What are the TOP 5 law schools?
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Anonymous
Anonymous
Not pathetic. it is a reality for anyone contemplating law school who wants to work for a big law firm. Why do you think law school applications have dropped so dramtically? Law jobs have dried up and many realized that spending $120,000-$200,000 for a law degree from a 3rd or 4th tier law school did very little when trying to find a law job. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304458604577486623469958142 http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/05/03/should-you-law-school/zLsxwMdRrygDJoPNLyuUFL/story.html http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/03/13/Shrinking-Law-Schools-Face-Financial-Devastation |
Anonymous
You COMPLETELY missed the point, but somehow that doesn't surprise me. The little kept wifey on a website saying "MY husband only hires from the TOP law schools..." Oh, forget it. |
Anonymous
Didn't miss your point at all. Actually, it just shows how pathetic you are in trying to stick to the point you are making on a college discussion forum. Some of us are actually tring to have a real discussion that is not about rudeness or being oh so clever. bet you are so proud of yourself. |
Anonymous
NP here. What could you possibly gain from being so mean? |
Anonymous
Attention. Like a misbehaving child who feels unloved. Let's ignore and focus on having a substantive conversation! |
Anonymous
The point (I assume), and I'm not that poster, is that a wife of a lawyer, who has no substantive understanding of a firm's hiring policy beyond what she might overhear when the big boss comes over for dinner, is trying to act high and mighty based on credentials that aren't her own. |
Anonymous
| Putting aside the wife's comment (although I'm still interested in which one of the top 9 is off the hiring list), the top 5-6 law schools are pretty much set. Not a lot of debate around them. |
Anonymous
Hiring can be very regional, so I'd also look to which market you are trying to get hired into. Ie. if you are looking for a job on the West Coast, Berkley and Stanford are more highly ranked than Columbia or Chicago. |
Anonymous
This is true, and even more true outside the "top 5". A professor used to tell me that you should go to college whereever you wanted, but you should go to law school where you wanted to live/practice. |
Anonymous
That's true, but conversely, as an East Coast firm, we don't bother to recruit at Stanford (can't get their kids) or Berkeley (no better than kids at any number of East Coast schools). |
Anonymous
| I know a law firm that noticed during the last recession that they were getting a noticeable number of associate resumes from Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, etc. law grads who were on the market and looking for work. So they decided it was a great time to "raise the bar" and "upscale" their associate ranks and they then let go some perfectly good GW and AU grads who were doing good work, to make room for hires with "better" resumes. |
Anonymous
| The advice to go to law school where you want to practice definitely makes sense outside of the top law schools, but the top law schools still make a huge difference in employment, with some caveats. One of the things to consider is the top law schools vary a lot not just in location but size -- Harvard is huge, Yale is small (most Yale grads practice and they do not have a difficult time finding jobs; while they send a higher % of grads into teaching, it is still a small percentage), Columbia big, Stanford medium to small. Chicago is small and is on a quarter system, and remains kind of focused on law and economics though not as much as it once was. NYU is the school that has made the most strides in the last decade and many consider it better than Columbia though older folks (50+) still think of Columbia as stronger. After that it is harder to say -- VA has had a hard time with its placement lately and it is quite isolated, limiting opportunities to work during the school year outside of the clinics. Penn does seem to be primarily a Philly school, and Philly is a large city with lots of good jobs, Michigan very good school that students like, big. Cal is still seen as primarily a CA school and its tuition, even for in state, is private-like. After that chase money or location, and I would put an edge on location. I think it would be a mistake, for example, to choose GW over Hastings if you wanted to practice in CA (actually SF, if you want to practice in LA go to one of the many LA schools) even if you were offered a lot of money, and if you choose Wash U with a scholarship, you should like the Midwest, not a bad place to practice or live but maybe not what you had in mind. |
Anonymous
My DH's (former) law firm did the same thing! He was Georgetown so barely escaped the carnage. Funny bc my govt law office is full of fourth tier law grads (some of them are really old and really stupid though). |
Anonymous
During a recession when there a is glut on the market, it is not unusual for firms to look to "upgrade the talent pool." Unfortunately, law schools are a pretty strange way to do this, especially when attorneys have been complied a track record working for several years. |