<p>Fordham places well in biglaw (in new york city) relative to its rank because its located in the biggest legal market. General consensus is top 1/3 at Fordham get biglaw, in NYC (this is before the economic downturn though). Fordham is regional though, so only attend Fordham if you know you want to work in New York City. </p>
<p>Here’s a chart for biglaw placement. Of course keep in mind self-selection also plays a role, as I bet Yale could place more of their grads into biglaw if the students decided to opt out of academia and clerkships. This obviously has East Coast bias, in particular NYC bias, evidenced by a lower T-14 school like Cornell placing better than some higher ranked T-14 because of the plethora of NLJ250 firms in NYC, so take this chart with a grain of salt.</p>
<p><a href=“http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/nlj/20080414employment_trends.pdf[/url]”>http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/nlj/20080414employment_trends.pdf</a></p>
<p>As for the 50% mark, consensus is that it only applies to the lowest T-14, Georgetown (GULC), partly because GULC has such a large class. GULC students have to be very competitive in order to get biglaw because of their large class size and low T-14 rank. I personally would not attend Georgetown because of their wavering T-14 reputation–USNews may include its PT program numbers into its rank–and high level of competition. </p>
<p>I think firms in general reach deeper into the higher ranked T-14.</p>