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The 2024 (published 2023) U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges Rankings were released today—here are the top 50 national universities with plus/minuses.
Apparently U.S. News has decided to pretend that its botched rankings rollout never happened. That transparency is overrated, or at least, that it only applies to law schools, not to U.S. News. And that law schools are to blame for the rankings fiasco this year. Let's recap. On April 11th U.S. News posted a "preview" of the new law school rankings, including a list of the top 14 schools; it said the full list would be available April 18. This was likely an attempt to (1) preempt possible leaks,
After a long, winding, grueling path to get here, we finally have the 2023-2024 U.S. News & World Report law school rankings. Here are the new rankings with +/-.
U.S. News' CEO Eric Gertler was part of a panel at Lafayette College on May 2nd. This blog focuses on what Mr. Gertler said about the U.S. News rankings—specifically, their relationship to the First Amendment and freedom of speech.
Just as the most tumultuous rankings season we have ever seen seemed to be settling, and U.S. News had both publicly released their top 14 law schools and the full embargoed rankings to all law schools, the following email was sent to deans.
A few months ago, many law schools announced they would boycott sending U.S. News direct (and non-third party audited) data, essentially forcing U.S. News to change their methodology. The rates of the admissions metrics were significantly reduced. What does this mean?
U.S. News has yet to publicly release the full 2023-2024 law school rankings, but today they released the Top 14 with their new methodology.
A recent Wall Street Journal article pointed out that U.S. News runs different permutations of the rankings before committing to one methodology. So we thought it might be interesting to explore what different results would look like from various methodologies in the upcoming edition, to be released in a few weeks. Because of the boycott U.S. News has announced that it plans to use publicly available data, e.g. information available through the American Bar Association. They will still use the
U.S. News & World Report is not sitting idle while its rankings come under fire. The CEO published an article in the Wall Street Journal offering his views on the rankings boycott. We have some thoughts.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike has a conversation with Vincent Sheu, an attorney and AI startup founder with a JD and a Master’s in Computer Science from Stanford (in addition to degrees in Statistics, Molecular and Cell Biology, and Bioengineering).
Mike and Vincent discuss how he uses AI in his legal work today (19:20, 22:20), how he expects to be using AI in legal work in the future (37:23), how important his human contributions are vs. the contributions of AI (25:32), whether AI will be able to learn EQ (27:12), the sorts of AI tooling skills that employers are (and will be) looking for (29:19, 42:45) and how they screen for those skills (33:39), the benefits of using AI for legal work as well as the risks (24:04, 31:21, 44:23), how the next generation of lawyers will be advantaged and disadvantaged in the new landscape of legal practice (30:03), whether Vincent would hire a new lawyer who was brilliant and likable but has no familiarity with AI (32:52), Vincent’s recruiting process out of law school (14:03) and what his hours looked like in biglaw vs. as an in-house general counsel (19:36), how Vincent went 23 for 25 during his law school admissions cycle as a “super splitter” (3:32), and more.
Near the beginning of the episode, Mike and Vincent chat about a viral video from 2014 in which Vincent rapidly completed a Rubik’s Cube at a college basketball game. While the original video is now private, you can find the referenced SportsCenter article here.
Mike also mentions the recent case of a defendant attempting to use an AI avatar to make their opening argument in court. You can find that video here.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. You can read a full transcript of this episode with timestamps below.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Anna Hicks-Jaco has a conversation with two Spivey consultants and former law school admissions officers, Kristen Mercado and Nathan Neely, on the decision whether to reapply to law school. What are good reasons—and what are bad reasons—to reapply? How much of an LSAT improvement is enough to justify reapplying (6:00)? How much of an impact can improved work experience have (16:09)? Can it be a game-changer if the only thing you do differently is applying earlier (36:09)? Does it ever make sense to reapply based purely on the hope that next cycle will be less competitive overall (38:17)? And what advice can we share for applicants who weren’t admitted anywhere (47:10)?
