Top Law Schools

AllTheLawz wrote:

Lasers wrote:

slack_academic wrote:

NoodleyOne wrote:To be clear, the NLJ 250 does not encompass all Biglaw (100+, or maybe even 51+), correct?

This seems like a good question.

depends on your definition of biglaw.

some would argue the nlj250 is overinclusive in defining biglaw.

Yep. NLJ250 covers most but there are a few NLJ 350 (http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNL ... 2548523777) that many would consider more desirable than even a portion of the V100.

I was really hoping they'd do up the stats both with NLJ250 and 350 but maybe there was just too much underreporting.

Seems like class size makes a big difference for percentage. Look in that range of schools from ND to Emory. Firms seem to just say "we're taking 40 students to fill out what we didn't want from the t14." Or rather the same big firms say we'll take about 2-4 students from these schools and that number just happens to sum up to 40.

Goblin Tacos wrote:Seems like class size makes a big difference for percentage. Look in that range of schools from ND to Emory. Firms seem to just say "we're taking 40 students to fill out what we didn't want from the t14." Or rather the same big firms say we'll take about 2-4 students from these schools and that number just happens to sum up to 40.

I think this is actually a factor. A firm will go to Northwestern and interview with 20 people, give 4-5 a callback. And they'll go to Michigan and give 4-5 a callback. And then to Georgetown and give 4-5 a callback. They are being way more selective at Gulc than Northwestern without intending to be.

It's not always so clear cut because many times a firm will go interview 120 Georgetown students, but I think the trend shows some bias.

Goblin Tacos wrote:Seems like class size makes a big difference for percentage. Look in that range of schools from ND to Emory. Firms seem to just say "we're taking 40 students to fill out what we didn't want from the t14." Or rather the same big firms say we'll take about 2-4 students from these schools and that number just happens to sum up to 40.

Contrast that to Fordham and GW, or WUSTL and Southern Methodist, or even Minnesota.

It's nice of you to think that's the answer, but even a quick look proves you're wrong.

SaintsTheMetal wrote:

stillwater wrote:

mephistopheles wrote:
the idea is that it's a positively skewed normal distribution so the median, while the center grade, is not the mean. see champagnepapi, supra. but, 70% may be a bit high.

yea a 20% bulge seems extreme

mephistopheles wrote:

stillwater wrote:

mephistopheles wrote:
yea, wut????, how does that mean they don't dip below median?

the idea is that it's a positively skewed normal distribution. see champagnepapi, supra. but, 70% may be a bit high to not dip below.

One thing about Penn that I think can explain this is that Penn students are not allowed to list GPA or ranking or their resume, so it becomes very very difficult for firms to distinguish between the middle 50% or so of the class, thus ending up with a lot of people at median.

If the difference of top 25% and top 75% is like 3.4 vs 3.2 GPA, that's pretty damn hard to eyeball just looking at a giant list of B/B+/A-/A grades.

Some schools just have systems better set up to place people, whereas I hear all the time about UVA's system (OCI and grading systems) fucking people over that aren't at the top of the class

I think it was someone on these boards who said that Penn hired a bunch of consultants to design their grading system with the goal of the highest % of students being hired by biglaw

The keys to maximizing big law chances for schools are not ranking students at all, having a supreme reputation in one of the top 3 states with the largest metropolitan areas in the US (NY/CA/IL), and using a grading system that maximizes the amount of students with GPA's noticeably above 3.0 after 1L (if on a 4.0ish scale).

Aberzombie1892 wrote:The keys to maximizing big law chances for schools are not ranking students at all, having a supreme reputation in one of the top 3 states with the largest metropolitan areas in the US (NY/CA/IL), and using a grading system that maximizes the amount of students with GPA's noticeably above 3.0 after 1L (if on a 4.0ish scale).

The key to maximizing biglaw chances are being biglaw feeder schools. the rest is irrelevant

Local market has a part of it too I think. Hence michigan and georgetown. Schools focused on nyc > schools focused on chicago

OP updated with a link to NLJ's more detailed breakdown of each school's placement.

http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNL ... 0127225923

Tiago Splitter wrote:OP updated with a link to NLJ's more detailed breakdown of each school's placement.

http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNL ... 0127225923

Did Davis Polk really only hire 6 people that year? If not, I can see why this is incomplete data.

thelawyler wrote:

Tiago Splitter wrote:OP updated with a link to NLJ's more detailed breakdown of each school's placement.

http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNL ... 0127225923

Did Davis Polk really only hire 6 people that year? If not, I can see why this is incomplete data.

Yeah and it has Cooley with only 7. My guess is there just isn't any way to know exactly how many people the 60 firms who didn't respond to the survey hired, and for the 58 for whom they could find any data they decided incomplete was better than nothing. Would be nice if they'd have admitted that though. At least now with the firm by firm breakdown we can get a better idea for how rampant the underreporting issue is.

Tiago Splitter wrote:

thelawyler wrote:

Tiago Splitter wrote:OP updated with a link to NLJ's more detailed breakdown of each school's placement.

http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNL ... 0127225923

Did Davis Polk really only hire 6 people that year? If not, I can see why this is incomplete data.

