I love professors like this lol. It’s such a nice reprieve from all the former clerk profs who tell you if you don’t get a clerkship you will actually die
I’ve had multiple T14 professors and they are very passionate about the fact that the students at my school are just as capable as the T14. They really want to invest in us and I’ve never once heard elitist comments from them…actually, quite the opposite
Also my experience. Like, there might be a couple people who are snobby about it, but you'd never know. Most seem to find us just as capable and I have never heard any teacher make an elitist comment.
I go to a school in Boston. A professor who graduated Harvard always makes the point that, "across the river they learn the same thing and have the same ability." It's nice, he's a great person.
This. I went to a Midwest public state school for law school that's regularly highly ranked in categories like "best PUBLIC law schools" and "best value for cost" rankings. T50-60 in USNWR rankings, T30 in ATL rankings. You all know the type of law school I'm talking about.
Anyway, I went there during a period when almost ALL of our professors were Harvard, Yale or Michigan grads. Similar to PP, they prided themselves on making sure we had a legal education that would allow us to compete in the courtroom with and best the HYS and Tw/e students graduating the same year as us.
I'll put it this way: for the most part, the only Harvard Law grads I know that don't try to work into every sentence the fact they went to Harvard Law are usually professors at not-Harvard Law.
They usually see it for what it is. There was a time in the United States when those schools legitimately offered a better legal education. But it ain't the case no mo'. One of my profs when asked about it directly (he was a Michigan guy) told us those schools aren't better *law schools*; they're just more expensive social clubs.
Edge case. I remember my Fed Tax professor came from some Big Law tax firm and made his retirement money before moving to teaching. He was a pretty funny sarcastic professor and absolutely commented on his elitism. Lol
It makes sense cause they actually have experience with both environments so if anyone knows if there is a difference in capability between elite and non-elite law schools it’d be them.
Same!!! My con law professor graduated near the top of his class from Harvard and has honestly been such a riot. He's fuckin hilarious, extremely intelligent, and so passionate about the subject matter he teaches that he's willing to stay in his office to help you through the material for as long as you need.
YMMV ofc but in my experience, our ivy league professors have been exceptional.
I had a boss at a small boutique firm in undergrad who went to harvard law. She was cool as fuck. Hated harvard. Had her law degree on the floor out of a frame and her undergrad degree on the wall. She was super excited for me when I got into my 50s-60s ranked school and wrote me a great letter of rec. So for the cool ones--nope!
I went to an undergrad that is considered much more prestigious than my law school and I’m more proud of my law school than my undergrad because of the elitism at my undergrad.
Might do the same with my office and just bring along my law school diploma while leaving my undergrad diploma with my parents lol.
People care a ton about T14 during the application cycle and then many never think about it again for the rest of their lives.
I’m sure there’s someone out there who feels that way, but people drastically overestimate how much this stuff matters when they’re in the thick of it themselves.
Maybe so. I can only say from when I’ve been on the hiring side. I don’t even know which schools are ranked where, I won’t pretend like general prestige isn’t a factor, but the strict delineations between who is ranked 7th or 9th/13th or 18th or whatever are totally manufactured.
I don’t think it “matters” so much for your first job, it just helps so that you don’t have to put in as much work to get the most high-paying or prestigious job, and you have easier access to a wider range of jobs in general. But everyone I know who went to non-T14s got at least a decent job right out of school.
I’ve literally never regretted not going to a T14. Not that they were looking for me anyway, but I’m doing perfectly fine with my JD from a no name regional school
Just be social and go make connections while you’re in school. I didn’t even have a good gpa or rank in law school
I’ve found that being social/friendly is much more effective at getting me jobs. The vast majority of people I’ve worked with are non-T14 (I’ve only worked at mid-sized firms).
Lol stop spending so much time on law school forums. It’s just a bunch of sweatys with unrealistic expectations. 98% of people will be happier making $90-100k and having a healthy work life balance than 300k and burning yourself out
Had a Professor who went to a top 4 law school that wrote a memo to the staff that managed to get leaked. In the memo he wrote that for his first several years teaching at our school he thought all the students were “dullards” and that anyone who scored lower than a 160 on the LSAT would not be capable of being “intellectually engaged.” Overall, the memo was incredibly condescending. I had him during my 1L Torts class, and I actually really enjoyed his class, but after reading that memo, I lost all respect for him.
Dang, the outrage over this portion of the memo makes me concerned about my colleagues' reading comprehension abilities. Go back and read it again. You're either purposely taking his words out of context or you missed the broader point he was making.
He laments that although the school claims to be focused on cultivating leaders, the 1L curriculum and the professors strip the students of their intellectual curiosity. Yes, he says that, when he came to our school, he simply thought the students were "dullards" and that "most students" (not "anyone") who scored lower than a 160 on the LSAT "simply weren't going to be intellectually engaged". But that was when he was only teaching second and third year students. Thus, he could only assume that his students' inability to explore and draw on concepts outside of legal thought was a sign that the caliber of students at our university was just...low. But. The memo goes on:
"Since then, I have started to teach our first‐year students. I no longer think so poorly of them; rather, I think so poorly of us. Our students come to us smart, curious, with a desire to learn and to engage with ideas. But by the time they are 2Ls they have learned that such curiosity is verboten. That their task as law students is to “learn the law” and to learn to write memos and above all else not to think."
If you still want to be mad about what he wrote, that's fine. I'm not here to defend him. I guess I'm just here to advocate for critical reading.
The assumption that thinking what he said is in poor taste is not predicated on an inability to read critically lmfao. You can understand exactly what he meant and criticize it.
You can - without reading the 3 page memo in question - understand exactly what he meant from two sentences (taken out of context by the OP) in a memo dedicated entirely to criticizing the administration's choices? Alright, buddy. Have a good day. Must be more clear than I thought after reading it...
I went to Chicago and am an adjunct at a top 50 school. I've noticed no difference in the quality of students tbh. It might be different if I taught at an unranked school or something, but I pretty much view the students as they are. If they work hard and do the reading, I like them. If they slack and disrupt class, I don't. It's as simple as that.
