But at the same time, I would like to believe that nobody would believe that there is such a thing as a "golden ticket," let alone that an academic degree would qualify. As I have posted earlier, even had you landed your dream job out of law school, you would still have no guarantees. Most BigLaw hires don't last more than a few years before moving on to something else (for instance). There are no guarantees in life, and a law degree may be the furthest thing from a guarantee. If you wanted safe employment, you should have gone to medical school, because all paths from law school to "success" go through lots of hard work and peril, with failure lurking at every turn.
A number of interesting points here, but there seems a deeper point that is easily lost: the factors surrounding rank, prestige, etc. are connected to but rather different from the factors surrounding personal success, whether in law school or thereafter. These in turn are different from the "cultural" factors, including the good luck of graduating into a robust market . . . or the bad luck of graduating now. (And, for the record, I graduated in 1991, into the maws of a legal recession every bit as scary as today's.)
It's easy to discount the relevance of objective factors such as prestige--objective under the standards of law regardless of subjective bases--primarily because, well, we don't like them. (Note the similarity to how one can mess up in a law exam.) Luck is something we either have or not, although a fair portion of luck gravitates to a select few, based often on thoughtfulness as much as good breeding. Those are very different factors from the last--quality--which is something we actually
do control. Thus, as painful as it is, and as quasi-random as law grades seem to be, how one approaches law school is a choice, and it's one many make badly, or at least haphazardly. The same is true of the practice of law. In a market such as this, the reasons will hardly matter.
For all, take a moment to re-read Morten's highlighted sentence: Even after all the work of stellar and perhaps pampered primary, secondary, and undergraduate years; after the sky-high LSAT; after the tippy-top acceptances; after a gruelling first year and wildly great grades; after two more years of mind-numbing schooling; and after an even more mind-numbing application to the bar and the bar exam itself . . . the odds are
still against success. Or at least conventional success.
I know we sound like old farts (or at least I do), but as to the issue of your own quality as a law student--and future colleague--please read Morten's first book. It might be an eye opener as to the very real world you're about to enter. (I would mention my own first book--The Young Lawyer's Jungle Book: A Survival Guide, now with fewer carbs!!--but that would be far too shameless. = : )