List of Undergrad Colleges for this year's 1L at Harvard Law

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People may want to reconsider law school in general...especially if you are a college freshman or HS senior today.

From an article on how Generative AI will transform law:

This first wave we are already beginning to see now, with widespread AI adoption and experimentation occurring in corporate legal departments and law firms of all sizes. Over the next one-to-three years, the legal industry will increasingly gain access to trusted Gen AI tools from both large technology companies and legal technology providers, letting legal departments and law firms move from pure experimentation to putting AI plans into action. Especially at the beginning, this work will be focused on back-office functions and support staff. Law firms and their clients will begin considering how they can optimize their labor costs, reducing numbers of new associate hires and non-fee-earning staff.

The focus on non-billable work will not last for long, however, particularly as Gen AI technology advances to perform more complex tasks. Looking three-to-five years out, we begin to see changes to the legal business model emerge. AI will allow legal work to be done more efficiently, and corporate legal departments will put increasing pressure on law firms and outside providers to deliver work faster. As less time is spent on legal tasks, the billable hour will no longer be the most cost-effective way to capture value, prompting firms to reimagine their billing models to better share in efficiency savings and capture the value that’s added through advanced technology.

In response, large law firms will seek to capture more revenue by deploying staff, including juniors, to higher value work. They may also use their new law or internal innovations teams to standardize repeatable work that might otherwise be unprofitable. Meanwhile, small- and midsize law firms will be able to use Gen AI to grow their practice without needing to hire more staff. Regardless of size, however, the point is that change is a must: The law firms that don’t adapt will not be able to keep up with the efficiencies gained by their peers.

Finally, extending the time horizon out five-to-ten years leads to greater automation of legal services — and, in some cases, partial or full disintermediation of the legal professional through AI. With Gen AI technology capable of tackling even more complex tasks, AI will be a primary driver of day-to-day legal tasks, with legal practitioners acting as supervisors and strategists. The result is a complete overhaul of not only how legal services are completed and billed, but also the mix of players in the legal arena that are most needed.

This will only happen with a base of sufficient training data and some sort of efficiency in hardware that drops the cost of running the models.

Honestly there is so much absurd hype around AI now, obviously written by people who don’t understand the actual extreme costs associated with running generative models.

Current Harvard 1Ls will be fine.

Moore’s Law is alive and well and so of course the hardware costs will drop significantly over the next 5-10’years.

If you think that is a limiting factor then you need to rethink.

You have no idea what you are talking about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People may want to reconsider law school in general...especially if you are a college freshman or HS senior today.

From an article on how Generative AI will transform law:

This first wave we are already beginning to see now, with widespread AI adoption and experimentation occurring in corporate legal departments and law firms of all sizes. Over the next one-to-three years, the legal industry will increasingly gain access to trusted Gen AI tools from both large technology companies and legal technology providers, letting legal departments and law firms move from pure experimentation to putting AI plans into action. Especially at the beginning, this work will be focused on back-office functions and support staff. Law firms and their clients will begin considering how they can optimize their labor costs, reducing numbers of new associate hires and non-fee-earning staff.

The focus on non-billable work will not last for long, however, particularly as Gen AI technology advances to perform more complex tasks. Looking three-to-five years out, we begin to see changes to the legal business model emerge. AI will allow legal work to be done more efficiently, and corporate legal departments will put increasing pressure on law firms and outside providers to deliver work faster. As less time is spent on legal tasks, the billable hour will no longer be the most cost-effective way to capture value, prompting firms to reimagine their billing models to better share in efficiency savings and capture the value that’s added through advanced technology.

In response, large law firms will seek to capture more revenue by deploying staff, including juniors, to higher value work. They may also use their new law or internal innovations teams to standardize repeatable work that might otherwise be unprofitable. Meanwhile, small- and midsize law firms will be able to use Gen AI to grow their practice without needing to hire more staff. Regardless of size, however, the point is that change is a must: The law firms that don’t adapt will not be able to keep up with the efficiencies gained by their peers.

Finally, extending the time horizon out five-to-ten years leads to greater automation of legal services — and, in some cases, partial or full disintermediation of the legal professional through AI. With Gen AI technology capable of tackling even more complex tasks, AI will be a primary driver of day-to-day legal tasks, with legal practitioners acting as supervisors and strategists. The result is a complete overhaul of not only how legal services are completed and billed, but also the mix of players in the legal arena that are most needed.

This will only happen with a base of sufficient training data and some sort of efficiency in hardware that drops the cost of running the models.