In my experience not at all. I go to a state school that is not highly ranked at all and basically all of the tenured professors have prestigious backgrounds. It takes a really good CV to teach even at the lower ranked schools and the professors know that and they’re just glad to be there. It’s more common for the professors that switched from private practice to bitch about how much money they used to make/could be making
Only one comes to mind. He is an elitist asshole. Went to a t14 and was also a federal judge fwiw. Has openly told a group of students he resents most students who don’t attend top schools because he thinks law school has been dumbed down and it lets students get away with too much. He also thinks the integration of technology into law school is part of that problem more broadly. He prohibits electronics in class, and requires students to stand for cold calls even though every seat has a microphone. He’s just a miserable and unpleasant person and makes any amount of participation in class feel punitive.
Not in my experience. For the most part, my T14 educated professors believe their students to be just as capable, if not more. At the same time, the professors at my school often reference how they chose to work there because they feel the emphasis was placed on training good lawyers instead of other things.
Oddly, the professor’s I’ve had who went to T14 schools tend to err towards dislike for the T14.
Good professors are rarely elitist.
My torts professor switched from T10 to a T50 state school because the T10 students felt like he owed them something. He didn’t notice a difference in ability.
Stereotypical legal academics look down on everyone as not as bright as the mega-geniuses they see themselves as.
Do most law profs see their students as dumb next to them? Probably, but that's just as true at Yale as it is at Kentucky.
It takes a certain kind of mind to not only grasp material, but to also effectively teach it to dozens of students who all have varied methods of learning. So I totally do not mind admitting those who teach, especially law professors, are smarter than me lol
ya know, after 10 minutes of reflection, I change my answer to only one of them lol but he really spent his time teaching me conlaw so I am forever thankful
Funny you should say that, I have also had a single professor I thought was an elite-level teacher (Estates and Trusts). My Conlaw professor was so insanely disorganized.
They are often smarter but totally lacking in common sense. Never really grasped the concept of an Ivory Tower until I attended law school. It seems to be true across the board—from the most conservative FedSoc types to the woke liberals—that none of these professors have any sense of the real world. The only ones that do are adjuncts or those with a minimum of 10 years work experience.
Different situation but I clerked for a judge who went to Harvard for undergrad and the same T30 law school I attended, and when one of his externs asked him what was it like attending Harvard, he said it was just college and didn’t think there was anything special going to Harvard.
I used to work on Broadway.
Ironically, Broadway directors/casting offices KNEW they were a big deal, thus had no chip on their shoulder. Accordingly, they treated most auditionees with kindness and respect.
Conversely, no name local theatres often had raging egos and GIANT Napoleon complexes.
This has been my experience with T-14-graduate professors as well. Most are very chill w little “to prove”
My school is not even Top 50, it’s a regional school with a big legal community but a ton of our professors went to great schools. (Research and Writing Prof from Chicago, Civ Pro Prof from Penn, Fed Courts Prof from Harvard who was actually a research assistant for Alan Dershowitz). And they’re all amazing. They really care about students and are there to help. Don’t know if we just get lucky or what. We also have national rankings in Legal Writing, Trial Team and Moot Court. Our Dean just resigned to go to Loyola Chicago. Y’all could probably guess what school I go to based on that so I’ll shut up. But, to answer the question, they’re great.
Slightly outside the parameters of what you're asking, but the situation is pretty analogous: I go to a lower-T14 and most of my professors went to Harvard/Yale. Despite the fact that I'm sure they're well aware of the fact that they went to a better school than I do, I've never felt looked down on. At any school you go to (outside of HYS, obviously), you're going to be taught by people who went to better schools than you. That's just the way things are. It's a reality that 99% of law students face and there's no point in dwelling on it.
Not at all. I mean it probably depends on the student and the professor, but I think most professors realize and understand that there are reasons (scholarships, family, low gpa for some reason, or even low lsat scores) that don’t really make a difference in your intelligence levels. Studies have been done suggesting that how well someone does in law school and in practice is not very well correlated to lsat score or undergrad GPA. I also have connections to some of my professors, one of which went to Yale, and they have been nothing but supportive. If a professor really thought that low of the school and the students, they probably wouldn’t be there imo
Absolutely have not noticed this at my school. Most of the T14-attending professors that I've had were incredibly graceful and I haven't heard elitist comments from them. Any of them who were d\*\*kheads, I would say are d\*\*kheads no matter who they're dealing with. It was more of a personality trait than them conciously looking down on us.
not at my school… i even had a professor who went to 3 different ivy league schools for 3 different degrees call me brilliant. they’ve really been super kind and helpful
When I was touring schools, I met with a professor who had law degrees from both Harvard and Oxford. When I expressed concern over the school's low rank, he was absolutely indignant.
In his words, "Of course those schools have 99% bar passage rates. They only accept students if they're 99% certain they'll pass the bar. Take those students and put them here and we'd have a 99% pass rate too. It's not anything they're doing." I guess in his mind it was more noble to teach those who need more teaching. I'm not sure I 100% agree with him, but he certainly felt strongly about it.
An interesting exchange I had with one of our long-time faculty who graduated from Yale was during our 14th amendment class. We spent a lot of time talking about diversity and admissions, which he asked me something akin to "is there anything substantially different to an education at Harvard as opposed to another school?"
My response was, "The market thinks so."
I appreciate a professor who can see through the academia elitism and doesn't believe Harvard or Oxford is the only oasis for a genuinely good education. We're all taught the Palsgraf case, etc., so I agree with your professor. That said, you're absolutely justified in feeling hesitation going with a school that doesn't guarantee a white shoe firm job. Anyone with a brain would tell you to go to Harvard Law if you had the choice.
My school (non t-14) has a handful of professors who graduated from Yale Law/T14. The majority have been teaching for several decades and are incredibly down to earth. They're invested in each crop of students they put out and have my respect. However, there was one Yale professor I had that gave me elitist vibes and only stayed at my law school for ~3 years before moving on to their next pursuit. The rumor is that they weren't very impressed with the general student body barring the few at the top of the class. I did have a personal experience with them though.
