I've looked into Vault somewhat when determining which firms to apply for this summer (not that it did me any good). What I found is that many of the rankings on Vault for the Practice Areas I'm interested in were similar to other rankings I found on the internet.

I also think that what lawyers think about each other is relevant (which would somewhat validate Vault's methodology). Although tiering can exist between firms because of this, lawyers from firms within the same tier still have to rank each other. This would mean that many of the lawyers ranking had the opportunity to get into these other firms. Hence, it can't just be that these lawyers look at where they didn't get into and rank those places better.

Since these top firms have have to rank someone first, if they all go in one direction it probably means something (although not everything). There are other valid ways to rank firms outside peer review measuring tangible attributes. However, considering many of these measures would favor size over quality and would probably disadvantage upstart and new firms, which have yet to achieve the size of the older firms. Perhaps growth could control for this somehow, but that disadvantages firms which already have 1000 lawyers.

Does anyone have any thoughts on another possible methodology for ranking instead of peer review of prestige or the tangible factors Eben has mentioned?

-- JulianBaez - 20 Feb 2008