Honestly there is so much absurd hype around AI now, obviously written by people who don’t understand the actual extreme costs associated with running generative models.

Current Harvard 1Ls will be fine.

Moore’s Law is alive and well and so of course the hardware costs will drop significantly over the next 5-10’years.

If you think that is a limiting factor then you need to rethink.

You have no idea what you are talking about.

I have a pretty good idea. Hey, keep your head in the sand…but it’s not good advice to suggest a college Freshman consider law school. The market for associates will be smaller in 7 years vs today…the only question is how much smaller.

At least make sure they know that mastery of generative AI will be required.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:why go to law school if you already went to a good college? not worth it.

Because you actually want to be a lawyer?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is causation and correlation. I think there is a high correlation between high SAT and high LSAT, and LSAT is one of the major stats along with GPA. Median LSAT at Yale is 175 and 75th percentile is 177. 75th is often cited as the "unhooked" target percentile. If you look at data from LSAC on LSAT by colleges, you will see that some schools don't have a max score that reaches the Yale 75th percentile. For instance, Max for Penn State from the 2017 data was 171, Arizona State 175, University of South Florida 175. None of those have any students at Yale in the class of 2026. (I recognize time periods differ, but it the most recent data and it still supports the point.) I think Harvard and Yale are largely taking students that can present the stats regardless of where they went, it just happens that those are disproportionately from the most selective colleges.

https://law.yale.edu/admissions/profiles-statistics

https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/legal_education_and_admissions_to_the_bar/council_reports_and_resolutions/May2018CouncilOpenSession/18_may_2015_2017_top_240_feeder_schools_for_aba_applicants.authcheckdam.pdf

yeah, shocking isn't it. The kids who were really smart in HS and got into T50 and T20 SLAC are more likely to end up at a Top law school. Who would have thought it possible?

Also finances play a part---kids at those schools were more likely Full pay so more likely to think "mommy and daddy are helping fund law school so I can afford to apply to expensive law schools"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People may want to reconsider law school in general...especially if you are a college freshman or HS senior today.

From an article on how Generative AI will transform law:

This first wave we are already beginning to see now, with widespread AI adoption and experimentation occurring in corporate legal departments and law firms of all sizes. Over the next one-to-three years, the legal industry will increasingly gain access to trusted Gen AI tools from both large technology companies and legal technology providers, letting legal departments and law firms move from pure experimentation to putting AI plans into action. Especially at the beginning, this work will be focused on back-office functions and support staff. Law firms and their clients will begin considering how they can optimize their labor costs, reducing numbers of new associate hires and non-fee-earning staff.

The focus on non-billable work will not last for long, however, particularly as Gen AI technology advances to perform more complex tasks. Looking three-to-five years out, we begin to see changes to the legal business model emerge. AI will allow legal work to be done more efficiently, and corporate legal departments will put increasing pressure on law firms and outside providers to deliver work faster. As less time is spent on legal tasks, the billable hour will no longer be the most cost-effective way to capture value, prompting firms to reimagine their billing models to better share in efficiency savings and capture the value that’s added through advanced technology.

In response, large law firms will seek to capture more revenue by deploying staff, including juniors, to higher value work. They may also use their new law or internal innovations teams to standardize repeatable work that might otherwise be unprofitable. Meanwhile, small- and midsize law firms will be able to use Gen AI to grow their practice without needing to hire more staff. Regardless of size, however, the point is that change is a must: The law firms that don’t adapt will not be able to keep up with the efficiencies gained by their peers.

Finally, extending the time horizon out five-to-ten years leads to greater automation of legal services — and, in some cases, partial or full disintermediation of the legal professional through AI. With Gen AI technology capable of tackling even more complex tasks, AI will be a primary driver of day-to-day legal tasks, with legal practitioners acting as supervisors and strategists. The result is a complete overhaul of not only how legal services are completed and billed, but also the mix of players in the legal arena that are most needed.

This may be true but at the end of the day, AI cannot analyze and synthesize information the way a lawyer can. It is just looking at things depending on what you feed into it.

You may be correct, however, it still means that firms will hire far fewer green associates because more experienced lawyers will be significantly more productive. Honestly, a new lawyer's ability to most productively understand and utilize LLMs will become their most important skill.

BTW, this is also happening with Investment Banks and all the analysts they hire (or more accurately, will no longer hire).

This is right. The equation at big law firms will change and so will the pyramid structure - although I venture to guess that those at the top will want to keep more of the $.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Notable absence of VA colleges, other than UVA and W&M.

