<p>USMC: I don’t think it’s about “possible” – everybody agrees it’s possible to come out of a tier-three program and do fine. I think the concern is more about likelihood. There are neurosurgeons who trained in the Caribbean, billionaires who never went to high school, etc. I think the question is one of probability, especially when tuition is so vicious.</p>
<p>btw, it should be noted that I’m not even in LS, or a 0L for that matter, so I’m most likely talking out of my ass. So take my opinion with a big grain of salt.</p>
<p>bluedevilmike - I appreciate what you’re saying. However, I still resent the blanket statement that nothing but a T14 law school is worthwhile. There are enough risk/reward combinations at even a third tier school that it could be right for some students. The bigger non-T14 programs such as TX, UCLA, Notre Dame, and GW offer a wide varriety of oppertunities that merit consideration. To write them off simply because they aren’t placing as many grads into Biglaw jobs as the T14 only makes sense if Biglaw is the only job you will accept.</p>
<p>This philosophy would say that no one should go to Vanderbilt or Emory, and those grads are getting fine jobs. Temple is another example- if you do well there, you will get a decent job at Philadelphia, maybe even at a “big law” firm. Again- I would not pick Temple over Duke or Virginia, but that doesn’t mean the place should shut the doors.</p>
<p>Few people from Vanderbilt, fewer people from Emory and almost nobody at Temple is getting big law jobs at the moment. </p>
<p>If you are dead set on big law and will be attending law school in the next year or two, Vanderbilt is about the lowest you should consider.</p>
<p>Why is “big law” the only acceptable job? I personally work with many SE law firms that are hiring well into the Vandy, Emory, Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee classes.</p>
<p>Go big or go home. ;)</p>
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<p>We have plenty of law school grads getting big law jobs, thank you very much.</p>
<p>…post 67 was a light-hearted joke, by the way!</p>
<p>"We have plenty of law school grads getting big law jobs, thank you very much. "</p>
<p>No you don’t. This isn’t an opinion…it’s fact. Look at the statistics.</p>
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LOL.
It’s a tough market out there.</p>
<p>Whatever. I’m really not worried about it. Anyone who does well from our law school can get hired by a top Philly firm. I dont care if we’re not t14 or whatever garbage.</p>
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<p>The only problem may be that the biggest Philly firms just aren’t hiring right now (in fact, two more just announced last week that they will be either severely limiting or cancelling entirely their on campus recruiting efforts this autumn). </p>
<p>No one has to go to a T14 law school, but doing so certainly opens a lot more doors in a lot more places than going to a more regional law school. In this economy, you may need all of the flexibility you can possibly have to find a job at all. Current law students need to be willing to work in cities they hadn’t originally considered, including suburbs of those cities. If giong to a regional law school reduces the ability of a law student to be flexible, then that may be a significant downside to attending that regional law school. </p>
<p>Of course, there are plenty of good reasons to attend a regional law school (didn’t get in to a T14 law school, merit scholarship money, family relocation issues, etc.), but there are plenty more good reasons to attend a T14 law school, particularly in this economy, if you have the option. Even T14 law schools are seeing law firms who hire there send fewer recruiters and/or cancel interviews for certain cities in which those firms have offices. However, recruiting for jobs at these schools is so robust that there will still be a tremendous number of opportunities for T14 law students at law firms and other employers across the country (and even around the world). I’m not confident that the same can be said of regional law schools.</p>
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<p>The problem is that those schools (or at least Vandy and Emory) can leave graduates with as much debt as any schools but little chance at getting a job that would pay enough for the debt not to be crushing. If someone wants to be a lawyer and won’t have to pay much for law school (keeping in mind that merit scholarships can be adjusted downward or revoked based on grades), then low-ranked schools aren’t a bad choice as long as they have realistic expectations.</p>
