April? Twenty fourth, two thousand and nine delayed Supreme Court Justice ended in Somalia, is speaking at American Universities, Washington, college of law. I, like you, very much, prefers markets being Grossman. Ladies and gentlemen, I I began one of one of my either talks or Lord, you ordered the students are all dressed up for the occasion C Span is recording is a big stage hung with blue polyester drapes Scalia holds forth. His black hair swept back from his forehead glasses on his nose, strong and square all intellect you'll have to enforce gripping the podium like it, the slab of beef men, administrative law- is not for sissies. It is very difficult course to teach under. I assume certainly was

my day a hard hard course to master its vintage Scalia. The audience hangs on his every word. He finishes triumphantly enhance shooting the air good afternoon. Many Christina some one else: you'd inherit Dhabi sale, Christina start. First, your student have a more general question and that is that part of American. The american ethos is that our society is a meritocracy were hard work internally to success. But there are other important factors like connections degrees and I'm wondering other than grades a journal. What do smart heart, hardworking, dubious students with strong writing skills need to do to be sick, outrageously, success formula, the law. What does it take to be out re justly successful in the law just work hard and be very good taste,

my name is Malcolm global. You listening to revision is history. I podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This episode is part two of my exam. Nation of the bizarre things the legal profession does to pick its best and brightest in part, one which, if you haven't listen to you probably, should I took the law school admissions test along with biases. Camille and couldn't understand why they made me rushed through all the questions, but now, in part, two we have bigger fish to fry, I'm in his service Malcolm Gladwell Grand unified theory of how to fix american legal education. No make that my grand unified theory. Fixing all american irish education, and what is our text for this too

caution of Gladwell Grand unified theory. It's the answer. Justice Scalia gave to the unfortunate Christina stud You know by and large, and unless I have a professor on the faculty, whose good friend and preferably a former law clerk of mine, whose judgment I can trust I'm going to be picking you know for Supreme Court law clerks. I can't afford a miss. I just can't so I'm going to be picking from the law schools that the that basically the are the heart get into they admit the best in the brightest and they may not teach very well. But you can't make you you you maker, you're out of a silk purse and if they come in the best in the bright, they're, probably gonna, leave the best and the brightest. Ok, let's pretend to be legal mines for a moment and closely parts, the meaning and implication of Scully a statement

a student at American Universities, Washington, college of LAW, a law school the? U S, news and will report ranked seventy seventh em. All american law. Schools is asking a quest, of a sitting justice of the? U S Supreme Court, who graduated from Harvard LAW School she's, basically asking him. Would it be possible to be one of his clerks and he answers you couldn't can universes washing college of law. You have no choice. So becoming? What am I clerks? I only heard people went to Harvard like I did, but then he goes on and he says this, which is my favorite, part because it sums up absolutely everything I want to talk about. In this episode. I mean everything now I started the reason I told a story is one of my former:

clerks, who I am the most proud of it- now sits on the six Circuit Court of appeals. Jeff sudden, I would refer him as one of my former. Why wasn't one. Former luck was Louis powers, clerk at the time Louis power with semi retired from the Supreme Court. He had once called senior status. So his law worked mostly for other justices, but I wouldn't have higher Jim sudden, for God's sake, he went to Ohio State and he's one of the very best law clerks I ever had and he's just a brilliant guy. So don't tell me this stuff about you and what do you have to do to be successful? You have to be good simple as that I think we're not. Thank you very much. Oh we're not done. We ve only just begun.

Tell me why you decided to go to Moscow oh so, law school was a third choice. First choice was teaching. I was a teacher in coach for several years, both middle School high school soccer baseball little track. This is Judge Jeffrey Sachs the guy who somehow slip through the cracks to become the best clerk ended in Scalia ever had foreign service was choice. Number two: Oh no lawyers in my family and when I finally went to law school, I wouldn't say my parents were beaming with pride. I came from a family of kind of service driven folk Sue whither and education. Some missionaries- and why did you do to go to to Ohio State LAW school. It was a pretty complicated decision. I applied to to law school, so high, a stated, Michigan I got into one of them and I ended up in Rome

at the one I got into OECD that was seriously her. I very much would have liked to have gone to Michigan and I was the fact that my Father in law had gone there in his son in law, couldn't get in was a little humbling. We got over it. I didn't ask Judge Sutton what is Elsa score was, but we can do the math Michigan is part of the elite group of law, schools known as the tea fourteen, the top fourteen Yale Stamford, Harvard University of Chicago Colombia, all the big ones I state is not among the tea fourteen the median Elsa score of someone who goes to Ohio state. These days is eight point slower than median score of someone Michigan. Now what does that fact mean? Well, as you may recall, from the previous episode, the EL said is not a test of someone's ability to solve difficult.