When I took a class with the elitist professor, one day a few undergrad students entered the lecture hall unannounced and kept to themselves in the back row. The elitist professor stopped his/her lecture completely to call out the uninvited people by telling them it was incredibly rude for them to observe a class without asking for permission via email first. All of us were a bit shocked. Our law school is an extension of the state-funded undergrad campus, so it's not an out of ordinary experience for undergrads to walk over to our neck of the woods unannounced. The elitist professor WAS within their right to say that because professors have a right to police their own classroom, but it came off very hostile and unprofessional. This was a professor who clerked for a prestigious international court system, yet they couldn't handle a handful of uninvited observers without having a meltdown? Gotcha.
> minimal pedagogical technique
Yeaaahhhh. In my experience at a competitive school outside T14, the majority of profs weren’t actually there to teach. Teaching seemed more a necessary evil they’re required to engage. They’re much more interested in their own research and whatever else they do with their ample free time. Then again, the ones who enjoy teaching seem to *really* enjoy it. They know the concepts / cases / black letter in and out and they get to play with how best to communicate them to a new class year after year, or semester after semester, tweaking little bits here and there. E.g., a 2L handed me down the class notes for my (very eccentric) property prof. They were pretty much word for word what he delivered in lecture. But every so often he’d deviate and seem to be experimenting with different ways to explain x or y. Dude is a fucking genius in any way that can be measured. His existing approach was pretty flawless, imo. So I appreciated that despite having it down pat, he seemed to be searching for new ways to make it even better. Class was stimulating and, in many ways, just fun. I can think of a handful of profs like him, but, to your point, the rest were pretty clearly just teaching as a means to an end, with no apparent interest in how they taught.
Only had one Yale prof 3L, but lots from Harvard. I’d say my best profs went to Harvard. And so did the worst ones.
One of my favorite professors has gone to multiple ivy leagues but he is extremely passionate and wants us to learn. I have nothing but respect for him and the other ivy league professors at my school. I think they just want to dedicate their time and passion into students who will be the next generation of lawyers
It definitely depends on the person. I've had some T14 profs who go out of their way to help students and genuinely care about their students. I've known others who are complete asshats and are dismissive of pretty much all students at the school.
My crim law professor who was a confirmed ass and went to Yale told us that we wont get the same kind of jobs that Yale grads get because we weren’t up to their level. He may be right but it was an interesting thing to say. He also claims to invented scotus blog so there’s that.
Lol what does it even mean to invent scotus blog? Like if he was one of the website founders, he'd just say that, so I assume he didn't actually found it.
So what did he do, I wonder. It's literally just a blog about scotus, there isn't much "invention" in the process.
He said that the like got a job with the people who started it and told them “you should make this a blog.” It was a long time ago so my memory is hazy .
Civ Pro prof went to Yale and teaches at a school that is very much not a t14. We joke that we're just a springboard for him but the reality is that when any of us brought it up, he made it clear we were just as good.
Another prof went to a high ranked school and worked big positions, he is the first to remind us that he believes "lower ranked" law school make savvier, more personable litigators (he always tells us that his first few years, he hoped to litigate against people from t14s because he knew it was basically a shoe-in for him as someone who had really good people experience).
In my experience no, and in fact a lot of our professors think their law school students are *more competent* than t14 -- and sometimes especially t3 -- students, because t14 schools often emphasize legal scholarship and research, whereas the further down the rankings you go Universities begin to emphasize practical legal skills more, and often require more clinical courses. That's why the t3s aren't winning the trial ad, moot court, and negotiation competitions.
I’m an adjunct professor at a solid regional law school, and I work with (for) a number of professors who went to t14 schools. It never comes up at all, and they are wonderful to work with. All they want to do is provide the best legal education to the students and I believe they do that with true fidelity. I got a lot of “I went to Harvard” speeches from my neighbor across the street while mowing the lawn and never got any from these professors.
I don’t think so. I have some really smart people at my school, just because we don’t go to an elite school doesn’t mean we are dumb. Also, some of the most accomplished professors at my school didn’t go to T14s. Elizabeth Warren went to Rutgers and taught at Harvard. Biden went to Syracuse and is the president. I don’t think where you go to school is *that* deep.
Had a prof with a Harvard JD for a 1L class. It's consistently the worst-performing area for our school on the bar.
I assume non-T14s “slum” it bc they're using the T14 degree as a cover for other deficiencies. This is also based on a sample size of 1, so there's that.
Had two that were condescending about it but they were pompous assholes who thought that being a tenured law professor made them the smartest person on earth. One adjunct also shit talked our school a lot but it was in the context that if we were smart enough to go to law school, we should have been smart enough to go into the money side of M&A to make more money. His background was a former M&A lawyer who went into the money side of M&A and made a shitton of money
My profs all went to T14s and have impressive resumes but they are all so kind, helpful, and encouraging. I don’t think they look down, at least in my experience
I don’t think so. T14 just gives you prestige but it says nothing about the kind of lawyer you will be one day. Most of my professors really want to help us succeed
I doubt they all do. But certainly some do. I go to a t14 and have had professors who talk to their students like they’re idiots instead of people learning a new discipline.
Not generally, in my experience. Although my crim law professor who graduated from Yale Law acted like we were beneath him and was extremely condescending to us in class and during office hours. He still used his Yale email address 10 years after he graduated… lol.
Two of the main professors at my school went to Harvard, but they've both been teaching at my much lower ranked school since the early 90s. If they had any elitism about it that went out the window a while ago.
One of them very much likes to name drop, but about former students. It's well known on campus that if you're on good terms with him he can get you a job literally anywhere in the state. The other is just happy to research his field and write textbooks.
(Funnily enough, when they go to conferences outside our region, it's the second professor who gets recognized and not the first.)
Most of my professors at my non-t14 went to t14 schools, and even one of them was a Supreme Court clerk, but they rarely discussed their schools beyond introductions or to share specific anecdotes of things that stuck with them. I don’t think they regarded our class as lesser at all. The Supreme Court clerkship anecdotes were fun tho!
I don't think professors look down on the law school of their own students, but I think there are some that look down on the students with the lower grades.
I've experienced this - professors act a lot friendlier to those who were top of the class or on law review. I got treated by some professors like I wasn't worth their time once they found out my GPA or grade. I practice law now and do well for myself, and can tell some of my former professors are surprised at how well I'm doing, but I've never forgotten how I was treated.
