@2135ar, your son will do very well, and having a parent who’s a lawyer will be helpful–at least he’ll have some familiarity with the profession and its expectations and will be able to better explain why he wants to be a lawyer, in interviews, than I could, with no lawyer parents.
You should be a proud parent- you’ve clearly done well in your career and raised your son right.
Thanks to everyone for their advice and encouraging words. Fingers crossed for my son and everyone reading this.
The OP’s son has probably already made his choice by now, but for those who will read this thread in the future, please be advised that National Law Journal; National Jurist; Above the Law; Tipping the Scales; Princeton Review; and U.S. News & World Report all rank Duke Law higher than Michigan. All six ranking entities place Duke in single digits as one of the top 9 law schools in the country.
Duke’s significantly smaller size allows for more individual attention from faculty, and Duke grads have a higher New York Bar Exam pass rate than Michigan grads also. Not to mention that Durham is a noticeably more pleasant place to live than Ann Arbor, with considerably milder winters. I lived in Michigan for several years and have been to Ann Arbor multiple times, and have also been to Durham several times. If I had to choose between the two cities as a place to live, I would pick Durham without hesitation.
Thanks Defensor. Actually, my son has not chosen yet; his first acceptance is not due for a couple of weeks. Two things have happened since my last post: (i) my son has attended admitted student sessions at both Michigan and Duke, and (ii) new USNWR rankings came out breaking the Michigan/Duke #10 tie, with Michigan falling to #11 for the first time ever, and Duke in a three way tie for 8/9/10. Admittedly that was alarming, but you never know what the rankings might be next year. I would not want rankings to be the determining factor unless we were really sure about them. My understanding is that MIchigan has made some changes such has lowering class size. I have two acquaintances who are the recruiting directors at national law firms and they both said that they would choose Michigan over Duke for reputation from an employer standpoint. I was recently at a gathering with many lawyers and it seemed that Michigan continued to have a slight edge on reputation. Now perhaps that is based on years past, but I looked at rankings over the years and schools have gone up and down.
As for Ann Arbor versus Durham, that is a personal choice. Looking simply the non-academic/ranking situation, at Michigan he would live right in the law quad in the heart of campus the first year and closeby in later years. To the extent of any free time, there would be lots of interesting places to go and eat right outside his door. Duke was very different. Schools is basically on campus but you don’t see the campus from the school (other than other graduate buildings). A car is needed and there would be less of a campus feel (yes I know it is not undergrad). The admitted student session had a bus tour of housing options. They are awesome apartments, almost brand new and very very nice. It is sort of the difference of living in Manhattan (Michigan) or the suburbs (Duke) - a personal preference.
I believe my son has a preference at this point but I don’t want to tip my hand. If anyone has any other thoughts based on the new rankings or otherwise, we would appreciate hearing them. Thanks.
I looked up the SCOTUS stats on Wikipedia for clerkships since 1990, followed by the total number for all years reported. This is the count, which could be off by one or two, in order of total numbers per school:
UVA: 47 (101)
Michigan: 29 (78)
NYU: 26 (44)
Berkeley: 19 (48)
Northwestern: 17 (39)
Georgetown: 14 (30)
Duke: 12 (19)
Penn: 10 (39)
Cornell: 3 (8)
Top of the heap totals (all years reported):
Harvard: 514
Yale: 344
Chicago: 143
Stanford: 120
Columbia: 115
I posted this before, but A2 is awesome for law school because of the Quad. I’m sure Duke is fun too, especially for basketball–congrats! Winters are long and brutal, but we enjoyed playing ball in the Quad.
I’m a Big Blue alumnus, at least when it comes to football.
Either way he’ll do fine.
P.S.: Alumni have gone ballistic over the latest ranking and because Michigan has one of the largest law school endowments, I expect it will be well positioned to fix the problem by leveraging its financial assets.
Duke Law is ranked higher than Michigan Law by all six of the major ranking entities I mentioned previously, four of which rank law schools exclusively.
Duke grads have a higher pass rate percentage than Michigan on the New York Bar Exam.
Duke’s significantly smaller size allows for more individual attention from faculty.
Duke is more selective in its admissions, with a noticeably lower acceptance rate percentage.
Duke has higher percentages of grads employed both at graduation and within 9 months of graduation.
U.S. News ranked Michigan Law #3 in 1987, but rank it considerably lower now, indicating a clear overall decline. Whereas Duke has steadily continued to improve over the years.