Problems? It's a test of someone's ability to solve difficult problems quickly. It is five sections of twenty to twenty five questions. And you have a hard limit of thirty five minutes for each section. You have to rush. As one Elsa tutor Toby. The test favours those capable of price pressing without understanding it favours hairs, not tortoises. So what's Jeff sudden well he's clearly brilliant. He was the Ohio State Solicitor in the nineteen nineties and while the Supreme Court with his arguments on a number of cases. His most recent work of legal scholarship is title. Fifty one imperfect solutions, states and the making of constitutional law. The New York of your books felt they had to get I retired Supreme Court. Justice to review it. There are lots of very serious people, in fact who thinks Sutton deserves to be a Supreme Court justice himself one day so sudden is in the category of blue

the person who didn't do all that well on the outside and what is that making? It makes him a tortoise. I'm not just any tortoise, a giant towards he's one of those tortoises from the Galapagos. That's five be long. So sudden graduates from Ohio State gets a job cooking for a federal judge. Then a job cooking on this court and in his year as clerk friskily, he thrives. The thing that really affects everybody who works with them is within weeks. You just get a sense of this incredible passion for the law, and that is just intoxicating, that that is what really change things and that year I can't. I can't emphasise enough how much I got out of that year, not long before Jeffrey Sutton

been a middle school teacher and Track coaching Columbus, now he's working with one of the greatest legal minds in the country, and he does such a good job that seventeen years at some random speech it American University Scully Singles Amount Scully. Well over a hundred clerks Jeff Satin is the one he's proudest of so Why does a tortoise do so well working for the Supreme Court? I asked by fanciest legal friend Tele for haughty and who is a clerk on the court a few years after son for Justice Sandra Day, o Connor save you working on a case. What what is working on a case mean well, we we worked in two kinds of cases. The first kind is was called the cert pool the thousands of petitions sent to Washington. A year by people who want their cases heard by the Supreme Court will at each get a stack of petitions on Wednesday and we had a week to get home

where'd you get into the floor so that in that case it will be a lottery alive, to eat. When you read those kinds of things. How do you read? How do you read? I don't know that question? Do you read the same way you read a work of nonfiction or a new Yorker article, what I always read them and I continue to read similar arguments with a pencil in my hand, which is not how I would read for pleasure, were nonfiction origin slower, faster, much slower, much slower, guess how much slower, but personally, I feel I can read very quickly and I can read very slowly and I get different things out of it, but this is definitely slow. Reading turtle slow reading turtle and why is it so important to resolve because the details manner and because the arguments are injured,

and because the solutions are difficult, I mean I'd. Everybody will tell you this when a case comes a supreme court. You know a case. That's really ready for review with the Supreme Court. It's hard. The reason the circuit court have disagreed about. It is because it's really hard, but the answer is not obvious. Yeah you're kidding yourself. If you think that it is So you have to you have to think. While you read here, you can't just process. You have to understand the ass you you have to think. While you read this is the primary requirement of one of the most prestigious jobs in the legal profession, the other part of the job. The main part of the job is researching and analyzing. The actual cases come before the court for her and was one of four crooks working for Oconnor. Since We'll get assigned a quarter of those cases

I'm with you spend on them. I don't think I ever stopped thinking about the cases that I was working on you, but what, with the time that would allow lapse, was the time lapse wrong when you were given the case to win you when you were finish, what would your contributions finished?