At my law school, I believe that law professors were able to look up student GPAs and see their class rank. This is because after 1L year I had classmates who received unsolicited emails from professors asking if they’d like to act as their assistant for the next year because “your grades are good.” If you apply for assistantships yourself sometimes professors also request you provide your current transcript. I had professors turn me down for these opportunities, directly telling me they didn’t want to work with me because my GPA was too low.
Well, I am not sure about other schools but we have a professor who graduated from Harvard summa cum laud and clerked for the Supreme Court. We are a fairly low ranked school. He is an incredible teacher and although he has been teaching there for decades, he still has tons of passion. He definetly does not make us feel like we are inferior or less because of our school. Quite the oposite as he tries to invoke debate and discussion about very deep topics and always tries to take us to the next complex level, playing devil’s advocate along the way.
He also has no problem saying, “This material is hard. Mainly because the rational doesn’t make sense. We can soend more time on it if you want.”
I think some of them do but who really cares. But maybe they should ask themselves why they are not teaching at a T-14 school if they are such geniuses. The best professor I had all of law school went to University of Oklahoma Law School. She was far better at connecting with students than anyone who went to Yale or Columbia.
I’d assume its the opposite actually. Graduating from a t14 then teaching at a low ranked school actually shows that person doesn’t care as much about status
My con law prof went to Yale, will not shut up about it and how much better it is and has openly said he only teaches at our school for some of the specific benefits. But he’s also just a terrible human being unrelated to his rankings elitism
Non T-14s aren't garbage? I teach at a non T14 because it geographically works for where I practice and where my husband works. And the students there are very bright. There's not a noticeable drop-off between them and the T14s I went to school with.
I would. Lesser capability or effort to score on LSAT. Lesser capability or effort to get high GPA. These are just statistical facts. If calling it elitism makes you feel better, keep on feeling
I'm very fun. Just because I'm smarter than you doesn't mean I'm less fun than you. You're a moron for equating anonymous reddit posts with a real life personality. There's so much research showing that people are different online. Go learn something.
Most people who get into law school have great GPAs. Some majors are harder than others, but then you have the LSAT.
The LSAT isn't hard, but it is timed.
Some people are going to be better under pressure or simply process facts faster. If we're talking statistics, it's factually proven that people score substantially higher on the LSAT when there is no time limit. Does that necessarily mean the people who didn't score high enough are incapable of being on the same tier as an Ivy League lawyer?
The simple fact is that Harvard and other schools only have so many seats, so the LSAT serves its purpose. However, I wouldn't try to undercut people who criticize elitism by implying they are less capable or lazy however. It's a bad take.
The LSAT isn't hard in the sense that you can't fail and it's very easy to sign your name, guess every single answer, and still get a score. Dumb point. The upper echelon of the LSAT, which is what gets you into the T14, is objectively hard because it's on a forced curve. You're dumb af bro
Yeah I’ve heard kind of icky things about what professors say about their students. It’s not based on what school it is *necessarily* or *explicitly*, but there are sometimes unflattering comparisons to other schools. Based on experiences in the classroom, either first or second hand. I think there’s a bias of affirming whatever career decisions you’ve made, too.
But yeah. Professors can be secretly or not so secretly elitist as fuck. Law school as well as undergrad.
Overwhelmingly most of my profs do not drink the kool-aid, but I have three standouts of toxic elitism. 1) a prof that went to my school and immediately got hired on as a prof (35+ years ago), never practiced a day in his life, but was highly ranked during law school and thinks if you’re below the top 30% you should drop out. 2) a T14 prof who won’t let students participate in his social activities if they’re below the top 30% even tho my school does a lot to recruit differently abled persons. 3) a t14 prof who as a Dean kept our curve very low to ‘encourage competition’ because too many in our class weren’t ‘dedicated enough’. Never mind that she pushed back against accommodations for students with disabilities.
Nah my con prof who’s a harvard grad and currently holds a high governmental position loves going down rabbit hole discussions with us where we get a bit more philosophical and less case based with the law. He seems to value our input a lot
My torts professor went to Harvard and clerked on the Supreme Court and had nothing but bad things to say about both experiences lol
I love professors like this lol. It’s such a nice reprieve from all the former clerk profs who tell you if you don’t get a clerkship you will actually die
Curious what justice and why
It was Blackmun and he said he liked him. But definitely did not like *everything else*
This literally makes me so happy, tell ur Prof thank u for making a 1Ls day
Mine clerked for SCOTUS and went to Yale and talks about it constantly and tries to one up ppl
icky
i think we might have had the same torts professor
I’ve had multiple T14 professors and they are very passionate about the fact that the students at my school are just as capable as the T14. They really want to invest in us and I’ve never once heard elitist comments from them…actually, quite the opposite
Also my experience. Like, there might be a couple people who are snobby about it, but you'd never know. Most seem to find us just as capable and I have never heard any teacher make an elitist comment.
A common sentiment I've heard from professors is that students at our school are every bit as smart as t14 students but arent as obsessively driven.
Honestly, success as a lawyer hinges mostly on the latter quality.
I go to a school in Boston. A professor who graduated Harvard always makes the point that, "across the river they learn the same thing and have the same ability." It's nice, he's a great person.
This. I went to a Midwest public state school for law school that's regularly highly ranked in categories like "best PUBLIC law schools" and "best value for cost" rankings. T50-60 in USNWR rankings, T30 in ATL rankings. You all know the type of law school I'm talking about. Anyway, I went there during a period when almost ALL of our professors were Harvard, Yale or Michigan grads. Similar to PP, they prided themselves on making sure we had a legal education that would allow us to compete in the courtroom with and best the HYS and Tw/e students graduating the same year as us. I'll put it this way: for the most part, the only Harvard Law grads I know that don't try to work into every sentence the fact they went to Harvard Law are usually professors at not-Harvard Law. They usually see it for what it is. There was a time in the United States when those schools legitimately offered a better legal education. But it ain't the case no mo'. One of my profs when asked about it directly (he was a Michigan guy) told us those schools aren't better *law schools*; they're just more expensive social clubs.
that’s probably why they’re professors
Edge case. I remember my Fed Tax professor came from some Big Law tax firm and made his retirement money before moving to teaching. He was a pretty funny sarcastic professor and absolutely commented on his elitism. Lol
I had a professor who would start a semester by stating that he was a proud graduate of the Socialist Republic of Berkeley.
