Value of highly ranked undergrad if law school in your future
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Anonymous
Undergrad is visible simply because, as a degree, it's a natural part of the resume. But, BigLaw hiring partners don't care, sorry. You can attend University of Utah, HLS, and work at an elite firm. TCU and HLS. Lake Forest College and HLS. Santa Clara undergrad and Stanford law. Bradley University in Illinois and Northwestern. I know people with each of these combinations. No one cares about the undergrad; it is simply a triviality in their personal history, like where someone grew up. But sure, if you want to pay for advice, go ask ANY law school admission consultant and they will tell you what matters, college GPA and LSAT. Not undergrad. |
Anonymous
100 percent agree. This really isn't even up to legitimate debate. Whoever these people are who are piping up and saying that law firms -- and the legal profession in general -- care about undergraduate schools are just flat out wrong. They can't be lawyers, and they definitely cannot be Biglaw lawyers. Lawyers are obsessed with law school attended. Not undergrad. Full stop. |
Anonymous
If you need a life-threatening medical scenario, who would you choose? University of Phoenix undergrad and the U of Guadalupe Med school. or Yale and Yale Med school? If you were charged with a serious crime and looking at 50+ years behind bars, who would you choose? the University of Phoenix undergrad and Western School of Law Yale and YLW? And what's the chance of the University of Phoenix undergrad and YLS? It happens and you might see it more with legitimate state schools and YLS - but they are not all that common because of the quality of the undergraduate school. If you refuse to believe it, why don't we ever see an Anne Arundel Community College and YLS combo? |
Anonymous
PP here and yes, I did go to name schools for both college and law school. My comment was in response to the claim that lawyers ask each other where they went to undergrad. No one asks. I've never been asked by another lawyer where I went to undergrad and I've never asked anyone else either. Of course I look up bio's of opposing counsel and the schools are listed so I see them but I am looking at their experience and maybe their law school. |
Anonymous
Me again. Just to get the Yale Law thing out of the way: yes, they seem to care about undergrad more than most (if not all) of the top law schools. So what. That doesn't mean law firms do or the legal profession does or anybody else does. In fact, Yale sends fewer of its graduates on to private law practice than other top law schools. It's a pipeline to academia, to the point where many top law firms are actually skeptical about hiring Yale Law graduates -- not because they don't think they're smart AF and really capable, but because they don't expect that most of them will stick around for very long. For this reason alone, while Yale is generally regarded as the nation's top law school, it definitely does not give you an edge over other top 10 schools when it comes to getting hired by a private law firm. |
Anonymous
You are so clearly not a lawyer. |
Anonymous
You are forgetting the chances of Wooster ----> YLS is not as high as Yale/Harvard/Columbia ----> YLS. Full stop. |
Anonymous
I am arguing logic, not JD. |
Anonymous
When it comes to getting hired by a private law firm, you say YLS grads don't fare well because "they don't expect that most of them will stick around for very long." I don't know if you know that you are undermining your own argument. |
Anonymous
That's great, except none of this has anything to do with logic. We are talking about reality. |
Anonymous
No good lawyer says “full stop”, which you’ve now done twice |
Anonymous
U of Phoenix is for profit. Don't go there. Community college doesn't lead to a bachelor's degree. Any state flagship is fine. JMU, GMU are fine. VT is obviously fine. Wooster and Bates are fine and neither one will increase chances of admission to law school over the other one, nor will BigLaw hiring partners care, if they are even familiar with them. In criminal practice, such as your example where "your life is on the line," prestige matters less, not more. Criminal practice is entirely different and not what people are typically referring to by "BigLaw" (although some big law firms may have a criminal practice group). BigLaw discussions refer to various practice areas involving corporate clients (that is where the money is), i.e. commercial litigation and transactional being the most basic way to describe them, though there are narrower ways as well. You may not want to believe it, so go ahead, find a law school admission consultant and ask. |
Anonymous
+1. It's always nonlawyers who vehemently cling to this misunderstanding that the prestige of undergrad somehow matters in law. |
Anonymous
There you go again, focusing on the "prestige of law school" instead of logic as if nonlawyers can't see reality for what it is. Very few people in this country attend >1% elite schools, undergrad or grad. Most attend non-elite schools. This is why mostly non-elite grads will focus on non-elite schools. If monkeys could write, they'll be extolling the virtues of the University of Monkeys. |
Anonymous
100%. Big firm lawyer who attended a t-14 school here. If I were charged with a crime, I would hire the meanest former DA/US Attorney shark I could find. I could not care less about where they went to college or law school. The only “white shoe” firm I would consider is Williams & Connelly, and then only if it were a “white collar” crime. |