So I can't sleep and decided that I wanted to make a list of the truly national law schools. Here is my list, with the reasoning below.

Yale
Harvard
Stanford
Columbia
Chicago
Penn
UVA
Michigan
Duke
Vandy

Now I'm not saying that these schools are better than the schools left off the list (Boalt, NYU) but are the schools that nationally disperse their graduates, and have great employment opportunities throughout the country.

Schools like Boalt, NYU, Cornell, Northwestern, GULC, Texas, UCLA do not fit this bill IMO.

Flame away. I'm ready for a good debate.

ITT: UVA gets a little full of itself at Boalt and NYU's expense.

Where exactly is your reasoning, again?

No no, I would say Boalt and NYU outperform UVA, its just that they do so well in their region and their grads stay in that region. From Boalt they stay in California and NYU New York, I don't see how that is saying anything so bad?

National Employment opportunities, and graduates actually dispersing nationally.

NYU and Boalt would seem to have national opportunities, their graduates just generally self select to California.

This is a very poor way to define "national".

Using this standard (i.e., pure geographic distribution of graduates), we find that Notre Dame is more national than Columbia and NYU, which is clearly not the case.

This Leiter/Sullivan study is far closer, but even it fails to compensate for the fact that the 3 highest-ranked firms in NY and Chicago are worlds away from the highest-ranked firms in Seatle, Portland, and Richmond.

But just b/c self-selection is happening does not mean that NYU and Berkeley graduates do not have portable degrees, just harder to show it based on graduate distribution.

Dude, never said they don't have portable degrees. Just said they choose not to go nationally. Read the words.

I read what you said. That still doesn't explain why you left them off the list of "truly national schools" just b.c self-selection is happening. Maybe I just disagree with how you are defining what makes a truly national school, b/c portability is what I typically think of when I hear that phrase. And in terms of what schools offer more portability to its graduates, NYU and Berkeley>Vandy

I absolutely agree with this. Just because Boalties don't seek out jobs in crumbier parts of the country (i.e. the East Coast . . . haha no offense) doesn't mean the school isn't "truly national." I think your definition needs revising.

If only there were a way to figure out a percentage or something of how many Boalties who want to work elsewhere besides the west coast and landed jobs. . .

According to your conception of what a "national school" is, having terrible job market in the state the school is located in makes the school more of a national school. The better the state market for big law, the more incentive graduates have to stay in the state. Those schools might produce more graduates that move across the country, but that movement says little about the relative qualities of the schools when the local and regional market differences are held constant. Poor local market = more "national" school.

Yup. Columbia and NYU are not only non-national schools, they're flat-out local by your standards.

I thought my post deserved more kudos, or at least acknowledgment. It had everything: insightful observations, an analogy by example, and a link to a comprehensive study. I feel slighted.

American University for the United States
Florida International for International law.

Did you check any placement data before making this list is this your gut instinct?

Because your gut is wrong...

I would have a couple criteria:

1) Having a large amount of graduates who get great jobs all over America, which you included.
2) Having a large amount of graduates who, even if they do not go all over America, still COULD, if they so wished, which you did not include.

To me, being national is not just about having graduates everywhere, but about having the ABILITY to have graduates everywhere (in good jobs, not just any jobs) if those graduates so wished. Thus, I would alter your list:

- Remove Vandy in this economy
- Add Berkeley, NYU, Georgetown, Northwestern
- Maybe Cornell too although it's hard to tell since they go so overwhelmingly to New York

Surprise surprise you end up with basically the T14.

The OP could have stopped at Yale Harvard Standford. The others listed are only "national" if you are from the Northeast, which means they aren't really national at all.

This really, really isn't true at all.

Yale and Harvard, Harvard and Yale

Is this a joke?

Wtf is a UVA?

I think more people know UCLA exists than Chicago TBH.

UVA gets very full of itself at everyone's expense.

But don't forget..... no wait, you got 'em all.

An egg that wears bow-ties?

The calvin study is okay. I think the problem with this study, to which you allude, is that by adding an extra factor like limiting it to selective firms, it is an impure study which measures placement in top firms more than it measures actual national placement. If that puts Notre Dame at the top, so be it. At least we know what the actual data shows and how to weigh it given that Notre Dame grads are not THE most sought after in the country.

There was another study I found on this but can't find anymore. It was "covelli" or something, the guy who founded autoadmit. But, it was very similar to Leiter/Calvin and had Chicago at one or two.

It is hard to think of ways to account for desirability of location versus inability to place outside of location. The only way I can think of is to look at the firms that interview at the OCI and determine how much opportunity there is to actually place nationally instead of looking at just the end result based on preferences. If the firms interviewing at your school are all local, that is severely going to limit your ability to move across the nation. If your school has an 50 firms from SF, 80 hiring to LA, 100 hiring to NY, 50 to Chicago, and 20 to DAllas, then you have a school that really gives you nation-wide options. If you don't have that, I'd argue that you are will be limited by going there.

One would be tempted to argue that a lot of Dallas firms don't interview at UCLA because UCLA grads would almost never choose to go to Dallas, so it wouldn't be worth the firms time even if the firm would love a UCLA grad. So this wouldn't account for sheer reputational power. However, it would mean that it would be at least a LOT easier to go to Vanderbilt to get a texas job because 20 Dallas firms go to the OCI. That is still a significant consideration for someone unable/unwilling to attend a school in a certain location, but wants a school that will make it easiest to land a job there.

I don't know how to find a good OCI list for all the schools, though, which has been updated given the current economy, but there are the bare bones for this at LSN.

Yale
Harvard

The only true "national" schools, IMO, are HYS. Northwestern actually has a more national placement than many people give it credit for and arguably places more nationally than both Duke and Vandy.