Students who rely on the name of their school to get them in the door at a law firm may realize that it is often not enough. The name of a law school might get a resume some attention, but a good academic performance is what gets an attorney a job at a top firm. Yet, without the information to properly put a student's record into context, an impressive record at one of these law schools could be unfairly dismissed.

In the process of creating the 2004 BCG Attorney Search and Placement Guide to Class Ranking Distinctions and Law Review Admission at America's Top 50 Law Schools, we at BCG Attorney Search sought to expand upon previous guides in order to make hiring partners and recruiting coordinators better informed in their decisions. By broadening the scope of the book to include 25 more schools, we hope to shed some light on the law school performances of students from schools that we have heretofore not discussed. Since there is less scrutiny placed on the lower ranked schools in the top tier, there is often less understanding of the achievements of the students who graduated from them.

This year's edition of the book involved more research than any previous version. One of the more noticeable improvements is that we were able to gather much more information about each school's journals, not just the main Law Review, and the standards required for students to achieve membership. The book also incorporates more student opinions about the various clinical programs schools provide, as well as the importance of the moot court competition. This is all designed to allow for each student's law school record to be more fully evaluated and examined by prospective employers.

Many of the law schools we feature in this book continue to be somewhat tight-lipped about their grading systems. This makes the process of creating the book more difficult to some extent, but at the same time stresses the need for it. By having this information readily available, we believe that it will be possible to actually spend less time concentating on each applicant's grades, and more time learning other valuable information about applicants.