Per ATL: Yale & Harvard Law No Longer T14

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is working for the federal govt considered a "quality job"?
What about an organization like the ACLU?
And then there are all those Trump judges who need to hire clerks - Vanderbilt and BYU is probably their version of Yale and Harvard.

I think any job that requires a law degree is a quality job. But maybe being the chief operating officer or chief financial officer of a hot startup wouldn’t be considered a quality job, using that metric.

I went to Wash. U. I loved going to Wash. U. But I think it’s more likely that there’s something off about the rankings than that Wash. U. has much better cost-adjusted law school outcomes than Harvard or Stanford.

If the ratings reflect a real shift, not a methodology problem, maybe graduates of places like Wash. U. look good here because they’re more humble and more willing to take lower-paid, less prestigious law jobs, or more boring law jobs.

Another possibility is that any real shift is the result of the fact that the overachiever schools here have weak needs-based financial aid but good merit aid. Maybe, on average, the students getting merit aid tend to have better connections and networking skills than the students getting needs-based aid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The Yale protest thing is being totally overblown here (and by David L.). I talked to friends that are professors there, and they said it was not a big deal like the press is making it seem.

That’s just one incident. The treatment of the student who wrote the “trap house” email? The students are bad, but the Yale Law Administration’s handling of these incidents is worse.

Unlike most reporters who covered the Amy Chua saga, Liz Breunig actually did some reporting and talked to the students involved. The Yale Law Administration has tried to ruin the careers of students who wouldn’t file complaints against Amy Chua.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/07/amy-chua-yale-law-school-real-story-dinner-party/619558/

Yale Law School is a funny place: Everyone you talk to says they’re there more or less for charity work, but somehow the graduates keep getting rich and famous. While we all contemplate that mystery, the Guest and the Visitor will be contemplating something very different—how to recover from this strange turn of events. The Guest, whose only documented offense was visiting Chua to talk about his run at the Journal, withdrew his application for the Coker fellowship, and applied for no clerkships. The Visitor quietly accepted one fellowship, and likewise declined to seek any clerkships, reasoning along the same lines as the Guest. What else could they have done? It takes an admirable perceptiveness to know when the truth can’t save you anymore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is working for the federal govt considered a "quality job"?
What about an organization like the ACLU?
And then there are all those Trump judges who need to hire clerks - Vanderbilt and BYU is probably their version of Yale and Harvard.

I think any job that requires a law degree is a quality job. But maybe being the chief operating officer or chief financial officer of a hot startup wouldn’t be considered a quality job, using that metric.

I went to Wash. U. I loved going to Wash. U. But I think it’s more likely that there’s something off about the rankings than that Wash. U. has much better cost-adjusted law school outcomes than Harvard or Stanford.

If the ratings reflect a real shift, not a methodology problem, maybe graduates of places like Wash. U. look good here because they’re more humble and more willing to take lower-paid, less prestigious law jobs, or more boring law jobs.

Another possibility is that any real shift is the result of the fact that the overachiever schools here have weak needs-based financial aid but good merit aid. Maybe, on average, the students getting merit aid tend to have better connections and networking skills than the students getting needs-based aid.

Are there many merit or need based scholarships at Harvard and Yale’s Law schools?

[Anonymous]

Harvard, Yale, and Stanford (although Stanford does give out a little bit of merit aid through the Knights-Hennessey program) give out all of their aid through "need" only. That means they will almost always take into account parental wealth and assets. Harvard is known to be the least generous in this regard (over half of their students pay the full $320,000 price tag), whereas Yale and Stanford are known to be more generous with "need" aid. I put "need" in quotations because how each school calculates "need" is somewhat suspect.

Other law schools in the T14 (Columbia, Chicago, Penn, NYU, UVA, Michigan, Berkeley, Duke, Cornell, Northwestern, and Georgetown) give out the majority of their aid through merit alone (i.e. GPA + LSAT score). Consequently, if you're looking at the financial side of job outcomes alone in getting a legal education, deciding to attend a T14 school on a full or even half tuition merit scholarship might be a better decision than deciding to attend Harvard Law at sticker price, since generic Big Law outcomes are going to be very similar across 12 or so of the top law schools. If you're angling to go into academia, become a judge, get a COA or SCOTUS clerkship, then the decision might be javascript:void(0);a little less clear, since Harvard, Yale, and Stanford (and Chicago) do have somewhat of an advantage above the other schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Harvard, Yale, and Stanford (although Stanford does give out a little bit of merit aid through the Knights-Hennessey program) give out all of their aid through "need" only. That means they will almost always take into account parental wealth and assets. Harvard is known to be the least generous in this regard (over half of their students pay the full $320,000 price tag), whereas Yale and Stanford are known to be more generous with "need" aid. I put "need" in quotations because how each school calculates "need" is somewhat suspect.

