I have an acquaintance at Yale's "prestigious" law school. Now, I did not apply at Yale (or any law school east of the Rockies, actually) and I don't know much about it except that it is one of the "big three"--law schools that will cost you a large fortune to attend but permit you, ostensibly, to write your future. Supposedly this is because they admit only the brightest (read: best-coached) students. They also do not grade you--if you're admitted and you can pay your bills, you get a degree and, likely, whatever job you want.

This acquaintance was in Utah recently, collecting course outlines from us lowly top-40 BYU law students. She likes Yale, you see, because at Yale they know that there are more important things in life than coursework and outlining. Also, there's no grading so as long as you can fake it through the final--and I have no doubt that the bright minds at Yale can fake it very well--you get your degree. At least, this is the story she tells between the lines.

I am not closely acquainted with the Yale admissions procedure, but I am sure it is rigorous. I have no reason to doubt that getting in to Yale is a very difficult thing. But it is quite clear that, once you have secured admission to Yale or Harvard or any of the top, say, ten law schools in the country, you attain a certain gravity for praise and acknowledgment. You no longer have to actually achieve anything--rather, achievements flow to you. This is not to say that you no longer have to work--but all of the work you do takes on an academic luster, a shine that draws the eye.

Before everyone starts crying sour grapes, this isn't a critique of ivy-league institutions--it's a critique first of the legal profession, and second of celebrity. Because the "honor magnet" effect is not just evident at places like Yale. For example, we recently elected a new Editor-in-Chief for the BYU Law Review. Although the two candidates provided by the current Editorial Board lacked prior publication and one had no interest in a federal clerkship, they were both in the hallowed "Top 10%" of the class. The other applicants, one of whom was academically published and had the overwhelming support of his peers, were not. I was not privy to the old Board's deliberations, but every appearance is that grades and class rank were the dispositive factor in the Editorial Board's choice.

Because of their grades, both of these candidates have already been afforded every conceivable opportunity--even at a "mere" top-40 law school like BYU, the top 10% get cushy internships, scholarships, even a virtually automatic acceptance onto the Law Review in the first place. Let's be clear on this: neither one had any particular career need for this additional bullet-point. Did they work harder than others for their grades? There doesn't seem to be much evidence of that. Do their grades indicate superior abilities? Quite possibly, but the skillset that gets you good grades in law school is largely unrelated to the skillset that makes you a good lawyer, which is itself almost completely separate from the skillset that makes you a good law review editor. Ultimately, accomplishing one difficult thing rewarded them not with a single accomplishment, but with a slew of opportunities that are at best tangentially related to their actual achievements.

Now, it's hard to say that this is one of those Quintessentially Bad Things^TM I'm always complaining about--after all, attaching rewards to merits is a pretty reflexive process. But there is a point at which it seems to become a matter of heuristics. We as humans like to "rank" things; we seem to crave hierarchy, but there are a lot of really amazing people in this world--to the point that once you reach a relatively small group with significant personal achievement--Hollywood actors, say, or national legislators, or even (at a slightly different level) law students--deciding who in that group is "better" than others is often a matter of such nuance that it is functionally impossible. Indeed, getting the "best" person for the job may in reality be achievable by selecting any of the qualified applicants!

So we try to quantify the unquantifiable. We invent arbitrary ways to stratify what is an essentially homogeneous group. This we do in the name of "evaluation" because "we have to provide some method of evaluation for employers, and some incentive for people to work hard." And indeed, the Yale experience mentioned above might lend some credence to this theory, but I think there's more to it.

I think people are lazy.

Shocking, I realize, but bear with me. d^_^b Why get to know someone, why read their interminably long writing sample and peruse their resumé and contemplate their cover-letter, when you can just index them by school and GPA and then skim the cream? Because, as a corollary to what I've already suggested, if the "Top 10%" aren't any better than the "Bottom 90%," then neither are the bottom ninety any better than the top ten! And if called upon by the HR department to justify your hire, you can always point to that neatly quantified GPA.

(Aside: does that mean that GPA==CYA?)

The legal profession has many unique quirks and entrenched archaic practices that need to be abolished--starting with Langdellian Law School--but it turns out that this "honor magnet" effect isn't one of them. One area that happens to be near and dear to my pocketbook heart is the publishing industry. Did you know that some authors don't write? That's right--some "writers" get so popular that, not only do they sell every book they write, their name on the cover sells books they don't write! Some people blame publishers, but let's face it: if ghost-written books weren't selling, the publishers wouldn't be making them. Sometimes you'll even see books that were written decades after the "author's" death. Yet we heap on the awards, we talk about them, their fame reaches critical mass and we overlook true merit in other places because we are blinded by the sheen of celebrity.

So having aired my grievances against the "honor magnet" affect, I am forced to allow that I have every intention of benefiting from it. If my wife's book gains critical market momentum, my family will benefit; I cannot but hope for such an outcome. I happen to believe that Aprilynne's book will succeed admirably on its merits--it's a really fun read!--but as a realist I must acknowledge that there is more money to be made on popularity than on critical acclaim. Sometimes the two go together, and sometimes they don't.

Which brings us to the unsatisfying conclusion that some people's merits receive disproportionate recognition, while most people's merits go entirely unrecognized. Some days you're the hammer, but most days you're the nail. I don't have much to complain about; let's face it, I have a really good life. But the philosopher in me has to wonder whether there isn't a better way to go about all this. Is it ever possible to truly succeed on our own terms? Should we doggedly pursue the one shining achievement that will forever blind all others to our eventual shortcomings? Or should we be content to labor in small ways, never receiving due recognition but content in the fact that our every accomplishment can stand on its own?

As usual, I am not the first to ask these questions. I am confident I will not be the last.