Life is too short

Life is too shortLife is too shortOn Wednesday, US News officially released its 2010 law school rankings (though many readers got a sneak peak earlier in the week). Despite the attempt of perennial critic Brian Leiter to launch a bloggers boycott (The fact that this garbage appears in a major news magazine doesnt change the fact that it is garbage.), the blogosphere resounds with ranking rehash.Above the Law is posting a series of open threads about closely-ranked schools U.S. District Court Judge LouisPollak has published an article on Why Trying to Rank Law Schools Numerically Is a Non-productive Undertaking and the absurdity of US News is discussed from the perspective of a political scientist who has studied its methodology. In addition to the view that any law school rankings are by their nature ridiculous, specific criticisms of the US News approach include undue emphasis on academic peer assessments, the extent to which the rankings depend on manipulable data, and the insuffic ient attention given to criteria that really matteri.e.,the perception of your potential future colleagues and employers. For critics in the latter camp, there is an alternative ranking that exclusively measures employability, as determined by law firm professionals directly involved in the assessment of law school graduates. In any case, before you get too caught up in the griping and sniping, try to keep some perspective. While Im hardly one to dismiss the value of rankings, consider the words of one commenter on the WSJs Law Blog The obsession with prestige is why people hate lawyers. Dont go somewhere youll be unhappy just for the sake of prestige, because youll soon find that you hate lawyers too. Life is too short.- posted by vera