, meet a lawyer who looks like he was born into a life of privilege. His bespoke suit appears to cost a small fortune and he’s prattling on about one pretentious thing or another—his yacht, Martha Vineyard, etc. You can be almost certain he’s not a fourth-tier alum.
The overall consistency in practicing lawyers is, I think, a sign that the ABA has done its job in recent decades ensuring the quality of America’s law schools. Let’s hope that doesn’t change with the approach of ABA-approved online J.D.’s.