I don't remember, I want to say a couple months being a Supreme court clerk is a job for a tortoise. You can't hurry. You have to have slowly and carefully, because if you miss something, that's a problem, I didn't even have to mention tortoises to judge sudden he brought them up in a law is very much a tortoise. The tortoise went, beats the hair, and so the hairs that go to the elite schools that they better slide into tortoise mode, or it's not gonna work out well for them, and the the the tortoises that go to the state schools better stay being a tortoise than stick with it. So let us recap sittings to be court. Justice explains to a group of law school students that he will not consider them for a job that involves being a tortoise, because they have failed to shine at a test that measures their ability to be a hair

and even as he says, that he can see. One of the best of his former clerks was a tortoise, who also did not shine to test the measured his ability to be a hair and when he presents this confounding bit of reasoning that manages both to stigmatize and disparage the entire audience, what does the audience do? listen. I mean this is bananas. This is prisoners during the war. I think you can see Why we are in need of a grand, unified theory to fix legal education The Monday after my assistant, Camille, and I took the outset- we took the train to new town. Pennsylvania too.

Headquarters of the law. School admissions council. This is the group that for the past, seventy years has created and administered the outset. They operate out of a two story: red brick, building in an office park. Big atrium, very eightys. We were ushered into a conference room on the second floor, where a row of test experts cycle Metricians were waiting for us. What damage after arrive at a deserter eight They began with a tutorial on how to make a standardized test, which, I have to say, was fascinating. It turns out a single item on a test like the outset takes thirty six months to develop. They don't just dream up hard questions. They test the questions over and again to make sure that a right kind of hard, so what I've done here is identified a question that was actually rejected because it was performing similarly for two sub groups of interest. Those were males and females. This is Alex Weissmann

certain text is actually on the second page. It starts off Thomas pumpkins renaissance, English composer wrote in a musical style that, in his time, had already become outdated and so forth. This is a passage designed to test the reading comprehension, skills of would be lawyers, but the results of the question came out weird women who are otherwise doing really well on that section were somehow shipping up on this particular question, any equivalent group male high scores were overwhelmingly getting it right. So here we have almost two x male versus not our welfare, almost twice as many males is women has females got his question. Cracked. Right, so, if you that is, that is already in the indicative of a problem with this question. Why the question of. Why is not always easy to answer and it and for a question like this. What we determine is

even if we can determine why this is happening. We Don't take the chance in keeping it on the test. In this case the Elsa wasn't functioning as a test of ability, which is what is supposed to be. It seemed like it was a test of gender which it's not supposed to be so they threw the question out when talk to Cycle Metricians outside the legal world. They were unanimous in their praise. At the outset, it was like talking to auto mechanics about a Porsche mechanics, love porsches, and if I had let them, I feel those three on the panel would have happily talked about their sports car for hours, the engine, the steering the acceleration but Camille, and I had- just two days earlier taken the outset. What I really want to know was why, with these guys building a sports car, I mean why go so fast. One of you.

Build a really good. Many then, don't you know, law school that doing the work efficiently being able to handle the reading out and handled manner, analysis that require innocent, Time is relevant, Lily needs which takes up the cause research, the queen, payments on any redesign. The test is to make sure that if your changing the timing or the number of questions that your asking given my time, you go back to square one and make sure it predicts when, one hour and fourteen minutes into the presentation I can't hold back any longer. So you re talking about efficiency, but I was trying to be more you, you gotta, stop me for being efficient. I had just been through the experience of finishing the first section of the

sat with time to spare and then running way out of time. On the last logic section, the efficient wish me to take. The test would be to speed up on the things that I was really good at and then use that time on the things I hereby timer guess how efficient people work right, but you wouldn't, let me be efficient. I was told seventy times. You cannot look ahead at the next section why I sat there for ten minutes after the first one. Ok, some getting a little bit worked up, but remember I'm under tremendous pressure to be Camille on the outset, and all this time she sitting right now to me all smug and complacent, like she was doing Jack games in her head? Just for fun? Does it? Why can deliver the next one under eternity? You know very well because they view, if you give him get more time for that next section than the first the next day or the person who

was the one, but the people who took the question when it was gone through. All these levels are being efficient in law. School is about time. Management right is about doing things. You'd you can do is really quickly quickly and using the extra time to. If I may be no up fast reader butter, slow writer, then it can. You know I have a different balance and if I'm a fast I do in a slow reader. I dont get the sense that I'm making any headway. So my question is why you forcing us all to do every skill in thirty five minutes. If human beings are everyone in that room, I took it with had a different set of skills, but you're. Why pushing us all into the same cookie could check It's a standardized test. I guess standard time is one of the features of the standardization, and We can you research on what you're saying, but having.