Other law schools in the T14 (Columbia, Chicago, Penn, NYU, UVA, Michigan, Berkeley, Duke, Cornell, Northwestern, and Georgetown) give out the majority of their aid through merit alone (i.e. GPA + LSAT score). Consequently, if you're looking at the financial side of job outcomes alone in getting a legal education, deciding to attend a T14 school on a full or even half tuition merit scholarship might be a better decision than deciding to attend Harvard Law at sticker price, since generic Big Law outcomes are going to be very similar across 12 or so of the top law schools. If you're angling to go into academia, become a judge, get a COA or SCOTUS clerkship, then the decision might be javascript:void(0);a little less clear, since Harvard, Yale, and Stanford (and Chicago) do have somewhat of an advantage above the other schools.

+1. Spouse turned down HLS for a full ride to another T14. Very financially successful, retired rather early. Obviously, this was many yrs ago, but it sounds like merit is even more common now than back then. It would be hard to imagine a better financial outcome happening from HLS; he was never interested in clerking and many of his partners were former S. Ct. clerks, all ending up in the same place, financially. My perspective is that, at least for law school name, a T14 is enough to get any student where they want to go in BigLaw. Like any other career, the rest is up to the person and their qualities: the intellectual goods, the drive to work hard, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe HYS grads are just turning away from soul-crushing stints in Big Law and going on to get PhDs (needed to become a professor at top law schools - most of whom have JDs from HYS) or going in house right away at tech start ups that offered greater deferred compensation. In any event, COVID-times make the job numbers everywhere wonky.

I have yet to know an HYS law grad now teaching at a top law school who also has a PhD. Not one and I know more than a few.

Any of them not retirement age?

Span of ages - some are 10 years out from retiring or as much as 20 to 25.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Harvard, Yale, and Stanford (although Stanford does give out a little bit of merit aid through the Knights-Hennessey program) give out all of their aid through "need" only. That means they will almost always take into account parental wealth and assets. Harvard is known to be the least generous in this regard (over half of their students pay the full $320,000 price tag), whereas Yale and Stanford are known to be more generous with "need" aid. I put "need" in quotations because how each school calculates "need" is somewhat suspect.

Other law schools in the T14 (Columbia, Chicago, Penn, NYU, UVA, Michigan, Berkeley, Duke, Cornell, Northwestern, and Georgetown) give out the majority of their aid through merit alone (i.e. GPA + LSAT score). Consequently, if you're looking at the financial side of job outcomes alone in getting a legal education, deciding to attend a T14 school on a full or even half tuition merit scholarship might be a better decision than deciding to attend Harvard Law at sticker price, since generic Big Law outcomes are going to be very similar across 12 or so of the top law schools. If you're angling to go into academia, become a judge, get a COA or SCOTUS clerkship, then the decision might be javascript:void(0);a little less clear, since Harvard, Yale, and Stanford (and Chicago) do have somewhat of an advantage above the other schools.

+1. Spouse turned down HLS for a full ride to another T14. Very financially successful, retired rather early. Obviously, this was many yrs ago, but it sounds like merit is even more common now than back then. It would be hard to imagine a better financial outcome happening from HLS; he was never interested in clerking and many of his partners were former S. Ct. clerks, all ending up in the same place, financially. My perspective is that, at least for law school name, a T14 is enough to get any student where they want to go in BigLaw. Like any other career, the rest is up to the person and their qualities: the intellectual goods, the drive to work hard, etc.

I don't think you are correct that HLS and YLS take into account parental assets in admissions decisions (if that's what you were saying) -- the application process is need-blind and then they do the financial aid separately. I turned down a full ride at a T14 for YLS which was definitely the right move financially. YLS gave me need-based financial aid, and I took out about $90K in federally subsidized loans. I would have had to borrow money at the "free ride" school to pay my room and board (which would have been more than in New Haven anyway) and would not have received subsidies for all my unpaid summer internships. I paid off that $90K a long time ago and YLS definitely made me more competitive for fellowship, clerkship and employment. Plus, the students there are really wicked smart. Some of them are irritating, yes, and some of them are socially awkward, and some are pretty arrogant. But they were universally wicked smart. It's a small class so they can be pretty selective.

But I agree that every case is different and people should consider their options.

[Anonymous]

All my friends crushing it in Big Law are not Ivy + Stanford grads. Instead, they are Boston College, UVA, Georgetown, Emory, etc.

My Ivy Law friends all work in government (with me!) or made the jump to academia. Lots of them did clearkships, whereas the non-Ivies pretty much all take a Big Law job if they can get one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Harvard, Yale, and Stanford (although Stanford does give out a little bit of merit aid through the Knights-Hennessey program) give out all of their aid through "need" only. That means they will almost always take into account parental wealth and assets. Harvard is known to be the least generous in this regard (over half of their students pay the full $320,000 price tag), whereas Yale and Stanford are known to be more generous with "need" aid. I put "need" in quotations because how each school calculates "need" is somewhat suspect.

