<p>If you attend a top law school, but graduate at the bottom, then what are your job options?</p>
<p>It varies. At a place like Yale or Harvard the grading system hides the bottom of the class pretty well. Their system of P/H/HH means that the bottom half of the class pretty much all looks the same. Several of them will therefore be able to get into major firms or government work. However, some of them won’t. Those graduates can end up anywhere. They can work for smaller firms or organizations or leave law entirely. Those striking out at Yale have the same options as anyone else really, though looking for work with a Yale degree is definitely preferable. </p>
<p>Unfortunately I’m at least somewhat qualified to answer the question: </p>
<p>People like that work at large law firms that pay the same $160,000 starting salary (or the equivalent market-leading salary in other big cities) as the market leaders do, but they work at less-prominent firms than people with better grades would.</p>
<p>I went to Harvard and was probably in the bottom half or bottom 40% of the class in that I graduated without honors; my GPA was slightly below the cutoff, if I recall correctly. (In the '90s, I think that a majority of the class got honors).</p>
<p>I got several offers from large NY firms and large firms in other big cities and ended up working for one that was and is in the top 5, measured by profits per partner.</p>
<p>Of the people I know graduated without honors, they had the same outcomes. One of my friends even got a C which is pretty bad but he ended up working at a good-quality but smaller firm in NYC (that paid the same starting salary as every other prominent firm in town) and, after some mergers, is now a partner at a very prestigious large firm.</p>
<p>In the 90s that may have been true. Not so much in the post-2007 era.</p>
<p>Sure, I’d expect the job market now to be much more difficult, but when I was coming through, it was much easier to get a job with a large NYC firm than it was to get a job with a smaller firm, and it was particularly difficult to get a job with a firm in a smaller city. Large NYC firms just expect everyone in the world to want to work for them, and so almost any legitimate reason you give in an interview will seam feasible. Conversely, smaller firms, particularly in smaller cities, respond to a Harvard resume with, “you go to Harvard so why would you want to work here? we don’t believe you.”</p>
<p>At least that was my experience. I found it very difficult to get a job in my hometown (a small city), particularly with lower-ranked firms there; it was much easier to follow the herd to NYC large firms.</p>
<p>"Conversely, smaller firms, particularly in smaller cities, respond to a Harvard resume with, “you go to Harvard so why would you want to work here? we don’t believe you.”</p>
<p>At least that was my experience. I found it very difficult to get a job in my hometown (a small city), particularly with lower-ranked firms there; it was much easier to follow the herd to NYC large firms."</p>
<p>I had the opposite experience. </p>
<p>I had no interest in applying to <em>any</em> firm in NYC or DC, however I did want to work for a larger law firm.</p>
<p>When I sent my resume to the largest firm in my home area (a smaller metro area), they immediately gave me a summer associate position (after they had already closed the process).</p>
<p>However, they had a number of Duke Law/Duke undergrad people there already, so I was their “ideal” associate.</p>
<p>They also had some Harvard and Yale people, so they would have been thrilled with them, too.</p>
<p>Interesting thread and responses. My kid’s smaller-sized law firm (city in a mid-Atlantic state) received applications from middle-of-the-class students from Duke and Cornell this year. One of them was going to get an offer, until they started talking salary. The 3L wanted low $100’s. Starting salaries at the firm are in the mid to high 50s. No offer was made. Of course, we don’t know if the 3Ls would have accepted an offer anyway. The firm ended up hiring someone from a regional law school.</p>
<p>My sister was waitressing last summer in New Jersey after graduating from college and she found out one day that her shift manager had a JD from Columbia Law School. When she asked him why he was working at Houlihan’s instead of being a lawyer he told her that he had done really badly in law school (he didn’t say how badly but he mentioned that his mom died the week he was taking his final exams one year and he failed some exams) and after he graduated no law firm would hire him so eventually he moved back to the town where he grew up and a friend from high school helped him get a waiter job. She said that the boss had made him manager pretty quickly because he had a law degree so maybe it was some help after all.</p>
<p>Goodness- I assume that the Columbia alum didn’t even bother taking the bar exam. Columbia is about the same as HYS and so anyone who goes there is clearly very intelligent and should be able to get a legal job at some point.</p>
<p>Columbia puts [url=<a href=“http://www.lstscorereports.com/schools/columbia/2013/]90%[/url”>http://www.lstscorereports.com/schools/columbia/2013/]90%[/url</a>] of its class into jobs. That means 10% don’t get them, so it’s not too surprising you’d run into one.</p>
<p>Alternatively, the Columbia grad could have taken and passed a bar exam, gotten admitted, then looked at the (not insubstantial) cost of remaining in good standing with the bar (i.e. CLEs, bar dues, malpractice insurance, etc.) and decided to throw in the towel rather than bang his head against walls.</p>
<p>I know several JDs, albeit not from Columbia, who have done this.</p>