Where Partners Really Come From...

...The University of Chicago Law School.

In the last post I critiqued an article by Theodore Seto (Loyola Law School) published in the Journal of Legal Education entitled “Where Do Partners Come From?" Seto's article gathered valuable data on the law schools that produced partners in the largest 100 firms over the last 25 years. As I discussed in the last post, however, Seto's article did not provide the information that prospective law students who hope to become partners in large large law firms really need to know. The reason is that Seto's article failed to account for the size of law school classes, a methodological choice led Seto to conclude that Harvard Law School is the law school most likely to lead to large law firm partnership.

In fact, Seto's data shows that on a per-capita basis the University of Chicago Law School is undoubtedly the largest producer of partners in the largest 100 law firms. No matter what measure of enrollment is used, Chicago comes out first and no other law school poses a serious challenge. Although Harvard has produced more than twice the number of partners in these firms as has Chicago (946 versus 426), it has produced about three times the graduates as has Chicago during the relevant period. As a result, on a per-capita basis Chicago is the clear number-one producer of partners in the largest law firms. 

The University of Chicago Law School was ranked eighth in Seto's survey, falling behind large law schools such as George Washington and Georgetown. When corrected for size, the University of Chicago should be ranked first for partner production in the largest 100 firms, comfortably ahead of the second-place law school (which is not George Washington or Georgetown).

UPDATE: I present size-corrected data for other law schools here. 

Comments

[James Simons]

Shouldn't the number of partners produced be relevant to the discussion of feeder schools to the largest 100 law firms? Even if, per capita, Chicago produces a large number of partners, at the end of the day, there are more partners from other schools doing the hiring. Thus, to the extent partners look to hire associates from their alma maters, one would anticipate that the more partners from a law school in practice, the more likely that a student from that law school would be hired.

[Rob Anderson]

James, I think that's a great point and one I actually considered addressing in the post but didn't to keep it short. You are probably right that the number of partners already within a firm is helpful for students' outcomes on a per-capita basis. This could be because of conscious or unconscious preference given to alumni from one's own school. A "critical mass" of partners can be a beachhead for an upstart school to expand its employment prospects, and a dominating presence could reinforce the lock of an "establishment" school.

However, Seto's data looks back so far in time (to 1986) that any such effect should be reflected in the per-capita numbers *now*. In other words, to the extent that the "beachhead" or "establishment" effects help current students, we should see that effect in current per-capita numbers, which is the data that would be most relevant in decision-making.

Where raw numbers might be interesting is the case where a school had made large gains in partner representation in recent years, which might foreshadow per-capita success in the future. That's not what Seto's ranking measures, however.