Other law schools in the T14 (Columbia, Chicago, Penn, NYU, UVA, Michigan, Berkeley, Duke, Cornell, Northwestern, and Georgetown) give out the majority of their aid through merit alone (i.e. GPA + LSAT score). Consequently, if you're looking at the financial side of job outcomes alone in getting a legal education, deciding to attend a T14 school on a full or even half tuition merit scholarship might be a better decision than deciding to attend Harvard Law at sticker price, since generic Big Law outcomes are going to be very similar across 12 or so of the top law schools. If you're angling to go into academia, become a judge, get a COA or SCOTUS clerkship, then the decision might be javascript:void(0);a little less clear, since Harvard, Yale, and Stanford (and Chicago) do have somewhat of an advantage above the other schools.

+1. Spouse turned down HLS for a full ride to another T14. Very financially successful, retired rather early. Obviously, this was many yrs ago, but it sounds like merit is even more common now than back then. It would be hard to imagine a better financial outcome happening from HLS; he was never interested in clerking and many of his partners were former S. Ct. clerks, all ending up in the same place, financially. My perspective is that, at least for law school name, a T14 is enough to get any student where they want to go in BigLaw. Like any other career, the rest is up to the person and their qualities: the intellectual goods, the drive to work hard, etc.

I don't think you are correct that HLS and YLS take into account parental assets in admissions decisions (if that's what you were saying) -- the application process is need-blind and then they do the financial aid separately. I turned down a full ride at a T14 for YLS which was definitely the right move financially. YLS gave me need-based financial aid, and I took out about $90K in federally subsidized loans. I would have had to borrow money at the "free ride" school to pay my room and board (which would have been more than in New Haven anyway) and would not have received subsidies for all my unpaid summer internships. I paid off that $90K a long time ago and YLS definitely made me more competitive for fellowship, clerkship and employment. Plus, the students there are really wicked smart. Some of them are irritating, yes, and some of them are socially awkward, and some are pretty arrogant. But they were universally wicked smart. It's a small class so they can be pretty selective.

But I agree that every case is different and people should consider their options.

Sorry for the confusion, I am the immediate PP and did not read other PP's post as referring to parental assets being considered in admission decisions - I think they were referring to cost only.

To clarify my own post, the full ride I was referring to was not need-based, but merit scholarship (tuition, living expenses + extra stipend + summer associate spot for first summer in BigLaw). My general point was merely that there was not a better financial outcome to be had from borrowing to attend HLS that he missed out on by taking the full ride to the T14, in my spouse's individual case. (Certainly, if he hadn't had the big merit scholarship, and borrowed for either the T14 or for HLS, it would also have worked out fine, though there was some freedom in not having that debt starting out.)

[Anonymous]

This is a trash ranking just based on the huge variance from year to year. Schools don't change that much in a year. They need to hire a better statistician. That's why US News has some credibility in that its formula at least results in a rather stable top 20 list.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Conservative federal appeals court judge Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman sent an email message to federal judges nationwide urges U.S. judiciary to not hire Yale protesters as clerks.

I'm willing to bet this email also included language which likely included Yale & schools like Yale (I.e. Harvard, Stanford, etc.)

So, when federal Article III judges have concerns & are voicing them (which is incredibly rare), then decline is probably also being noticed/experienced by law firms that don't want to deal with entitled young attorneys.

We also recently had the leak at the Supreme Court, which has never, ever happened. To get a clerkship at that Supreme Court is the usual Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc. I'm sure the Supreme Court is going to be re-evaluating these schools as well.


https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/conservative-judge-urges-us-judiciary-not-hire-yale-protesters-clerks-2022-03-17/

That e-mail may encourage more progressive judges to hire them

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is working for the federal govt considered a "quality job"?
What about an organization like the ACLU?
And then there are all those Trump judges who need to hire clerks - Vanderbilt and BYU is probably their version of Yale and Harvard.

DoJ honors program has a massive bias in favor of Harvard/Yale. Personally, I would consider that a great job, but ATL doesnt seem to agree,

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a trash ranking just based on the huge variance from year to year. Schools don't change that much in a year. They need to hire a better statistician. That's why US News has some credibility in that its formula at least results in a rather stable top 20 list.

I disagree US News is likely paid by some of these schools and a great majority of these schools are coasting off their reputations. I don't want a "stable" list, I want a truthful list which is what ATL has given us here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a trash ranking just based on the huge variance from year to year. Schools don't change that much in a year. They need to hire a better statistician. That's why US News has some credibility in that its formula at least results in a rather stable top 20 list.

I disagree US News is likely paid by some of these schools and a great majority of these schools are coasting off their reputations. I don't want a "stable" list, I want a truthful list which is what ATL has given us here.

Any reputable ranking will produce a rather stable list, because the truth is schools' quality don't change overnight. The truth is Stanford is definitely a top 25 LS, and HLS and YLS are definitely are in the top 14. This "ranking" needs a lot of improvement in statistics-design. It may tell something you want to hear but it's a meaningless list. You are better off looking at any specific employment statistics if you are so into the "outcome" aspect.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Considering the recent idiocy of YLS students, I'm not particularly surprised. Who would want to hire these twits?

Bingo. A+++ in smug virtue signaling. As an employer, no thanks.

+100
They have shown us who they are. Hard pass.