Hi everyone,
I am trying to finalize my list of law schools that I will be applying to. I am interested in international law, environmental law, and space law, primarily, but I have not had much legal experience, so I am entirely open to anything that I end up loving. Right now I only have 6 schools on my list and out of those, 3 are reaches, so I want to diversify where I apply while still being excited about the options.
In my research about environmental law, I have discovered Pace, which is #1 for environmental law and #142 nationally. Would going to a school like this impact my chances at potentially expanding into other law? What does it really mean that there is such a huge discrepancy between a speciality ranking and the overall law ranking? Would future employers care about those rankings?
Any guidance at all would be appreciated. :)
1 comments
So, just remember from the jump that rankings are COMPLETELY SUBJECTIVE. It's not like they had a knockout style tournament where schools were ranked by how many games they won and opponents they vanquished or anything like that. But with that said, these kinds of things can happen because even a smaller school can have a real depth of opportunities in a niche area - one or two clinics, a journal, three or four faculty whose research is focused on that area, etc. The key here isn't just accepting the ranking, but then going and checking out what the school actually has in that particular area.
Regarding employers caring about rankings, the more important thing would be the alumni and networking connections out of the lesser ranked school. If they're getting results at the employers you want, that means that there are connections and that's all you need.