This is part one of a two-part series. Coming late next month: part two all about the STRATEGY of reapplying.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. You can read a full transcript of this episode with timestamps below.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike has a conversation with Rob Baker, a long-time practicing entertainment lawyer who has served on hiring committees for multiple law firms, ranging from biglaw to mid-law to a small firm, and who leads Spivey Consutling’s new employment coaching and law school mentorship program. Rob discusses his law school application process (3:49), what it was like starting 1L year (5:18), how law school prepared Rob for practicing (12:16) and how it didn’t (16:18), how legal employers view rankings (10:00), whether law school is “fun” (19:07), what makes a good lawyer (21:32), one key talent of the highest-earning lawyers (15:15), the one trait that can make all the difference in excelling in biglaw, becoming an entertainment lawyer, or getting admitted off the law school waitlist (17:28), and more.
Mike mentions our podcast episode with Jeff Chapman in this episode, “Interview with a Biglaw Partner (Jeff Chapman, Gibson Dunn Co-Chair of Global M&A),” which you can listen to here.
If you’re interested in learning more about Rob’s coaching and mentorship services, please reach out to info@spiveyconsulting.com.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. You can read a full transcript of this episode with timestamps below.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike discusses the five reasons that being denied from law school hurts—and the concrete ways that you can handle it.
Mike mentions a few other podcasts and a video clip in this episode:
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. You can read a full transcript of this episode with timestamps below.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, we take questions from Reddit! Mike Spivey, Mike Burns, and Anna Hicks-Jaco discuss just how slow this cycle is (10:19) and how that might impact late-cycle applicants (6:47), why law schools place applicants on “holds” (1:23), decision timelines and how/why they vary (4:23), advice for scholarship reconsideration (11:20), whether schools rescind admits or scholarships if you ask for more money (13:31), how the new student loan caps might impact your request for scholarship reconsideration (14:00), whether you should email a school if you haven’t heard from them since you applied early in the cycle (23:44) and whether they might have forgotten about your application (24:44), predictions for next cycle (19:31) and waitlist season this cycle (15:00), the cannonball strategy of law school waitlists (25:50), how important softs are and whether “soft tiers” are admissions pseudoscience (27:48), essays about institutional injustice and how to avoid coming off overly negative in a way that could harm your chances (34:36), advice for becoming an admissions officer (37:40), and more.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. You can read a full transcript of this episode with timestamps below.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike has a conversation with Dr. Nita Farahany—speaker, author, Duke Law Distinguished Professor, and the Founding Director of the Duke Initiative for Science & Society—on the future of artificial intelligence in law school, legal employment, legislation, and our day-to-day lives.
They discuss a wide range of AI-related topics, including how significantly Dr. Farahany expects AI to change our lives (10:43, 23:09), how Dr. Farahany checks for AI-generated content in her classes and her thoughts on AI detector tools (1:26, 5:46), the reason that she bans her students from using AI to help generate papers (plus, the reasons she doesn’t ascribe to) (3:41), predictions for how AI will impact legal employment in both the short term and the long term (7:26), which law students are likely to be successful vs. unsuccessful in an AI future (12:24), whether our technology is spying on us (17:04), cognitive offloading and the idea of “cognitive extinction” (18:59), how AI and technology can take away our free will (24:45) and ways to take it back (27:58), how our cognitive liberties are at stake and what we can do to reclaim them both on an individual level (30:06) and a societal level (35:53), neural implants and sensors and our screenless future (39:27), how to use AI in a way that promotes rather than diminishes critical thinking (44:43), and how much, for what purposes, and with which tools Dr. Farahany uses generative AI herself (47:27).
Among Dr. Farahany’s numerous credentials and accomplishments, she is the author of the 2023 book, The Battle for Your Brain: Defending Your Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology; she has given two TED Talks and spoken at numerous high-profile conferences and forums; she served on the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues from 2010 to 2017; she was President of the International Neuroethics Society from 2019 to 2021; and her scholarship includes work on artificial intelligence, cognitive biometric data privacy issues, and other topics in law and technology, ethics, and neuroscience. She is the Robinson O. Everett Distinguished Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at Duke University, where she also earned a JD, MA, and PhD in philosophy after completing a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth and a master’s from Harvard, both in biology.
Dr. Farahany’s Substack—featuring her interactive online AI Law & Policy and Advanced Topics in AI Law & Policy courses—is available here. The app she recommends is BePresent. The Status Check episode Mike mentions, with Dr. Judson Brewer, is here.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. You can read a full transcript of this episode with timestamps below.