<p>joefow, the tone of your e-mail is offensive, and implore you to try to make your point without attacking another poster personally for stating an opinion. Oh, and no one cares that you are already rich, as you mentioned, as that is completely irrelevant to the subject matter of this thread. </p>
<p>To me, the U.S. News rankings outside of the T14 should be taken with a grain of salt. However, if you can overlook the narrow rankings of the law school listed as #22 versus #26, (do you really think that law schools move up several places or down several places within a year’s time?) and consider that all law schools more properly fall within ranges, it can be a valuable tool when applying to law school. No, employers don’t often look at the year-to-year changes in the U.S. News rankings, but the general reputation of a law school is pretty accurately represented by the general placement of a law school within the range of law schools surrounding it. </p>
<p>At the end of the day, if you wish to know what your prospects would be if you attended any particular law school, I would highly recommend talking to the career offices of any law schools to which you are admitted to find out what percentage of graduates are employed after graduation, in what regions these graduates are employed, the employers that recruit most heavily at a particular law firm and how many job offers a typical student had from which to choose.</p>
<p>Also, your uncle in Connecticut is certainly entitled to his opinion, and you may know a lot about Fordham Law (are you enrolled there?), but I can tell you from many years of experience as an attorney in BIGLAW in NYC that where you go to law school does indeed matter in recruiting and hiring at BIGLAW, and the U.S. News rankings of the T14 do indeed reflect the law schools from which a significant percentage of BIGLAW associates are drawn. </p>
<p>Yes, law firms in Connecticut may recruit at U Conn, Quinnipiac and other regional law schools, but those law firms also pay a lot less than BIGLAW in NYC (including the branch offices of large firms located within Connecticut) and provide annual increases and bonuses that do not compare with BIGLAW (in other words, the salary differential increases over time). Also, you generally do have to be at the top of your class at these regional law schools to get jobs at the larger and more locally prestigious Connecticut law firms (including the branch offices of large firms). Often, these Connecticut firms are recruiting locally because they don’t have as much success as they would like recruiting from T14 law schools – they just can’t compete with the big salaries offered at BIGLAW. I know this from personal experience and from the many attorneys that I know working in Connecticut. </p>
<p>There are, of course, instances where students who did not attend T14 law schools go on to very successful careers in BIGLAW. The difference is that for many, if not most, law students at T14 law schools, the doors to BIGLAW are open wide and a golden pathway indicates the way through those doors, while for those outside of T14 law schools, particularly as you move down the ladder, the door is open only a crack and must be pryed open with a crowbar by those hoping to make their way through.</p>
<p>i have some of the same concerns as marny. Should students apply to the t-14 then a couple of schools 15-25/30 in hopes of getting money to defray some of the debt?</p>
<p>what about patent law? i doubt it requires the t14 names as much as big law does</p>
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<p>My dad did very well in patent law with a JD from the University of Florida. Go where you want to go; dont read too much into this doomsday crap.</p>
<p>EIP/EIW update. I attend CCN.</p>
<p>Around top 30%. I had about 30 interviews. So far, I have 5 callbacks. Some are in the V5, and others reach down to V60. I know many people in the bottom half with no callbacks, many others with only 1 or 2. top 30% is where things start taking off, and the top 10% are cleaning up.</p>
<p>I’d hate to be at Fordham right now. I hear things are pretty bloodbath-ish there.</p>
<p>The gossip around here is that OCI hasn’t seemed impacted at all; callbacks are flying very rapidly. OCI isn’t even over yet; I’ve gotten callbacks from a third of my interviews and most classmates are doing better than that since I have a weird background. A group of five of us were just sitting and talking for about fifteen minutes; we received three callbacks in that interval.</p>
<p>Of course, that’s not to say that firms might not ask us to defer after the summer is over, or that they might have callbacks but be very selective about offers. But so far nobody’s noticing much of a difference.</p>
<p>I don’t have a Vault Membership (and am looking at a specialized practice area anyway), so unfortunately I don’t really know what the rankings are.</p>