Law and the Value of Classical Education

The relationship between college and vocation is popularly modeled something like this:  

1. Attend the most prestigious college you can afford.
    
2. Pick a degree program that interests you, e.g., marketing or education, that’s your “vocation.”
    
3. Earn your degree as quickly and inexpensively as possible.
    
4. At graduation, your degree will make you eligible for a stable and high paying career in your field. (The more prestigious the degree, the better your opportunities.)

This model is easily altered to accommodate careers which require postgraduate study, like law and medicine.  

1. Attend the most prestigious college you can afford.
    
2. Pick a pre-professional degree program that interests you, which will become your “vocation.”
    
3. Earn your degree as quickly and inexpensively as possible.
    
4. At graduation, your new degree will make you eligible for postgraduate schools in your field. (The more prestigious the degree, the better your opportunities.)
    
5. Earn your second degree as quickly and inexpensively as possible.
    
6. At graduation, your degree will make you eligible for a stable and high paying career in your field. (The more prestigious the degree, the better your opportunities.) 

There is something to be said for this model of college and vocation. It offers a definition of vocation: the career path which follows from the field you pick to study in college. And it also defines the role of college in vocation: the more prestigious the college, the better opportunities you will have in each key step of starting your career. 

But this model leaves something out entirely: Education.

Is education needed? If the model works as it is, what’s the problem? Maybe college is just for degrees, and degrees are the pathway into careers.

Let me offer a single, well-established data point to challenge this model. It has to do with careers in law and the surprising results of classical education. It also has application to other fields which require postgraduate study, like medicine. And I believe you’ll find it indicates a broader principle of education in general.

For a moment let’s take for granted that a highly-ranked law school is all that is necessary for maximizing your opportunities in legal-related careers. That is, after all, largely what determines the rankings of law schools. Generally speaking, law schools are given high rankings if they regularly place graduates into good legal careers. Alternatively, you could say it in reverse–good legal employers hire from highly ranked law schools–but either way it seems generally helpful to attend a decently ranked law school if you want to obtain competitive, high-paying, or otherwise desirable legal employment. 

So how do you get into a good law school? According to the modern model, the answer is simple: get a pre-law degree from the most prestigious college you can. The more prestigious your undergraduate institution, the more likely you will be admitted to a prestigious law school. 

And yet, here are professional admissions consultants advising the exact opposite. They suggest that prestigious undergraduate programs actually decrease someone’s chances of getting into a good law school. Why? Law school admissions boards look for two things more than anything else: a high score on the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) and a high undergraduate GPA–regardless of where it came from. 

The reason for this is simple. Law schools compete to be the “highest ranked.” These rankings are determined based on several factors. One factor is the success of employment for graduates. Also factored are the average GPA and LSAT score of a school’s student body. 

But here’s where things get interesting. As I also mentioned, good employment for graduates is a feedback loop. It might determine a law school’s ranking, but it is also determined by a law school’s ranking. That means the primary way for a law school to enhance its ranking is to increase the average GPA and LSAT scores of its students. If you look at law school rankings you’ll see how much this matters. Top law schools have near 99% percentile average GPA and LSAT scores. Even if a law school really wants to admit a student with a prestigious degree, if the student has low numbers, they have to consider that admitting them will lower the school’s rank. That starts a downward spiral of employment opportunities, which also lowers the school’s rank, and so on. Bad for business. What about admitting a student with good numbers from a less prestigious college? No hit to rankings. Good for business.

So a prestigious degree isn’t the key to law school opportunities. 

Does that mean the key to getting into a good law school is to care less about education? Not so fast.

A 2014 study by the Law School Admissions Council surveyed law school applicants with the highest GPAs and LSAT scores. They looked at what major was most highly represented among these top tier applicants. The result? Classics. Not far behind were rigorous liberal arts degrees like religious studies and philosophy. Meanwhile, the poorly performing degrees included the ones the modern model would expect to lead directly to legal success, like criminal justice and pre-law. In other words, applicants who studied classical liberal arts outperformed applicants who got a degree specific to the legal field. 