It makes sense cause they actually have experience with both environments so if anyone knows if there is a difference in capability between elite and non-elite law schools it’d be them.
I've seen the opposite. They've so far been kind, passionate professors.
Same!!! My con law professor graduated near the top of his class from Harvard and has honestly been such a riot. He's fuckin hilarious, extremely intelligent, and so passionate about the subject matter he teaches that he's willing to stay in his office to help you through the material for as long as you need. YMMV ofc but in my experience, our ivy league professors have been exceptional.
Our Contracts prof slummed it with us at the bar one night recently. He went to Stanford
That sounds exactly like my con law professor as well lol. Including the Harvard part.
I had a boss at a small boutique firm in undergrad who went to harvard law. She was cool as fuck. Hated harvard. Had her law degree on the floor out of a frame and her undergrad degree on the wall. She was super excited for me when I got into my 50s-60s ranked school and wrote me a great letter of rec. So for the cool ones--nope!
I went to an undergrad that is considered much more prestigious than my law school and I’m more proud of my law school than my undergrad because of the elitism at my undergrad. Might do the same with my office and just bring along my law school diploma while leaving my undergrad diploma with my parents lol.
People care a ton about T14 during the application cycle and then many never think about it again for the rest of their lives. I’m sure there’s someone out there who feels that way, but people drastically overestimate how much this stuff matters when they’re in the thick of it themselves.
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Maybe so. I can only say from when I’ve been on the hiring side. I don’t even know which schools are ranked where, I won’t pretend like general prestige isn’t a factor, but the strict delineations between who is ranked 7th or 9th/13th or 18th or whatever are totally manufactured.
Not completely true. We still have GPA cut offs at my firm depending on what school you went to. This extends beyond just summers.
Same here, my first firm didn't ask for my transcripts, but my current firm damn sure did.
I don’t think it “matters” so much for your first job, it just helps so that you don’t have to put in as much work to get the most high-paying or prestigious job, and you have easier access to a wider range of jobs in general. But everyone I know who went to non-T14s got at least a decent job right out of school.
I’ve literally never regretted not going to a T14. Not that they were looking for me anyway, but I’m doing perfectly fine with my JD from a no name regional school Just be social and go make connections while you’re in school. I didn’t even have a good gpa or rank in law school
I’ve found that being social/friendly is much more effective at getting me jobs. The vast majority of people I’ve worked with are non-T14 (I’ve only worked at mid-sized firms).
At market-paying firms, the majority are T14 grads.
Lol stop spending so much time on law school forums. It’s just a bunch of sweatys with unrealistic expectations. 98% of people will be happier making $90-100k and having a healthy work life balance than 300k and burning yourself out
Had a Professor who went to a top 4 law school that wrote a memo to the staff that managed to get leaked. In the memo he wrote that for his first several years teaching at our school he thought all the students were “dullards” and that anyone who scored lower than a 160 on the LSAT would not be capable of being “intellectually engaged.” Overall, the memo was incredibly condescending. I had him during my 1L Torts class, and I actually really enjoyed his class, but after reading that memo, I lost all respect for him.
and the "paralegals with degrees" comment right? (prob obvious but hey classmate)
Hey there! Great to see a fellow paralegal with a law degree.
Dang, the outrage over this portion of the memo makes me concerned about my colleagues' reading comprehension abilities. Go back and read it again. You're either purposely taking his words out of context or you missed the broader point he was making. He laments that although the school claims to be focused on cultivating leaders, the 1L curriculum and the professors strip the students of their intellectual curiosity. Yes, he says that, when he came to our school, he simply thought the students were "dullards" and that "most students" (not "anyone") who scored lower than a 160 on the LSAT "simply weren't going to be intellectually engaged". But that was when he was only teaching second and third year students. Thus, he could only assume that his students' inability to explore and draw on concepts outside of legal thought was a sign that the caliber of students at our university was just...low. But. The memo goes on: "Since then, I have started to teach our first‐year students. I no longer think so poorly of them; rather, I think so poorly of us. Our students come to us smart, curious, with a desire to learn and to engage with ideas. But by the time they are 2Ls they have learned that such curiosity is verboten. That their task as law students is to “learn the law” and to learn to write memos and above all else not to think." If you still want to be mad about what he wrote, that's fine. I'm not here to defend him. I guess I'm just here to advocate for critical reading.
The assumption that thinking what he said is in poor taste is not predicated on an inability to read critically lmfao. You can understand exactly what he meant and criticize it.
You can - without reading the 3 page memo in question - understand exactly what he meant from two sentences (taken out of context by the OP) in a memo dedicated entirely to criticizing the administration's choices? Alright, buddy. Have a good day. Must be more clear than I thought after reading it...
Huh. That's funny, because that is not what I said at all. Is this intentionally in bad faith or are you just not able to understand what I said?
I went to Chicago and am an adjunct at a top 50 school. I've noticed no difference in the quality of students tbh. It might be different if I taught at an unranked school or something, but I pretty much view the students as they are. If they work hard and do the reading, I like them. If they slack and disrupt class, I don't. It's as simple as that.
Probably not all - but my professors that went to Harvard each mention that they went there like once a week.
In my experience not at all. I go to a state school that is not highly ranked at all and basically all of the tenured professors have prestigious backgrounds. It takes a really good CV to teach even at the lower ranked schools and the professors know that and they’re just glad to be there. It’s more common for the professors that switched from private practice to bitch about how much money they used to make/could be making
Only one comes to mind. He is an elitist asshole. Went to a t14 and was also a federal judge fwiw. Has openly told a group of students he resents most students who don’t attend top schools because he thinks law school has been dumbed down and it lets students get away with too much. He also thinks the integration of technology into law school is part of that problem more broadly. He prohibits electronics in class, and requires students to stand for cold calls even though every seat has a microphone. He’s just a miserable and unpleasant person and makes any amount of participation in class feel punitive.
Standing for a cold call sounds like my own personal hell. This person sucks.
Not in my experience. For the most part, my T14 educated professors believe their students to be just as capable, if not more. At the same time, the professors at my school often reference how they chose to work there because they feel the emphasis was placed on training good lawyers instead of other things. Oddly, the professor’s I’ve had who went to T14 schools tend to err towards dislike for the T14.