Well, we ve research on the timing of the questions before they were introduced. How many, how long it takes for people to do this number of questions reasonably well to get your optimal score, isn't necessarily to try a request. So some students do get a better swore by spending more time for question and then leaving shoe skipping. If you, then, by trying to question some students, best strategy is to try a request, and so we advise them to expand on themselves when their practices and see. What's that, such a strategy that that's the only reason you d dab. Those strategies is because you had this arbitrary time constraint, right I just take issue with the arbitrary am I being obnoxious? Maybe I am. Is I've gone to push ahead, Garrison, stood guard and am badgering.

About why they are building something with sliding doors and third rose seeding, but I do know does not strike you that they should have at least thought about this. A bit more. You. You started by going through a really the current discussion about how much care you take to make sure test do not have some element of cultural or group. Unfairness shadows super interesting, but now you just you, but you could simultaneously have imposed a system which disk which discriminates against someone who, for example, the snow reader you're, on the one hand, beautifully sensitive to the notion that the test might be disadvantaging a certain kind of person in this industry. In the same breath, you are completely insensitive to the kind of person who wants to take their time. There will be difficult This is genuinely this was my question gas ass you're, so

The information the test? Does we have to do it and will stand as way here we are suggesting is a different approach to these tests and we of course do that Willy nilly, I feel and rewrite and rethink and restructure the questions, but the format? No, that's Willy nilly the thirty five minutes. Time limits on each section are cast in stone. Why they cast in stone because the job the Elles said is to make it easier for law schools to decide which students to admit and what would have happened if I had been able to carry over my extra time or if that thirty five minutes was turned into forty five minutes I would have scored higher sort of lots of other tortoises if tortoises, an extra ten minutes-

only some of them catch up to the hairs, but then what is that done now? It's harder for law schools to decide which students to admit back when I was preparing for the EL said over the edge tech, company, noodle, I asked the experts to game this out, one of the needle guys Fritz Steward, said you could relieved the time pressure for a significant number of tortoises. If you extended the EL said to a hundred and twenty five percent of its current length. If we get wet line, twenty five percent. So what's the same way, we do it. What are you gonna do as its culture, its girl, screw with their lovely norms? Gulf right, it's it's really subversive anyway he's what Fritz is trying to do is destroy Lascaux admissions. Well, that's Dan Edmunds, another noodle guy. What he means is this right now over a hundred thousand people take deal set every year. The results fall on a bell curve. Of course, the ninetieth percentage is right around one. Sixty four out of a hundred

maybe the top schools or almost join from the pool above the one hundred and sixty seven mark, but if the test allows the tortoises to score high, then suddenly the number over a hundred and sixty seven would balloon. The bell curve goes to Helen Hand basket. The loss was with her to make admissions about something other than just the also score, because currently law school at Miss This is about. Seventy percent girl sat score about thirty percent your grades, and that leaves pretty much zero percent for any other considerations. So if you take that pressure off your suddenly maybe triplane your number of qualified applicants for a lot of these top programmes and they're gonna have to do the work of actually figuring out something other than a test tube to decide who gets into their school. Now. That raises the question of why we don't just make the outset harder, lift the time pressure and compensate by making the questions much tougher. So we get our nice beautiful, belcour back, but now all we're doing is

Privileges tortoises over the hairs now the Jeff Sutton's of the world get a perfect score. GotTA, Harvard LAW, school and Justice Scully breathed a sigh of relief, except, if you do it that way, the hairs get discouraged, because they could only get into american University Witherspoon The seventh in the country and went Supreme Court just has come to visit. They tell us students, they have no chance wisest better We need hairs to if you're an investment bank trying to close it incredibly complicated deal in forty eight hours with lawyers have to all read a thousand pages in a day. Maybe you want to hear the law needs tortoises and hairs. We have now arrived at the absurdity of american autocracy, of course. The whole reason the people obsess over their else had score. There are a small number of law schools that everyone wants to get into the top fourteen. The prestigious law

