Thread by @ThomasHCrown

This isn't to pick on @sarahrumpf, whose point here is fair, but as someone who picked among Top 25 schools and litigates against folks from those schools and lower-tier schools all the time, I want to say something. redstate.com/sarah-rumpf/20…

Going to a Top 25 law school -- that is, one ranked among the top 25 by U.S. News and World Report -- is historically strongly correlated with a higher starting salary or a plum job in the federal judiciary, etc., than at lower-ranked schools.

The reasons for this are many and varied and not worth going into right now. I would note, however, that the graduates of those schools historically tend to have more polished writing and research skills; this makes sense, as they had to have better liberal arts skills for entry.

Again, put a bookmark there. We'll come back to that in a bit.

Speed through the second-and-lower tiers -- schools that may be good in some aspect of the law, somewhat prestigious state schools (other than the University of Texas, University of Virginia, University of Michigan, etc., which are often if not always Top 25) for now.

Historically, those schools -- again, for reasons that are too varied to enumerate right now -- tend to produce competent-to-good lawyers as well. Again, put a bookmark there.

As @rumpfshaker notes, Thomas Cooley is considered The Worst of the Worst With Honors, Sir, and has been for decades. It accepts almost everyone. Its mean entry scores are miserable. All of the indicators of success in the practice of law are not required to enter.

Law students and lawyers from other schools tend to mock it, and rightly so. For a few years, I litigated against a guy who graduated toward the bottom of his class there. He failed multiple Bars multiple times. He was ... please God, unique.

Thomas Cooley has -- or had, when I last cared to look, and for years before that -- a brutal failure/dropout rate. Again, this is largely driven by the skills and so much else brought by those who slide in: Lower academic skills, lives filled with other things, poor work habits.

But it's driven by other things, as well, one of which is that it is -- or was -- an academically brutal environment. Unlike many if not most top-tier law schools, exams are not open book, there is no curve, and the school knows it churns and burns students.

If you got an A in Real Property in my school, you had a working grasp of a lot of theory, a good outline (two -- one generated in class and one you bought), and a well marked-up book.

Trust me, I know whereof I speak. I beat Alpha Centauri twice in that class, Phantasy Stars II-IV once each, and was working on Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight when we got to the final. Class was irrelevant.

If you got an A in Real Property at Thomas Cooley, you not merely knew the Rule Against Perpetuities, you could not merely apply it to a devise across multiple generations, you could generate a law school question about it and write the rubric for it.

A friend was top of his class at the end of his 1L year and promptly transferred to a Top 25, where he finished Order of the Coif because, and I quote, "This is so much easier."

Bookmark.

I pride myself on being able to try a case to verdict. I am very, very proud of my writing skills -- with good reason or not; pride is not rational -- but as someone who is basically a misanthropic introvert, being able to try to twelve folks good and true matters.

An old lawyer, a sometimes-mentor, who passed away a decade ago, used to give all the polished, bright young things at AMLaw 100 firms headaches at CLE with this joke:

Q: What's the difference between a trial lawyer and a litigator?
A: A trial lawyer tries cases. A litigator has so much paper, he can't get it up into the courtroom, and so has to settle on the courthouse steps.

The skills that produce interchangeable, handsome- and pretty young things, whose writing skills and firm-internal energy and drive are enormous, tend to produce pretty garbagey trial lawyers, especially because they rarely get to practice because of risk-averse clients.

But top-of-their-class kids at Thomas Cooley are, or were, scrappers. They tend to be harder on exit from school; not nearly as polished at writing appellate brief; and much, much more compelling and on-their-feet in a courtroom.

The ability to walk into a courtroom and not merely put on a show for a lady in black robes who sees everyone who enters as another floating mouth, but for seven or twelve bored everyday humans, is a hard one to learn and a harder one to just have.

The kids from mid-tier schools are often like this, too, but farther down their final class ranking, which is why they fill in so many of the positions generated by a society addicted to the use of law.

But I'd hire that top-of-her-class kid from Thomas Cooley in a New York minute, because she's gonna bust her butt and she's more likely to be able to put on a show.

I don't know this Cohen dude worth jack, I have no idea what his relative skill set is, etc. But knocking him for his law school may or may not be correlated with how he's done in life, which aside from possible criminal activity, doesn't seem all that bad from here.

It may be that he's a typical Cooley grad and was doomed to failure ... and somehow made a lot of money in a profession that only produces that by luck or skill. I don't know.

But this school snobbery stuff, especially from lawyers in perfect suits who freeze up when presented with a venire and can't look up from their pre-prepared questions when doing voir dire, grinds me the wrong way.

The ability to stand before that jury and say, "Good morning, folks. I appreciate your being here, and I won't waste your time, so let's get to know each other a bit and send most of you on your way" without stammering is, in my world, the real rubber-to-road moment.

And the ones who came through the Thomas Cooley grinder are much better at that than the kids who slid pass-fail through Yale.

That's all.