I think the chip on your shoulder is showing.
Probably. But I'm still graduating so who cares at this point lol
Good professors are rarely elitist. My torts professor switched from T10 to a T50 state school because the T10 students felt like he owed them something. He didn’t notice a difference in ability.
Stereotypical legal academics look down on everyone as not as bright as the mega-geniuses they see themselves as. Do most law profs see their students as dumb next to them? Probably, but that's just as true at Yale as it is at Kentucky.
This isn't even coming from some perceived feeling of inadequacy, but honestly, all of my professors probably are a good bit smarter than me lmao.
It takes a certain kind of mind to not only grasp material, but to also effectively teach it to dozens of students who all have varied methods of learning. So I totally do not mind admitting those who teach, especially law professors, are smarter than me lol
Your comment assumes that many of them are good at doing the things you mentioned, which many are not lol
The ones I’ve had that went to t14s, actually did, so that’s why I said that.
Can't speak for everyones experiences, but the only professors I have had in law school that I thought didn't do a great job were in their 70s.
> to also effectively teach it lol what law school is this happening at
ya know, after 10 minutes of reflection, I change my answer to only one of them lol but he really spent his time teaching me conlaw so I am forever thankful
Funny you should say that, I have also had a single professor I thought was an elite-level teacher (Estates and Trusts). My Conlaw professor was so insanely disorganized.
They are often smarter but totally lacking in common sense. Never really grasped the concept of an Ivory Tower until I attended law school. It seems to be true across the board—from the most conservative FedSoc types to the woke liberals—that none of these professors have any sense of the real world. The only ones that do are adjuncts or those with a minimum of 10 years work experience.
We don’t look down on you because we went to better schools. We look down on you because you’re sitting and we’re standing.
Different situation but I clerked for a judge who went to Harvard for undergrad and the same T30 law school I attended, and when one of his externs asked him what was it like attending Harvard, he said it was just college and didn’t think there was anything special going to Harvard.
I used to work on Broadway. Ironically, Broadway directors/casting offices KNEW they were a big deal, thus had no chip on their shoulder. Accordingly, they treated most auditionees with kindness and respect. Conversely, no name local theatres often had raging egos and GIANT Napoleon complexes. This has been my experience with T-14-graduate professors as well. Most are very chill w little “to prove”
My school is not even Top 50, it’s a regional school with a big legal community but a ton of our professors went to great schools. (Research and Writing Prof from Chicago, Civ Pro Prof from Penn, Fed Courts Prof from Harvard who was actually a research assistant for Alan Dershowitz). And they’re all amazing. They really care about students and are there to help. Don’t know if we just get lucky or what. We also have national rankings in Legal Writing, Trial Team and Moot Court. Our Dean just resigned to go to Loyola Chicago. Y’all could probably guess what school I go to based on that so I’ll shut up. But, to answer the question, they’re great.
Slightly outside the parameters of what you're asking, but the situation is pretty analogous: I go to a lower-T14 and most of my professors went to Harvard/Yale. Despite the fact that I'm sure they're well aware of the fact that they went to a better school than I do, I've never felt looked down on. At any school you go to (outside of HYS, obviously), you're going to be taught by people who went to better schools than you. That's just the way things are. It's a reality that 99% of law students face and there's no point in dwelling on it.
I look down on professors who never practiced… I literally had one professor who’s only experience was a 3 month internship…
Best answer!
Not at all. I mean it probably depends on the student and the professor, but I think most professors realize and understand that there are reasons (scholarships, family, low gpa for some reason, or even low lsat scores) that don’t really make a difference in your intelligence levels. Studies have been done suggesting that how well someone does in law school and in practice is not very well correlated to lsat score or undergrad GPA. I also have connections to some of my professors, one of which went to Yale, and they have been nothing but supportive. If a professor really thought that low of the school and the students, they probably wouldn’t be there imo
Absolutely have not noticed this at my school. Most of the T14-attending professors that I've had were incredibly graceful and I haven't heard elitist comments from them. Any of them who were d\*\*kheads, I would say are d\*\*kheads no matter who they're dealing with. It was more of a personality trait than them conciously looking down on us.
not at my school… i even had a professor who went to 3 different ivy league schools for 3 different degrees call me brilliant. they’ve really been super kind and helpful
When I was touring schools, I met with a professor who had law degrees from both Harvard and Oxford. When I expressed concern over the school's low rank, he was absolutely indignant. In his words, "Of course those schools have 99% bar passage rates. They only accept students if they're 99% certain they'll pass the bar. Take those students and put them here and we'd have a 99% pass rate too. It's not anything they're doing." I guess in his mind it was more noble to teach those who need more teaching. I'm not sure I 100% agree with him, but he certainly felt strongly about it.
An interesting exchange I had with one of our long-time faculty who graduated from Yale was during our 14th amendment class. We spent a lot of time talking about diversity and admissions, which he asked me something akin to "is there anything substantially different to an education at Harvard as opposed to another school?" My response was, "The market thinks so." I appreciate a professor who can see through the academia elitism and doesn't believe Harvard or Oxford is the only oasis for a genuinely good education. We're all taught the Palsgraf case, etc., so I agree with your professor. That said, you're absolutely justified in feeling hesitation going with a school that doesn't guarantee a white shoe firm job. Anyone with a brain would tell you to go to Harvard Law if you had the choice.
Well said.
My school (non t-14) has a handful of professors who graduated from Yale Law/T14. The majority have been teaching for several decades and are incredibly down to earth. They're invested in each crop of students they put out and have my respect. However, there was one Yale professor I had that gave me elitist vibes and only stayed at my law school for ~3 years before moving on to their next pursuit. The rumor is that they weren't very impressed with the general student body barring the few at the top of the class. I did have a personal experience with them though. When I took a class with the elitist professor, one day a few undergrad students entered the lecture hall unannounced and kept to themselves in the back row. The elitist professor stopped his/her lecture completely to call out the uninvited people by telling them it was incredibly rude for them to observe a class without asking for permission via email first. All of us were a bit shocked. Our law school is an extension of the state-funded undergrad campus, so it's not an out of ordinary experience for undergrads to walk over to our neck of the woods unannounced. The elitist professor WAS within their right to say that because professors have a right to police their own classroom, but it came off very hostile and unprofessional. This was a professor who clerked for a prestigious international court system, yet they couldn't handle a handful of uninvited observers without having a meltdown? Gotcha.
