I think it might be somewhat more complicated. As far as I know, the LSAT+GPA measure is actually a pretty strong predictor of law school performance as far as standardized tests go. But there’s some controversy in the literature about how much law school grades matter for success. Good law schools also have much higher bar passage rates, though there could be confounding factors there too.
In general, the legal market seems somewhat weird to me. E.g., it’s pretty easy for T3 students to get a BigLaw job, but often hard for students near the bottom of the T14 too. I do not understand why firms don’t just hire such students and thereby lower wages, which are very high. My best guess is, Hansonianly, that there’s a lot of signaling going on, where firms try to signal their quality by hiring only T6 law students. Also, I imagine the T6 credential is important for recruiting clients, which is very important to BigLaw success.
But query how much of this matters if you want to do a non-ETG law path.
I think it might be somewhat more complicated. As far as I know, the LSAT+GPA measure is actually a pretty strong predictor of law school performance as far as standardized tests go. But there’s some controversy in the literature about how much law school grades matter for success. Good law schools also have much higher bar passage rates, though there could be confounding factors there too.
In general, the legal market seems somewhat weird to me. E.g., it’s pretty easy for T3 students to get a BigLaw job, but often hard for students near the bottom of the T14 too. I do not understand why firms don’t just hire such students and thereby lower wages, which are very high. My best guess is, Hansonianly, that there’s a lot of signaling going on, where firms try to signal their quality by hiring only T6 law students. Also, I imagine the T6 credential is important for recruiting clients, which is very important to BigLaw success.
But query how much of this matters if you want to do a non-ETG law path.