It was basically only ire from the top fourteen and the top fourteen only have room to admit forty five hundred students a year in total. Fifty three thousand people are competing for forty five hundred slots. It's crazy! I'm a graduate of the University of Toronto. All Canadians will tell you that the university Toronto is their most prestigious most Elite World Class university Do you know how many undergraduates attend the universe to Toronto? Ready remember this is the elite school in a country of just thirty five million people and just to orient yourself Harvard University. The most elite school in a country of three hundred and thirty million people has a total undergraduate enrollment of six thousand six hundred and ninety nine ready. The best school in Canada have seventy thousand eight hundred and ninety undergraduates. Now how about the universe

the British Columbia. I second crown jewels. Fifty two thousand, seven hundred and eleven undergraduates. What about me Jill University. In Montreal I was wished. I went to Miguel intimate elite Exclusive Mcgill. Has twenty seven thousand six hundred and one undergraduates. Do you see how genius this is? We have a lead. Schools in Canada but we don't spend enormous amounts of time, devising elaborate tests to arbitrarily limit the number of people who can attend those elite schools we just make the school is bigger. Honestly, how hard is it This whole revision is history.

Object on the outset began when I ran across a paper on assess all run by a guy named William Henderson. We met him in the previous episode, the former fire fighter from Cleveland who now teaches law at Indiana University. Well, Henderson told me to call a friend of his named Evan Parker. They worked together. I dont know if you ve ever read Michael Louis, his famous book money ball about the analytics nerds who took over baseball? They went in with their advanced statistics and told the old school scouts. You know, you're picking the wrong players. Parker does money ball, for law firms? Will you mentioned many ball earlier? It really is minimal.

It is one hundred percent puckers young cerebral, very proper in a suit tie briefcase. Is that messing around? I said at the beginning that I was going to offer you a grand, unified theory of how to fix higher education. I'm almost there pucker analyzes who the successful people are at any law firm and then works backwards and asks is the firm hiring the kind of law school graduate? Who is most likely to become a good lawyer? He has multiple data points, regressions, algorithms and he finds they dont higher the right kind of law school graduate. What is the efficiency that is the perfect worded is a market

efficiency firms have plenty of information about prospective hires resume grades law, school work experience, but Parker finds they dont know how to make sense of it. People go for a short cut. Instead, you end up selecting people who are like you, not people who are like the successful attorneys. At your firm view, my colleague is call it the mirror, autocracy the mere autocracy people who reminds us of ourselves at the standard law from interview, a partner sits down with a second, your law, school student and then that partner rates the candidate. What is the correlation between that right? eating and how well the candid actually does when they get hired Parker Analyse Data is essentially a coin foot. So someone says you're, dispersants Gray wrote his per zero. That rose. Tell you anything about. There actually to do with retention. It was actually negative so that those who

getting higher individual scores where she less likely to stay puckers method. Is in systematize would allow from wants, When they interview someone, they know what to ask oppression say too much, but I can't give it all away, but what we can do is think of proxies for certain types of behaviour, so blue collar work experience. What happens if you have that, in your background minutes A mixed bag could be a lot of things, but if you have that background- and you also gone on to succeed and gradually law school Helen perform well that that that is too, to us. It is a signal of something meaningful, and so it at certain arms you will see blue collar experience, be one of the most positive than in significant factors under the all else, equal conditions. What makes for a good lawyer is complicated. It differs from law, firm to law, firm job to job,

situation, the situation you need algorithms and data to make sense of it, and now we come to the heart of the issue some of the ones that are more. I think surprising to firms are the things that don't matter, what doesn't matter, wait for it? Well it where you into law, school, doesn't matter at all, You all yeah. It's is essentially a random predictor. So is it not? two thousand t fourteen or is it not matter? Well, it really doesn't matter If you go on the website of any hot shot law, firm vivid picture We one of their attorneys and next to the picture. They'll tell you where that prison went to law school. They can boast about how they never higher from Ohio State an american university. That's how much the profession is obsessed with law school pedigree. What does the money ball guy the client, who is right,

