A study by the National Law Journal, as reported by Above the Law:
http://abovethelaw.com/2015/05/10-law-schools-most-likely-to-help-you-land-jobs-as-lawyers/
Note that Georgetown gets killed in this study because 14% of its graduates are actually employed by the law school after graduation, and not private employers-- a practice designed to boost USNWR rankings, but which is discounted for the purpose of this study/ranking.
Georgetown suffers substantially from its big class size and location. I don’t really see either of those changing, so prospective students should be wary of paying full price.
@Demosthenes49 How does location hurt Georgetown? I would think Washington D.C. would be a big advantage, compared to say Cornell (in Ithaca, NY) which is ranked #2 on this list?
DC is an extremely competitive and small market that everyone from the T14 wants to get into. That means GULC gets no homefield advantage. Compare it to a school like Fordham, which places far outside its class due to its sitting in the heart of NY, or Baylor/UH for Texas.
It’s hard to say whether Cornell has a real home advantage either, but it doesn’t need one since it feeds directly into the largest legal market. It’s also a much smaller school so it needs a smaller portion of the available jobs.
Uva? Feeds D.C. into DC too, but it is a smaller schoo.
From an employer’s perspective, of the top law schools, Georgetown is probably the worst to recruit at OCI in terms of the atmosphere, organization and overall sense of tension amongst the students.
How is GULC OCI different than any other? I’ve heard reports (though have no firsthand experience) that Yale OCI can be a bit pretentious, but otherwise the recruiting I’ve seen at various schools is pretty much the same all around.
I’ve not recruited at Yale, but I have at many of the other T14 schools. I’ve covered Georgetown 3X and it is always chaotic, the students are anxious and stressed and it feels overall crowded and disorganized compared to other schools. Also, I always ask the interviewee whether they are enjoying their law school experience at _____, and for whatever reason the answers at G’town are usually on the meh to negative side, which always surprises me because-- having just gone through the college process for two of my kids’ – D.C. seems like a great town for students.
On the positive side, my partner recently used the Georgetown facility and program to prepare for a USSC argument and had a totally first class experience.
I’m in CA so I don’t have much experience with the OCIs at east coast schools. I’m curious if you’ve recruited at the next rung down, UCLA/Vandy/UT. Is it similar to GULC or more pronounced?
I have not personally interviewed at the schools you mention, but have at couple of schools in the “next rung down” in our local market. It’s a bit of a different situation at those schools because we are permitted to screen resumes in advance and it’s a very narrow, pre-selected group that I’ll see. Within the T14, only a few of the schools permit firms to pre-screen resumes. For most T-14’s, if you want to interview at the school, you have to see the students the school puts on your list (i.e. no pre-screening). It’s simply based on who signs up, and schools typically use a points system to make it fair and spread interview slots evenly, but not based on grades). I don’t even consider class rank or grades at the top 5 schools. I call back who I like. For the rest of the T-14, top half of the class takes grades out of the equation entirely. If grades are lower than top half (but not a disaster, i.e. very bottom of the class), a call back and offer is still quite possible if there are other strong factors I like about a candidate.
I can personally attest that YLS, like in many other areas, has an abundance of riches in this area. One, it’s small class size, approximately 200 or do, coupled with no required curve for grades, make for a plethora of job opportunities. I have heard a number that is equal to double that of the graduating class–and I would not doubt that, as many firms have multiple openings. Further, YLS, has the most generous and largest law school loan forgiveness program in the nation. Many people do not realize that YLS has an obscene, distinct and separate endowment, that is in excess of a billion dollars, supporting just 600 or so students.
I would think that each of the top 5 schools would have a number of jobs offered to 3Ls at least 3-4 times the number of students, with the number of jobs offered limited only by students getting tired of interviewing and just picking one of several offers.
Hmmn, while Harvard Law grads certainly have no problem obtaining employment, I’m not so certain whether there are 2200-plus job offers (4 times the class size 560)…but, point well taken.
Thanks; I had 4 offers to pick from when I was a 3L at HLS, and I definitely wasn’t a standout student by any stretch of the imagination. Some people had 10+; they would get a callback from nearly every on-campus interview and would get offers from most of the callbacks (but certainly not all). They were just good talkers and had good grades.
Remember, most students at these schools who are taking jobs in biglaw, not government or public interest, are interviewing for these jobs the summer after 1L. Most ( of course, not all) of those summer associate jobs after 2L turn into full-time offers post-graduation. So, the number of offers is really the number of offers for 2L summer associate jobs. And that number is often limited by the number of callbacks a student accepts after OCI. Some students with many callback offers cancel callbacks after receiving one or two offers from firms they like, as noted by HappyAlumnus.
@runnersmom, you are correct. Not many people re-interview as 3Ls, and hiring is much tougher then because employers can’t test you out during the summer, as they can when you’re a 2L.
There are iso many fewer spots available for 3L OCI because most of the class is filled by 2L summer associates accepting offers of full-time employment. There are a few firms (mostly BL firms in the NYC market) that seem to routinely hire a few 3Ls every year to complete their classes.