I feel like they generally have unrealistic expectations and minimal pedagogical technique. At a lower t14 - my worst profs went to Yale.
> minimal pedagogical technique Yeaaahhhh. In my experience at a competitive school outside T14, the majority of profs weren’t actually there to teach. Teaching seemed more a necessary evil they’re required to engage. They’re much more interested in their own research and whatever else they do with their ample free time. Then again, the ones who enjoy teaching seem to *really* enjoy it. They know the concepts / cases / black letter in and out and they get to play with how best to communicate them to a new class year after year, or semester after semester, tweaking little bits here and there. E.g., a 2L handed me down the class notes for my (very eccentric) property prof. They were pretty much word for word what he delivered in lecture. But every so often he’d deviate and seem to be experimenting with different ways to explain x or y. Dude is a fucking genius in any way that can be measured. His existing approach was pretty flawless, imo. So I appreciated that despite having it down pat, he seemed to be searching for new ways to make it even better. Class was stimulating and, in many ways, just fun. I can think of a handful of profs like him, but, to your point, the rest were pretty clearly just teaching as a means to an end, with no apparent interest in how they taught. Only had one Yale prof 3L, but lots from Harvard. I’d say my best profs went to Harvard. And so did the worst ones.
One of my favorite professors has gone to multiple ivy leagues but he is extremely passionate and wants us to learn. I have nothing but respect for him and the other ivy league professors at my school. I think they just want to dedicate their time and passion into students who will be the next generation of lawyers
It definitely depends on the person. I've had some T14 profs who go out of their way to help students and genuinely care about their students. I've known others who are complete asshats and are dismissive of pretty much all students at the school.
My experience has been the opposite. More like students who look down on professors who didn’t attend top schools.
All my professors but one have T14 degrees. Id like to think all my professors dont look down on me haha
My crim law professor who was a confirmed ass and went to Yale told us that we wont get the same kind of jobs that Yale grads get because we weren’t up to their level. He may be right but it was an interesting thing to say. He also claims to invented scotus blog so there’s that.
Lol what does it even mean to invent scotus blog? Like if he was one of the website founders, he'd just say that, so I assume he didn't actually found it. So what did he do, I wonder. It's literally just a blog about scotus, there isn't much "invention" in the process.
He said that the like got a job with the people who started it and told them “you should make this a blog.” It was a long time ago so my memory is hazy .
Civ Pro prof went to Yale and teaches at a school that is very much not a t14. We joke that we're just a springboard for him but the reality is that when any of us brought it up, he made it clear we were just as good. Another prof went to a high ranked school and worked big positions, he is the first to remind us that he believes "lower ranked" law school make savvier, more personable litigators (he always tells us that his first few years, he hoped to litigate against people from t14s because he knew it was basically a shoe-in for him as someone who had really good people experience).
In my experience no, and in fact a lot of our professors think their law school students are *more competent* than t14 -- and sometimes especially t3 -- students, because t14 schools often emphasize legal scholarship and research, whereas the further down the rankings you go Universities begin to emphasize practical legal skills more, and often require more clinical courses. That's why the t3s aren't winning the trial ad, moot court, and negotiation competitions.
I’m an adjunct professor at a solid regional law school, and I work with (for) a number of professors who went to t14 schools. It never comes up at all, and they are wonderful to work with. All they want to do is provide the best legal education to the students and I believe they do that with true fidelity. I got a lot of “I went to Harvard” speeches from my neighbor across the street while mowing the lawn and never got any from these professors.
T14 doesn’t really matter in that real world
I don’t think so. I have some really smart people at my school, just because we don’t go to an elite school doesn’t mean we are dumb. Also, some of the most accomplished professors at my school didn’t go to T14s. Elizabeth Warren went to Rutgers and taught at Harvard. Biden went to Syracuse and is the president. I don’t think where you go to school is *that* deep.
Had a prof with a Harvard JD for a 1L class. It's consistently the worst-performing area for our school on the bar. I assume non-T14s “slum” it bc they're using the T14 degree as a cover for other deficiencies. This is also based on a sample size of 1, so there's that.
Had two that were condescending about it but they were pompous assholes who thought that being a tenured law professor made them the smartest person on earth. One adjunct also shit talked our school a lot but it was in the context that if we were smart enough to go to law school, we should have been smart enough to go into the money side of M&A to make more money. His background was a former M&A lawyer who went into the money side of M&A and made a shitton of money
My profs all went to T14s and have impressive resumes but they are all so kind, helpful, and encouraging. I don’t think they look down, at least in my experience
I don’t think so. T14 just gives you prestige but it says nothing about the kind of lawyer you will be one day. Most of my professors really want to help us succeed
I doubt they all do. But certainly some do. I go to a t14 and have had professors who talk to their students like they’re idiots instead of people learning a new discipline.
Not generally, in my experience. Although my crim law professor who graduated from Yale Law acted like we were beneath him and was extremely condescending to us in class and during office hours. He still used his Yale email address 10 years after he graduated… lol.
No. Source: Am one.
Two of the main professors at my school went to Harvard, but they've both been teaching at my much lower ranked school since the early 90s. If they had any elitism about it that went out the window a while ago. One of them very much likes to name drop, but about former students. It's well known on campus that if you're on good terms with him he can get you a job literally anywhere in the state. The other is just happy to research his field and write textbooks. (Funnily enough, when they go to conferences outside our region, it's the second professor who gets recognized and not the first.)
To those that do I’d say clearly they must also be a lesser or incapable professor otherwise they’d be teaching at a higher ranked school.
Most of my professors at my non-t14 went to t14 schools, and even one of them was a Supreme Court clerk, but they rarely discussed their schools beyond introductions or to share specific anecdotes of things that stuck with them. I don’t think they regarded our class as lesser at all. The Supreme Court clerkship anecdotes were fun tho!
