Recent U grad: Other law schools should be ashamed of themselves

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Sometimes the debate we get in the comments section is infinitely more interesting than anything I could come up with. A case in point is a comment we recently received to an old post from a commenter who used the name “UMN LAW ’09.” Like Pip in the Dicken’s novel, this particular individual seems to have great expectations and a pretty strong sense of self-entitlement. In this case, the feeling come from having attended a law school that is nationally ranked by U.S. News and World Report magazine. Our young Pip is pretty dismissive of the other three law schools in town, finding it significant that the U. has a bar passage rate a full eight points above the state average. The post almost immediately generated a resounding rebuttal from a William Mitchell grad, which I link to after pasting in the commenter’s post below.

Somewhat late to the game here, but “Helping Anonymous Understand” is the one who needs some help.

UMN’s superior ranking isn’t due to “tax subsidies” – it’s due to the fact that UMN’s entering classes possess substantially higher GPAs and LSAT scores than any of the other three schools. The difference between a 165 median and a 156 median may sound like a mere 9 points, but that gap actually represents approximately 30-40 percentiles. We’re talking performers above the 90th percentile versus LSAT takers in the 50-60 percentile range. No contest here. And last I checked no one needs to prove “their right to exist.” What does that even mean?

He/She asserts righteously that there’s no gap in bar passage rates (Uhh – UMN’s passage rate is around 98% while the average in the jurisdiction hovers around 90%. What does that tell you?) and that there’s no “achievement gap” between UMN grads and the other schools. Let me know when Billy Mitchell starts placing grads as faculty members at Tier 1s or when Hamline starts getting SCOTUS clerkships. Or hell, even legal employment for the bottom half of the class at UST, WM, and Hamline would be a good start towards your claim that there’s “no achievement gap.”

Anyhow. Not sure that the original poster was the one who didn’t know what was going on. WM/Hamline/UST are the ones that should feel ashamed of their willingness to take $100,000 and turn it into a degree with little to no employment prospects.

— UMN LAW ’09

Click here to see the full rebuttal posted by Savage attorney John Murphy. Here’s what I thought was the money quote:

I clearly could have been a UMN law student. I wasn’t, I went to Mitchell. Know why? Arrogant younger students and no diversity/maturity of the student mix. I suspect you are under 30. I was a returning student at the age of 37, after running a multi-million dollar business for more than a decade. I’d put the wisdom of my choice of school against your hype for the U any day.

Now I feel obligated to point out that not all U students have the same attitude as young Pip above. And I suspect even Pip will one day regret posting something like that after gaining a little more life experience or suffering some sort of comeuppance. If Pip’s ambition is to practice in Minnesota (and, given Pip’s attitude about the rankings, why else attend the U rather than somewhere ranked higher?), I am sure the chief justice of the high court (Mitchell grad) or the president of the state bar (Hamline grad) would love to hear at some cocktail party how they wasted their time by going to law school somewhere other than the U.