<p>The most recent edition of Corporate Counsel Magazine has a list of the General Counsels of the Fortune 500 companies includung, in most cases, the law school attended by the GC.</p>
<p>A total of 105 law schools were represented. The top 20 schools were:</p>
<p>Other notables are Duke, Notre Dame and Northwestern (5 each), and Brooklyn, Saint Louis, Fordham, Vanderbilt, Wisconsin and Ohio State (4 each). Only one GC graduated from USC in California, while 2 graduated from USC in South Carolina.</p>
<p>How would you measure preparation to be a General Counsel, if not by looking at who is, in fact, a general counsel?</p>
<p>Aren't you the least bit surprised that Indiana Law School has produced almost as many GCs as NYU and Chicago, and more than Duke and Northwestern?</p>
<p>Rather than dismissing GWU as an obviously inferior school, wouldn't these facts make you want to investigate whether the programs at GWU trained lawyers in the skills necessary to be a general counsel at a large company?</p>
<p>I guess my point is that the list of law schools attended by GCs wouldn't necessarily match a list of the "best" law schools. Perhaps companies hiring lawyers for inhouse jobs are looking for different skill sets, or perhaps people who go to Yale or Duke don't want inhouse jobs.</p>
<p>I don't have the answers, but concluding that the facts don't matter seems foolhardy if you'd like to be a GC some day.</p>
<p>The only thing this list led me to think was "What are the other Yale grads doing?" Because honestly, my money would be betting their doing even better things. Telling me that Yale alumni aren't in a group doesn't make me think less of Yale, it makes me think less of the group. </p>
<p>Secondly, as a mathematician, I agree that theres something to be said about the fact that Yale also doesn't graduate classes as large as those other schools.</p>
<p>I think if this list proves something, it proves that success is certainly possible at any of those schools. It doesn't say much about how much better one school is compared to the others, or how an alumnis earnings compare from one to the other, or pretty much allow you to draw any real conclusions when comparing schools against each other.</p>
<p>Many law schools have 4 year programs which allow you to earn a JD and a MBA. I have NO data, but suspect that the joint degree folks would be overrepresented in the GC group. Thus, I think you may be measuring not only the strength of the JD program, but also the strength of the MBA program. Harvard has a more highly ranked and more business-oriented MBA program than Yale. Penn has the Wharton school. Northwestern has the Kellogg School. Indiana U's Kelley school is one of the most highly ranked business programs in the US. </p>
<p>Before concluding that these LAW schools do a "better" job of preparing attorneys to be GCs, I'd ask how many of those GCs were in joint programs and got MBAs too.</p>
<p>An in-house attorney is often something of a hybrid. Their real value comes from less from pure expertise in an area of the law (although many do achieve considerable expertise in one or more areas) than it does from combining that legal knowledge with a deep knowledge of the client corporation. </p>
<p>Running a Fortune 500 legal department usually means managing a very large group of people. I have never heard of a law school course that pretended to provide any guidance in that skill. Jonri's hunch may be a perceptive one. I'll throw out one of my own, also based on no data: I'd guess that GC's of companies with large legal departments are more likely than most lawyers to have served in the military.</p>
<p>My H is a General Counsel of a large corporation, knows many other General Counsel, and I doubt that any of them would make a direct correlation between what law school they attended and their ability to be a competent General Counsel. Most have extensive experience in large law firms prior to moving into a GC position.</p>
<p>But it might be the case that acquiring those jobs occurred partly because they had attended top law schools.</p>
<p>I think many people often say that their educations prepared them very little for the actual nature of performing their jobs -- but it at least could be the case that their educations helped them acquire their first jobs, which served as a "launching" point for their future work, too.</p>
<p>bluedevil, the first job, yes. The GC job, no. I doubt the corporation that hired my H has any idea where he even went to law school. :) As I said, it's more likely to be the ~20 years of experience they have at large law firms which is more likely to be the determinant factor.</p>
<p>Yes, but say (for example) that Harvard (hypothetically) helped land that first job at a big company.</p>
<p>That job then helped him (partly) land the next one, etc.</p>
<p>It could -- could being the operative word here -- end up being a situation of dominoes. A breakable situation, either by excelling or failing disproportionately, of course. But the inertia might have started with the law school.</p>
<p>If you look at the US news rankings you'll see that while Yale is their #1 it was not for the subcatagories I checked out. Intellectual Property, tax law, international law.
it seems to me that getting ahead in the legal world means going to the law school where you will be in the top 10% if you work like crazy and have a talent for the law. Recruitment is from the top of the class only. The C student at Harvard Law is not asked to interview as a 2nd year, but the top-of-class students from "the rest of the schools" may be interviewed.
Dont' know if all do this but the ones I heard of grade on the curve, so some students in each class at Harvard are going to get a D. it's required.
scary, eh?</p>
<p>OldinJersey...
This may be rude, but you haven't a CLUE what you are talking about. I've never ever heard of ANYONE at Harvard Law School getting a D--it certainly does NOT happen to "some students in each class at Harvard" and your statement that "it's required" is wholly untrue.
A C student at Harvard Law would be in the bottom 5% of the class. Oh, it's certainly possible to get one or two Cs--but to end up with a 2.0 gpa if you actually go to class and take exams/write papers? Nope. Just doesn't happen.
And, I assure you that the kids in the middle of the class at Harvard have NO trouble whatsoever getting jobs.
And, the idea that law firms pay ANY attention whatsoever to US News sub-category rankings is just wholly inaccurate. If you want to do tax law, go get a LLM from NYU. It will help. The idea that a law firm would hire someone with only a JD who went to X law school over Harvard for the tax department because X law school is more highly rated in tax is just plain silly.</p>
<p>You said "attended". What about graduated? What about passed the bar, and if so, which bar? The California bar, for example, is one of the most difficult to pass. I would be curious to know these stats as well.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Many law schools have 4 year programs which allow you to earn a JD and a MBA. I have NO data, but suspect that the joint degree folks would be overrepresented in the GC group. Thus, I think you may be measuring not only the strength of the JD program, but also the strength of the MBA program. Harvard has a more highly ranked and more business-oriented MBA program than Yale. Penn has the Wharton school. Northwestern has the Kellogg School. Indiana U's Kelley school is one of the most highly ranked business programs in the US.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Not only that, but the Yale School of Management wasn't even founded until 1976 (making it the youngest business school of the top 25), and didn't even offer the MBA until 1994 (before that, it offered the MPPM degree). Hence, a lot of old-timer Yale grads may not have even had the opportunity to pick up a degree from the Yale SOM, and certainly not an MBA degree.</p>