W&L, Patrick Henry College

I meant public, but left that out lol

Got to give a shout out to Patrick Henry College

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Notable absence of VA colleges, other than UVA and W&M.

Notable presence of Florida universities. Take that, hataaahs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You'll see a wide variety here so don't despair if your future lawyer doesn't go to an Ivy:

https://hls.harvard.edu/jdadmissions/apply-to-harvard-law-school/jdapplicants/hls-profile-and-facts/undergraduate-institutions/

Take a deeper look: 45 of the 147 schools are Top40ish Universities or Top15 LACs, and 20 of them are ivy-plus (Stan, Duke etc). There are 556 L1s . It is unlikely anything below the more competitive 45 schools has more than one admit. Those 45 may have two or more. The ivy-plus 20 may have even more each and in fact could make up half the class . Given that the ivy plus schools are small in size compared to others, there is significantly higher chance to get in from one of them than from a school outside the 45, nevermind all the schools not on the list.

Do you have any data for this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People may want to reconsider law school in general...especially if you are a college freshman or HS senior today.

From an article on how Generative AI will transform law:

This first wave we are already beginning to see now, with widespread AI adoption and experimentation occurring in corporate legal departments and law firms of all sizes. Over the next one-to-three years, the legal industry will increasingly gain access to trusted Gen AI tools from both large technology companies and legal technology providers, letting legal departments and law firms move from pure experimentation to putting AI plans into action. Especially at the beginning, this work will be focused on back-office functions and support staff. Law firms and their clients will begin considering how they can optimize their labor costs, reducing numbers of new associate hires and non-fee-earning staff.

The focus on non-billable work will not last for long, however, particularly as Gen AI technology advances to perform more complex tasks. Looking three-to-five years out, we begin to see changes to the legal business model emerge. AI will allow legal work to be done more efficiently, and corporate legal departments will put increasing pressure on law firms and outside providers to deliver work faster. As less time is spent on legal tasks, the billable hour will no longer be the most cost-effective way to capture value, prompting firms to reimagine their billing models to better share in efficiency savings and capture the value that’s added through advanced technology.

In response, large law firms will seek to capture more revenue by deploying staff, including juniors, to higher value work. They may also use their new law or internal innovations teams to standardize repeatable work that might otherwise be unprofitable. Meanwhile, small- and midsize law firms will be able to use Gen AI to grow their practice without needing to hire more staff. Regardless of size, however, the point is that change is a must: The law firms that don’t adapt will not be able to keep up with the efficiencies gained by their peers.

Finally, extending the time horizon out five-to-ten years leads to greater automation of legal services — and, in some cases, partial or full disintermediation of the legal professional through AI. With Gen AI technology capable of tackling even more complex tasks, AI will be a primary driver of day-to-day legal tasks, with legal practitioners acting as supervisors and strategists. The result is a complete overhaul of not only how legal services are completed and billed, but also the mix of players in the legal arena that are most needed.

This will only happen with a base of sufficient training data and some sort of efficiency in hardware that drops the cost of running the models.

Honestly there is so much absurd hype around AI now, obviously written by people who don’t understand the actual extreme costs associated with running generative models.

Current Harvard 1Ls will be fine.

Moore’s Law is alive and well and so of course the hardware costs will drop significantly over the next 5-10’years.

If you think that is a limiting factor then you need to rethink.

You have no idea what you are talking about.

I have a pretty good idea. Hey, keep your head in the sand…but it’s not good advice to suggest a college Freshman consider law school. The market for associates will be smaller in 7 years vs today…the only question is how much smaller.

At least make sure they know that mastery of generative AI will be required.

NP. This goes for pretty much everyone in future white collar professions so whatever. We’re not all going to become welders to avoid AI.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:why go to law school if you already went to a good college? not worth it.

Because you actually want to be a lawyer?

Haha good one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You'll see a wide variety here so don't despair if your future lawyer doesn't go to an Ivy:

https://hls.harvard.edu/jdadmissions/apply-to-harvard-law-school/jdapplicants/hls-profile-and-facts/undergraduate-institutions/

Take a deeper look: 45 of the 147 schools are Top40ish Universities or Top15 LACs, and 20 of them are ivy-plus (Stan, Duke etc). There are 556 L1s . It is unlikely anything below the more competitive 45 schools has more than one admit. Those 45 may have two or more. The ivy-plus 20 may have even more each and in fact could make up half the class . Given that the ivy plus schools are small in size compared to others, there is significantly higher chance to get in from one of them than from a school outside the 45, nevermind all the schools not on the list.