Yeah and it has Cooley with only 7. My guess is there just isn't any way to know exactly how many people the 60 firms who didn't respond to the survey hired, and for the 58 for whom they could find any data they decided incomplete was better than nothing. Would be nice if they'd have admitted that though. At least now with the firm by firm breakdown we can get a better idea for how rampant the underreporting issue is.

If somebody can collect a relative list of all the big firms that are completely under-represented here, we could probably build a pretty accurate picture. Or wait for the ABA data, I suppose.

Cooley placed 1 student into biglaw - Morgan & Morgan

1 out of 999! That is absolutely ridiculously pathetic.

guano wrote:Cooley placed 1 student into biglaw - Morgan & Morgan

For the people.

It's not really biglaw; it's a plaintiffs PI mill

Desert Fox wrote:

Goblin Tacos wrote:Seems like class size makes a big difference for percentage. Look in that range of schools from ND to Emory. Firms seem to just say "we're taking 40 students to fill out what we didn't want from the t14." Or rather the same big firms say we'll take about 2-4 students from these schools and that number just happens to sum up to 40.

I think this is actually a factor. A firm will go to Northwestern and interview with 20 people, give 4-5 a callback. And they'll go to Michigan and give 4-5 a callback. And then to Georgetown and give 4-5 a callback. They are being way more selective at Gulc than Northwestern without intending to be.

It's not always so clear cut because many times a firm will go interview 120 Georgetown students, but I think the trend shows some bias.

I think this may be one of the reasons that Penn outperforms some of its peer schools (MV) when it comes to placement statistics.

hume85 wrote:

Desert Fox wrote:

Goblin Tacos wrote:Seems like class size makes a big difference for percentage. Look in that range of schools from ND to Emory. Firms seem to just say "we're taking 40 students to fill out what we didn't want from the t14." Or rather the same big firms say we'll take about 2-4 students from these schools and that number just happens to sum up to 40.

I think this is actually a factor. A firm will go to Northwestern and interview with 20 people, give 4-5 a callback. And they'll go to Michigan and give 4-5 a callback. And then to Georgetown and give 4-5 a callback. They are being way more selective at Gulc than Northwestern without intending to be.

It's not always so clear cut because many times a firm will go interview 120 Georgetown students, but I think the trend shows some bias.

I think this may be one of the reasons that Penn outperforms some of its peer schools (MV) when it comes to placement statistics.

Honestly though, those placement statistics matter a lot. Do smaller class sizes inflate these percentages? Of course. But smaller class sizes mean less competition, and that placement % is ROUGHLY (of course there are factors such as self-selection, under-reporting, etc. that make placement stats not quite equal to placement ability, but these are common factors across T14 schools) your % shot at obtaining biglaw.

In other words, maybe biglaw will hire 120 students from each of MVP. Does this mean Penn is held in higher regard over M & V? No, they are perceived as peers. But does this mean you have a better shot at getting biglaw from Penn? Of course, it's much easier to be one of the 120 students out of a class of 250 vs. 350, 400, etc.

IMO, this makes MVP NOT peer schools, as there are obvious measurable comparative advantages to attending the school with the smaller class size. Thus there is a disconnect between perception and reality.

Tiago Splitter wrote:

thelawyler wrote:

Tiago Splitter wrote:OP updated with a link to NLJ's more detailed breakdown of each school's placement.

http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNL ... 0127225923

Did Davis Polk really only hire 6 people that year? If not, I can see why this is incomplete data.

Yeah and it has Cooley with only 7. My guess is there just isn't any way to know exactly how many people the 60 firms who didn't respond to the survey hired, and for the 58 for whom they could find any data they decided incomplete was better than nothing. Would be nice if they'd have admitted that though. At least now with the firm by firm breakdown we can get a better idea for how rampant the underreporting issue is.

Stupid question maybe, but how do you reconcile this data with the NALP forms?

http://www.nalpdirectory.com/employer_p ... avis%22%7D


They can't possibly be under reporting THAT much. And IIRC, the NLJ numbers for c/o 2011 weren't that far off from the actual ABA data.

ChampagnePapi wrote:

Tiago Splitter wrote:

thelawyler wrote:

Tiago Splitter wrote:OP updated with a link to NLJ's more detailed breakdown of each school's placement.

http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNL ... 0127225923

Did Davis Polk really only hire 6 people that year? If not, I can see why this is incomplete data.

Yeah and it has Cooley with only 7. My guess is there just isn't any way to know exactly how many people the 60 firms who didn't respond to the survey hired, and for the 58 for whom they could find any data they decided incomplete was better than nothing. Would be nice if they'd have admitted that though. At least now with the firm by firm breakdown we can get a better idea for how rampant the underreporting issue is.

Stupid question maybe, but how do you reconcile this data with the NALP forms?

http://www.nalpdirectory.com/employer_p ... avis%22%7D


They can't possibly be under reporting THAT much. And IIRC, the NLJ numbers for c/o 2011 weren't that far off from the actual ABA data.