What do the classics have to do with success in law school admissions? Logical reasoning and reading comprehension. These are the core skills tested by the LSAT. The LSAT is designed to predict the academic performance of first-year law students. It doesn’t test legal knowledge–so a pre-law degree won’t help you. It tests students’ ability to read carefully, think critically, and communicate effectively. So the out-performance of classics majors isn’t related to the facts and information they memorized or anything written on their diploma. It’s related to the intellectual skills they developed in their studies. In a world where many students are memorizing terms and textbooks, students stand out who receive a real education in grammar, logic, and rhetoric. In other words, students who went to college to get an education outperformed students who went to college to get a degree.

Of course, there are certainly other variables involved. Law schools look for more than just a good GPA and LSAT score. They also want proof that applicants will study hard and be successful in the field. They look for proof of discipline, resilience, and leadership. They look for skills like writing and public speaking. A degree is not enough. They want someone who started a club on campus, competed in collegiate debate, and completed an independent study on a complex research topic. But these just prove even further that the model we started with is wrong.

Is there a better model? 

The full relationship of college education to vocation goes beyond the extent of this blog post, but here’s a plausible model for getting a successful start in law: 

1. Attend a college that will give you an education. (Look for one that includes honing your sense of vocation, which may or may not include law.)
    
2. Study the classics. Dig in deep. Learn critical thinking skills and earn the grades and LSAT score to prove it (Pursue extracurriculars, too. Compete in debate. Start a club.)
    
3. Attend a decent law school. If a top law school will accept you, a law school good enough for your needs may give you a full-ride.
    
4. Study hard in law school, get a summer internship, and build that into a career in law.

Plausibly, we can amend this to accommodate other fields as well. Postgraduate admissions consultants say medical schools work similarly, they just use the MCAT instead of the LSAT. It’s possible this model also applies to careers that don’t require a postgraduate degree:

1. Attend a school that will give you an education that includes honing your sense of vocation.
    
2. Study the classics. Dig in deep. Learn critical thinking skills and earn the grades to prove it.  Pursue extracurriculars, too. Compete in debate. Start a club or independent study in a field you’re interested in.
    
3. Leverage your extracurriculars into a summer internship. Build that into a career.

This is an oversimplified model, of course. For example, this model doesn’t attempt to define vocation. Maybe your vocation will be your career. Maybe your career will just be a paycheck to sustain a separate calling, like as an elder at your church. Maybe your career will last two years before your vocation transitions to being a homeschool mom. Maybe the education you receive in college will play a bigger role in your life than just opening the door of a single career path. Maybe it will be a foundation upon which you will grow into a flourishing human being in all areas of your life. I hope that’s the case.

I also admit that some career fields have different standards entirely. What works in law might not work on Wall Street. Certain career paths in high finance and management consulting might be the polar-opposite: the product they sell is essentially prestige, so they’ll look at the name on your diploma more closely. But even that is not without exceptions. (In this case, I speak from personal experience.)

For background, I attended a Christian classical liberal arts college. It was small, unaccredited, and relatively unknown. The most popular career path among my classmates was law, by far. Both of my brothers went to the same college and went on to good law schools on scholarships. I was planning the same path but providentially found my way into banking. Once I got in, I was complimented on my writing skills (apparently finance majors don’t learn this) and was promoted to vice president in half the time of others.

I’m confident that a Christian classical education is an invaluable foundation for any vocation. Not to mention, only this kind of education is designed to help you define your vocation. 

That’s where New Aberdeen stands out. New Aberdeen is designed to build the whole person by discipling students. Here, students will study what it means to be stewards of creation, to work the earth, to do all for the glory of God. If you want a degree, there are plenty of colleges around. If you want an education, too, consider New Aberdeen.

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Debate Team

New Aberdeen is also excited to announce the launch of its forensics program. Starting this year, the college is fully equipped to field students in national and international debate leagues. Competing in academic debate for over six years has convinced me it is the perfect place to put the logic and rhetoric of a classical education into real-world practice. 

Students who join debate at New Aberdeen will get to sharpen their critical thinking and communication skills in competition against universities around the world. This is a particularly valuable opportunity for students looking to build their profile for law school. There are other opportunities, too. New Aberdeen is starting something new. This is an environment to demonstrate leadership and initiative like nowhere else. Instead of signing up for a legal society or sitting on the law review, New Aberdeen will equip students to create something new, to be founders and co-founders. New Aberdeen is here to cultivate leaders and lawyers of the next generation.