The numbers. Tell us really doesn't matter and we like to serve represent results, visually and so have this baseline line and essentially, what's to the left to serve a negative predictor. What's that arise, a positive and it's almost uniformly the case that this t fourteen false right on that day, which has said this is an insignificant factor, really yeah. This cut a fantastic, maybe fantastic is the wrong word. Infuriating is a better word. This whole process. Begins with the outset, which has been on the idea that a certain kind of thinking is valuable for legal education, and we know that's tricky because it's not exactly clear why that certain kind of thinking is so much more important than other kinds of thinking, but whatever for a sub set of idiosyncratic reasons. America only has so many places at the top, so those

who excel at that certain kind of thinking get into the top law? Schools those who get into the top law schools get hard by the top law firms, and then what do we find When you look at his succeeds at those top law firms which higher on the basis of which screw, you went to which in turn select on the basis of whether you are good at that certain kind of thinking you I know where you went to law school, doesn't matter the whole daisy chain. L sat law school law firm? We made it all Evan, Parker Ones, a special study on rain makers. The people who are really, Good at bringing in new business for a law from law firms cannot survive without rain makers. And I was struck in doing that- work- how many of the individuals in our study which, alas, schools it I've never even heard of right or they to school to get their lot agree night school and law schools you ve never heard of. So what should we do about this absurd?

Today it is now time for amalgam glad Wells, Grand unified theory of how to fix higher education. Ready, don't ask don't tell we make a rule prospective employers cannot ask and prospective employees cannot disclose the name of the educational institutions they attended. You could still go to Harvard if you won spend a small fortune on tutoring for the outset, so that when you sit down and class him you can be the very speediest hair you can be for them, You leave Harvard you have to shut up about it, silence hybrids over and players can't use it as a shortcut for who to hire because it's not helping them and they can't post it on their websites while right by the way. Let's do don't ask, don't tell for all hiring when you sing

Bout, choosing a school. You should be thinking about where you can get the best education for you and where you will be happy, you shouldn't be making some complicated calculations about the brand value of your college in the workplace and neither should the Supreme Court I can't afford amiss. I just can't show I'm gonna be picking from the. Nah schools that that basically, there are the hardest to get into. So this is what Justice Scalia could have said. He could have said in answer to Christina Stats question I care about people who can think deeply about consequence, issues who know how to read slowly, who Hungary enough to overcome problems around the clock? I had a clerk once named Jeff Sutton, who

all those things and more, and I guess what I'm looking for is another Jeff Sutton, another giant tortoise, and if you are concerned about the fact you go to Washington, college of LAW or Ohio state, because, u else set score was in high enough. Remember I don't care. We went to law school because I consider it my responsibility as a gatekeeper in a meritocracy to select people based on their fit and their ability, and not on their skill at answering twenty five questions in thirty five minutes, something like that. It's not a hard thing to say I'm here with Camille Battista, my assistant, with whom I went Mano motto on the EL set three weeks ago and I Jacob Smith,

So with this, this is the moment of unveiling out. We have Camille was has gotten the email from the Moscow Admissions Council. Cameo till I saw it with my escort. Ok, ok, nice! Ok! This is not, therefore, what what did you know where'd they go back. The earth was again we tide. We got the same score and I know you want to know what the score is, but trust me that way lies only bitterness and illusion. Don't ask don't tell I took the sweetest poetic justice

we know we began this whole process back in January, and it was the whole question was whether my years of study and experience would be offset, By my years of cognitive decline and weather can have bigger Camille, then the swiftness and write. This and newness of her brain would over her lack of of of realistic spray. Turns out it's a large ass. It was, I think this outcome is absolutely beautiful and delightful next season you, as should as a stun, both go to law school, embedding sire provision is, history is produced by meal. A bell and Jacob Psmith with communal Baptista are editor, is Julia Barton Flung Williams is our engineer fact checking by Beth Johnson. Original music by Luis Gara. Special thanks to come

Lee Mig Liore had her Fain Maggie Taylor, Maya Caning and Jacob Iceberg provisions. History has brought you buy Pushkin industries, I Malcolm Grandma I welcome your march. Twenty nineteen else had score is two percent. How rank is. Angela tenth twenty fifteen, a young woman named Sandra Bland, was stopped by a police officer on a highway and rural Texas. Then everything went wrong, I have written a book called talking to strangers. It starts with that encounter, but I didn't just right. For the page, I recorded an audio books as well

new kind of audio book. That allows you to hear the voices of the people I talk to and come with me to the places I go because you shouldn't just listen to an audio book. You should experience it talking to strangers the audio experience available now, where ever audio books or sold.