Winters are much milder in Durham than Ann Arbor. Durham averages less than 7 inches of snow per year, Ann Arbor more than 58. Average January high temperature in Durham is about 49 degrees F, compared to about 31 degrees in Ann Arbor.
Prepare to spend a lot of time cooped up in a dorm/apartment during the winter in Ann Arbor. No such problem in Durham, where the tiny bit of snow they get is usually gone in a day or two.
Duke places slightly better that Michigan, but they’re essentially comparable. The other stuff is just fluff.
Fluff? I beg to differ-it’s almost impossible to quantify the outdoor steam bath offered by Durham’s heat and humidity from May through September.
Eh, half the decent schools have terrible weather. Harvard/Cornell winters? Georgetown summers? There’s a reason they only let a few people into Stanford/Berkeley.
The Forbes 2014 “Best Places for Business and Careers” ranks Durham #26 in the nation, Ann Arbor only made #61. Not to mention that the NC state capital of Raleigh, only 30 minutes from Durham, was ranked #1 in the nation.
Durham population density as of 2010 U.S. Census = 2406 people per square mile.
Ann Arbor population density as of 2010 U.S. Census = 4270 people per square mile.
NC also has that old Southern Charm and hospitality and deep South culture that makes it a principal destination point of HYSP graduates too, lest we forget.
I really appreciate everyone’s comments. Still, I don’t believe there is a definitive answer to whether it would be better (non-academically) to spend three years in Ann Arbor or Durham. I am sure some people would prefer one and other people would prefer the other. I will say that I went to Michigan ungrad resulting in my son being a lifelong Wolverine fan and his brother is currently a freshman at Michigan. Duke has a pull if it has a better reputation, but despite what has been said here, that has not always held true when I talked to recruiting partners in national firms (discussed in other posts) and to many lawyers I know. My son has about another week to decide and I try not to bug him about it. But for the benefit of future readers I will post his ultimate decision. Again, thanks everyone for your comments.
there is no better academic answer. It comes down to preference. AA or Durham. Big House or Coach K.
And yes, the ‘partners’ that you have spoken with are likely old school, and UM has historically been the #2 public in nearly everything. It just so happens, however, that other schools are catching up, particularly the privates, who are investing in the arms-race.
For the past few years, perhaps due to its large class size, UM has had more trouble finding jobs for many of its grads…
The problem, IMO, is that we had one recent dean in particular, now gone, who ignored the signs and thought wrongly that the rankings were beneath the academic mission of the law school. Michigan still has a top five endowment that it needs to leverage simply by reducing the class size, which has remained too large in light of the oversupply of lawyers. We should have a class no larger than 250 in this market, not 390 or “business as usual.” I predict Michigan will return to a top seven rank, and this has nothing to do with any other law school. We have the financial resources to get back up.
The Michigan Law class enrolling in 2014 had 318 students. Let’s hope it says at least that small next year.
Agreed, and now that Caminker is gone, we need to replicate Cal and reduce the class size, while relying on the generosity of our large and well-placed alumni. Our greatest strengths, at least vis-a-vis Penn, Cal, UVA and NYU in particular, are our huge law school endowment, outstanding physical plant, and massive library holdings. If we reduce and hold steady with a smaller student body, everything else will fall into place.
SeattleTW, I take it that your post #30 is in jest?
Separately, who goes to law school for the experience of law school and the attractiveness of the law school’s area? At least for me, it was all about placement, meaning that employment statistics at graduation, and the school’s long-term ranking performance, mattered most. The only way I’d see geographic location mattering is that the law school would send a disproportionate number of its graduates to its region of the country.
I didn’t even bother to apply to Michigan, having precisely zero interest in being in Michigan for law school. This also applied to my decision to not apply to Cornell. In the case of Cornell, it did not have to do with the fact that it was in New York, but the fact that it was in Ithica. I applied to Columbia and NYU.
I went to Duke for law school.
I see no reason to go to Michigan when you can go to Duke.
You can certainly use “experience of the law school and the attractiveness of the law schools area” when you are talking about effectively equivalent schools, neither of which are in major metro areas, which is what Duke and Michigan are at this point.
“I see no reason to go to Michigan when you can go to Duke.”
My kid found one, #30…
Interesting because I turned down NW, Columbia and Penn law schools precisely because I didn’t want to live in an urban environment with a high crime rate. I didn’t even consider NYU or Duke because they weren’t as highly ranked. On the other hand, Duke does have a public relations issue that habitually rears its head:
http://www.dukechronicle.com/articles/2015/03/27/campaigns-emerge-address-racism-duke#.VShnpcvD_qA