Well it'd affect some schools more than others. Like NYU is sending 25 to Davis Polk this year, and I'm not sure how much they sent for co2012, but considering that's a 5% bump from just one firm, there's probably some discernible difference if you include others like Paul Weiss.

Basically, with the small bumps + AIII Clerkships, I think you will start nearing the 70-80% offer rates from OCI you hear OCS talking about from these schools.

ChampagnePapi wrote:

Tiago Splitter wrote:

thelawyler wrote:

Tiago Splitter wrote:OP updated with a link to NLJ's more detailed breakdown of each school's placement.

http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNL ... 0127225923

Did Davis Polk really only hire 6 people that year? If not, I can see why this is incomplete data.

Yeah and it has Cooley with only 7. My guess is there just isn't any way to know exactly how many people the 60 firms who didn't respond to the survey hired, and for the 58 for whom they could find any data they decided incomplete was better than nothing. Would be nice if they'd have admitted that though. At least now with the firm by firm breakdown we can get a better idea for how rampant the underreporting issue is.

Stupid question maybe, but how do you reconcile this data with the NALP forms?

http://www.nalpdirectory.com/employer_p ... avis%22%7D


They can't possibly be under reporting THAT much. And IIRC, the NLJ numbers for c/o 2011 weren't that far off from the actual ABA data.

Yeah they definitely aren't underreporting that much. But for some schools leaving out just Paul Weiss and Davis Polk makes a real difference. The other ones that look suspicious to me are Cooley, which shows only 7 new hires in this data but expected to hire 43 per NALP and White & Case, which this data says hired just 12 but NALP says they had hired about 60 each of the last two years in the New York office alone. There may be other discrepancies, but I agree that overall this gives a pretty good idea of BigLaw placement.

I guess the firm websites don't update their roster or very little..

JamesDean1955 wrote:

hume85 wrote:

Desert Fox wrote:

Goblin Tacos wrote:Seems like class size makes a big difference for percentage. Look in that range of schools from ND to Emory. Firms seem to just say "we're taking 40 students to fill out what we didn't want from the t14." Or rather the same big firms say we'll take about 2-4 students from these schools and that number just happens to sum up to 40.

I think this is actually a factor. A firm will go to Northwestern and interview with 20 people, give 4-5 a callback. And they'll go to Michigan and give 4-5 a callback. And then to Georgetown and give 4-5 a callback. They are being way more selective at Gulc than Northwestern without intending to be.

It's not always so clear cut because many times a firm will go interview 120 Georgetown students, but I think the trend shows some bias.

I think this may be one of the reasons that Penn outperforms some of its peer schools (MV) when it comes to placement statistics.

Honestly though, those placement statistics matter a lot. Do smaller class sizes inflate these percentages? Of course. But smaller class sizes mean less competition, and that placement % is ROUGHLY (of course there are factors such as self-selection, under-reporting, etc. that make placement stats not quite equal to placement ability, but these are common factors across T14 schools) your % shot at obtaining biglaw.

In other words, maybe biglaw will hire 120 students from each of MVP. Does this mean Penn is held in higher regard over M & V? No, they are perceived as peers. But does this mean you have a better shot at getting biglaw from Penn? Of course, it's much easier to be one of the 120 students out of a class of 250 vs. 350, 400, etc.

IMO, this makes MVP NOT peer schools, as there are obvious measurable comparative advantages to attending the school with the smaller class size. Thus there is a disconnect between perception and reality.

These conversations tend to treat biglaw as a monolithic entity. It doesn't work that way. Certain offices of certain firms have affinity with certain schools. For example, one firm/office I'm aware of interviews at 4 schools. That's it. Any student that doesn't go to one of those 4 schools will have a hard time snagging an interview. Penn's advantage is that it's close to NYC, DC and Philly, meaning firms/offices in those cities are more likely to interview at Penn than at, say, Michigan, which requires them to A) fly there for interviews, and B) fly out prospective students for callbacks.

There are only a handful of firms/offices with a big enough class size that you could realistically say they'll hire 20 from this school and 20 from that. And for the most part, those firms are V10 and those schools are the T6.

The one thing that is more pronounces with a small class size is that an annual fluctuation is much more noticeable. Anyone remember when Cornell placed a ginormous percentage of their class? If Cornell places 20 more than usual, that's a 10% swing. If Georgetown places 20 more than usual, that's a 3% swing. Everything else is just wishful thinking on the part of law students who like to over-analyze everything

Just curious since I figured you all would know, what are most Yale graduates doing? Are they going into private practice or something? I noticed they only place 30% into biglaw so assuming they found something better to do.

Holynorth wrote:Just curious since I figured you all would know, what are most Yale graduates doing? Are they going into private practice or something? I noticed they only place 30% into biglaw so assuming they found something better to do.

clerkships.

zman wrote:

Holynorth wrote:Just curious since I figured you all would know, what are most Yale graduates doing? Are they going into private practice or something? I noticed they only place 30% into biglaw so assuming they found something better to do.

clerkships.

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