Do you have any data for this?

This is anecdotal, but the law review at the top 10 law school I attended was about 50 percent Ivy League. I was the only Duke guy. I must add that our notes editor was from Salem State in Oregon, the smartest on the team was from Muhlenberg (and a former FBI agent) who was the only person in front of me in the class rankings, the editor in chief was a Penn State swimmer and a good leader, and another editor who became an incredibly effective death penalty appellate defense specialist was from St Mary's, who takes a data driven approach to appellate defense. I took from this that talent is talent, no matter where it is from.

The most successful guy financially is from Georgetown, and he in his own practice has won several large class actions against drug companies, taking enormous risks which paid off. Another guy formed a health insurance company and never practiced law - he is the most well off - a Georgetown grad too and I did admire him for toughing out the law review because he had little interest in practicing law. Takes all types. A Dartmouth grad who was my friend worked for a big LA firm, then switched careers to be an OB GYN. She and I were from poor circumstances, and we both thought our high grades were somehow unearned - calling ourselves the imposters. Arguably (and I am not kidding) the best criminal lawyer in the country went to Penn. He would have been a great trial lawyer going to any law school in the country.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You'll see a wide variety here so don't despair if your future lawyer doesn't go to an Ivy:

https://hls.harvard.edu/jdadmissions/apply-to-harvard-law-school/jdapplicants/hls-profile-and-facts/undergraduate-institutions/

Take a deeper look: 45 of the 147 schools are Top40ish Universities or Top15 LACs, and 20 of them are ivy-plus (Stan, Duke etc). There are 556 L1s . It is unlikely anything below the more competitive 45 schools has more than one admit. Those 45 may have two or more. The ivy-plus 20 may have even more each and in fact could make up half the class . Given that the ivy plus schools are small in size compared to others, there is significantly higher chance to get in from one of them than from a school outside the 45, nevermind all the schools not on the list.

You're misattributing their successful admission to the college they attended instead of to the individual. The reason more people are admitted from highly selective undergrad programs is that more highly capable students are in those programs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You'll see a wide variety here so don't despair if your future lawyer doesn't go to an Ivy:

https://hls.harvard.edu/jdadmissions/apply-to-harvard-law-school/jdapplicants/hls-profile-and-facts/undergraduate-institutions/

South Dakota School of Mines. That's cool.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You'll see a wide variety here so don't despair if your future lawyer doesn't go to an Ivy:

https://hls.harvard.edu/jdadmissions/apply-to-harvard-law-school/jdapplicants/hls-profile-and-facts/undergraduate-institutions/

Take a deeper look: 45 of the 147 schools are Top40ish Universities or Top15 LACs, and 20 of them are ivy-plus (Stan, Duke etc). There are 556 L1s . It is unlikely anything below the more competitive 45 schools has more than one admit. Those 45 may have two or more. The ivy-plus 20 may have even more each and in fact could make up half the class . Given that the ivy plus schools are small in size compared to others, there is significantly higher chance to get in from one of them than from a school outside the 45, nevermind all the schools not on the list.

You're misattributing their successful admission to the college they attended instead of to the individual. The reason more people are admitted from highly selective undergrad programs is that more highly capable students are in those programs.

Also, how many people from lower-ranked colleges from around the country even bother applying to HLS? Yes, probably just one kid from Kansas State got accepted, but probably very very few applied.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You'll see a wide variety here so don't despair if your future lawyer doesn't go to an Ivy:

https://hls.harvard.edu/jdadmissions/apply-to-harvard-law-school/jdapplicants/hls-profile-and-facts/undergraduate-institutions/

Take a deeper look: 45 of the 147 schools are Top40ish Universities or Top15 LACs, and 20 of them are ivy-plus (Stan, Duke etc). There are 556 L1s . It is unlikely anything below the more competitive 45 schools has more than one admit. Those 45 may have two or more. The ivy-plus 20 may have even more each and in fact could make up half the class . Given that the ivy plus schools are small in size compared to others, there is significantly higher chance to get in from one of them than from a school outside the 45, nevermind all the schools not on the list.

You're misattributing their successful admission to the college they attended instead of to the individual. The reason more people are admitted from highly selective undergrad programs is that more highly capable students are in those programs.

Also, how many people from lower-ranked colleges from around the country even bother applying to HLS? Yes, probably just one kid from Kansas State got accepted, but probably very very few applied.

Good point.