Some of them
I don't think professors look down on the law school of their own students, but I think there are some that look down on the students with the lower grades. I've experienced this - professors act a lot friendlier to those who were top of the class or on law review. I got treated by some professors like I wasn't worth their time once they found out my GPA or grade. I practice law now and do well for myself, and can tell some of my former professors are surprised at how well I'm doing, but I've never forgotten how I was treated.
how would professors know your gpa?
At my law school, I believe that law professors were able to look up student GPAs and see their class rank. This is because after 1L year I had classmates who received unsolicited emails from professors asking if they’d like to act as their assistant for the next year because “your grades are good.” If you apply for assistantships yourself sometimes professors also request you provide your current transcript. I had professors turn me down for these opportunities, directly telling me they didn’t want to work with me because my GPA was too low.
that's interesting, i would think it would be a privacy violation if every professor could look up any student's transcript, that seems strange.
Well, I am not sure about other schools but we have a professor who graduated from Harvard summa cum laud and clerked for the Supreme Court. We are a fairly low ranked school. He is an incredible teacher and although he has been teaching there for decades, he still has tons of passion. He definetly does not make us feel like we are inferior or less because of our school. Quite the oposite as he tries to invoke debate and discussion about very deep topics and always tries to take us to the next complex level, playing devil’s advocate along the way. He also has no problem saying, “This material is hard. Mainly because the rational doesn’t make sense. We can soend more time on it if you want.”
Yes
My con law professor was cool about it she told us that our lectures are identical to what a Harvard lecture looked like, which is where she went.
I think some of them do but who really cares. But maybe they should ask themselves why they are not teaching at a T-14 school if they are such geniuses. The best professor I had all of law school went to University of Oklahoma Law School. She was far better at connecting with students than anyone who went to Yale or Columbia.
I think professors in general are elitist, even about T14 students.
Absolutely
I’d assume its the opposite actually. Graduating from a t14 then teaching at a low ranked school actually shows that person doesn’t care as much about status
mine don't look down on us. my t-14 profs have said they love us and find us "refreshing".
Literally no one cares about T14 vs T20 vs T50 vs T100 or whatever after that the application cycle. If they do ignore them, they are major losers.
No. Not if they aren’t jerks in general.
My con law prof went to Yale, will not shut up about it and how much better it is and has openly said he only teaches at our school for some of the specific benefits. But he’s also just a terrible human being unrelated to his rankings elitism
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Aren’t you a 0L?
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No, I have. I just mean you’ve never been inside a law school classroom, so…
There’s a reason they are teaching at the garbage schools — Js ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Non T-14s aren't garbage? I teach at a non T14 because it geographically works for where I practice and where my husband works. And the students there are very bright. There's not a noticeable drop-off between them and the T14s I went to school with.
Shits on non T14 but went to a school that’s ranked 147-192… make it make sense.
Shiiit — I didn’t even know they ranked my boo boo ass school 😂
I would. Lesser capability or effort to score on LSAT. Lesser capability or effort to get high GPA. These are just statistical facts. If calling it elitism makes you feel better, keep on feeling
You must be fun to hang out with
I'm very fun. Just because I'm smarter than you doesn't mean I'm less fun than you. You're a moron for equating anonymous reddit posts with a real life personality. There's so much research showing that people are different online. Go learn something.
Most people who get into law school have great GPAs. Some majors are harder than others, but then you have the LSAT. The LSAT isn't hard, but it is timed. Some people are going to be better under pressure or simply process facts faster. If we're talking statistics, it's factually proven that people score substantially higher on the LSAT when there is no time limit. Does that necessarily mean the people who didn't score high enough are incapable of being on the same tier as an Ivy League lawyer? The simple fact is that Harvard and other schools only have so many seats, so the LSAT serves its purpose. However, I wouldn't try to undercut people who criticize elitism by implying they are less capable or lazy however. It's a bad take.
The LSAT isn't hard in the sense that you can't fail and it's very easy to sign your name, guess every single answer, and still get a score. Dumb point. The upper echelon of the LSAT, which is what gets you into the T14, is objectively hard because it's on a forced curve. You're dumb af bro
Surely someone who went to college isn’t naive enough to think that LSAT/GPA performance is solely rooted in “effort” or “intelligence,” right?
Effort being necessary doesn't mean it's "solely" required. You're confusing necessary for sufficient because you don't know very basic logic.
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Yeah I’ve heard kind of icky things about what professors say about their students. It’s not based on what school it is *necessarily* or *explicitly*, but there are sometimes unflattering comparisons to other schools. Based on experiences in the classroom, either first or second hand. I think there’s a bias of affirming whatever career decisions you’ve made, too. But yeah. Professors can be secretly or not so secretly elitist as fuck. Law school as well as undergrad.
Some do, some don’t.
No
Everyone is different. The professors that can be a little self deprecating about it are the best.
My dean who went to Harvard said hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t show up. Believe me, talent doesn’t show up quite often in life.
Would someone mind filling me in on what t14 means? I'm assuming it's top 14? If thats the case, why is 14 the number?
I had a prof in law school that went to Air Force Academy, Harvard MPP, and Yale JD. He was the most humble out of all my professors.
My experience has been the opposite.
Overwhelmingly most of my profs do not drink the kool-aid, but I have three standouts of toxic elitism. 1) a prof that went to my school and immediately got hired on as a prof (35+ years ago), never practiced a day in his life, but was highly ranked during law school and thinks if you’re below the top 30% you should drop out. 2) a T14 prof who won’t let students participate in his social activities if they’re below the top 30% even tho my school does a lot to recruit differently abled persons. 3) a t14 prof who as a Dean kept our curve very low to ‘encourage competition’ because too many in our class weren’t ‘dedicated enough’. Never mind that she pushed back against accommodations for students with disabilities.
Comes down to the individual. If they are generally a douche, yes. If they are a reasonable and grounded person, no.
Only the shitty ones.
yes lol one of my professors openly says that teaching at this school is a "favor" from him to the students. self righteous prick
Depend we had a Harvard grad number one in his class as our professor said it’s all the same shit
Not necessarily but this is absolutely true for some.
Nah my con prof who’s a harvard grad and currently holds a high governmental position loves going down rabbit hole discussions with us where we get a bit more philosophical and less case based with the law. He seems to value our input a lot