SLU vs. Case Western Forum

[PhantomBMAN]

The health law alumni comes from what I would assume are chunk of students who go to SLU specifically because of the opportunities it offers for health law students and lawyers. The lawyers I spoke to aren't exactly what people would call "boomer lawyers", but current students offer a good perspective in the sense that they have a current idea of employment climate as well as how well the school is preparing them for certain avenues of law.

Healthlaw is one area of law that isn't being offered in most schools, particularly in any sort of meaningful fashion. As one current BigLaw health lawyer put it, people who go into health law unprepared are trying to drink from a fire hydrant. Getting a very broad (if any) preparation on healthcare law doesn't make for a good lawyer, least of all one who should be getting employed.

I don't know many people here who would gush about SCU either (to which I was accepted, but while IP is great, I'm really passionate about health more), and yet SCU has a very good reputation with getting its grads positions in Silicon Valley practicing what they do best. Having said that, I would be interested to see how many of those who are under/unemployed from SCU ended up specializing in more common disciplines, like tax, business, or criminal law.

The same thing with SLU or GGU or USF. GGU and USF I know have a decent rep for doing public service law (which, if you're into that, great. If not, yeah, things will suck). I would be really interested to know how many of those unemployed from SLU or Case or otherwise were people trying to find a place in BigLaw, other corporate law, etc. If anyone knows where such statistics are gathered, I'd be happy to hear it.

Anyways, I'm not trying to be a cheerleader for SLU or other similarly ranked schools. I'm simply trying to draw the distinction between the lucrative and physically intense law that a vast majority of the T14 crowd battle neck and neck for, vs. those who look for the best schools to prepare them to be the best lawyers in their own specialties, such as IP or Health law. From what I've been hearing from employers and lawyers, many of them prefer working with a lawyer who actually know what he or she is doing, rather than someone who has a nice fancy diploma but no concept of the work they're going into.

A teacher at UoP was teaching a student from UCLA's dental school (all highly regarded). And yet the teacher noted that the student from UCLA had absolutely no concept of how to perform a procedure that other students from lesser schools were taught. I know it's a specific anecdotal example, but it still applies to a wide scope of other lawyers and graduates from lesser schools.

[deadpanic]

Healthlaw is one area of law that isn't being offered in most schools, particularly in any sort of meaningful fashion. As one current BigLaw health lawyer put it, people who go into health law unprepared are trying to drink from a fire hydrant. Getting a very broad (if any) preparation on healthcare law doesn't make for a good lawyer, least of all one who should be getting employed.

That is really just not true. It is not like a big law firm snags students from Columbia then says, "welp, now on to St. Louis to get our associates for our healthcare practice group." I hate to break it to you on what you think law school will be, but it does NOT actually teach you to practice much of any law in any meaningful way. You basically read countless amount of cases and apply it to random hypotheticals. That is why, for the most part, reading 89 more healthcare cases/legislation than a law student at a better school will simply not matter to BigLaw employers. Any difference it does make is very insignificant and not enough to justify the costs.

I am a practicing lawyer and have some friends in healthcare sections at BigLaw firms. They took a total of one healthcare class in law school. That did not matter at all. They simply had stellar grades and wound up at the very top of the class. What if you make 1 C+, miss a firm job and thus strike out of health care law? Then your whole dedicated to health care law thing isn't very valuable to small firms, who do not practice it, or at all for government jobs like PD/DA.

[rickgrimes69]

Both schools are complete dumpster fires, and neither gives you more than a snowball's chance in hell at accomplishing your goals. Your options are (1) retake, go to a better school, and succeed; (2) downgrade your goals to the extent where you recognize that there's a real chance that you will never work as a lawyer; or (3) don't go to law school.

Pick which one sounds best to you.

[PhantomBMAN]

Deadpanic,

What kind of work do your friends do? Do they work at hospitals? Health insurance companies? DoJ? Medical centers?

Or is it primarily dealing with the healthcare issues of employees for otherwise business firms?

Are any of them Health Administrators? Or do any work related to healthcare administration?

Kudos on being a practicing lawyer. And I'm sure your friends are happy working in health law sections. (I'm not being snide here)

But more information on the above would be nice.

And the reason why I'm interested in SLU or W&L is precisely BECAUSE they teach you how to do well as a health law practitioner/administrator, through clinical experience and externships, etc.

[Jay2716]

http://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/us/people/121867

This is probably the top healthcare practice in St. Louis. They have 5 associates. 4 went to Wash U. They have one SA working there this summer. Guess where he goes? If SLU can't put more than 1/6 associates into the top healthcare practice in its home city, I would be very skeptical of how much value their emphasis in the area adds. And if this is the best they can do in their own backyard, where their reputation is strongest, I would be very skeptical of anyone who told you that firms in the Bay Area would care about their specialty at all.

[PhantomBMAN]

Most likely because they didn't conduct interviews at SLU.

But that's a good link to have on hand for the future in any case.

[Jay2716]

If they're not even bothering to interview at SLU, that should worry you even more.

If you want to work in California, do not go to these schools. These are not the schools for your goals.

Again, people from the top of the class at WUSTL fail to get back to CA. It will not be easier from these schools.

[PhantomBMAN]

I realize that, which is why I would work from Missouri or the surrounding area first, gain valuable experience and additional contacts, and only then consider moving back.

It doesn't really worry me more. Sometimes going to the employer instead of having the employer come to you can be just as fruitful. I'm not betting on having an easy time or admission to employment because of a mere name on a diploma. But I'm also aware that for as shoddy as so many other schools are in the country, they still have good lawyers that come out of them, employed in good positions.

[arturobelano]

Look, dude, your entire anti-TLS argument is hinging on a faulty premise - that because most TLS users focus heavily on Biglaw and federal clerkship, they are incapable of understanding that there are other outcomes with different paths underlying them. Rather, TLS focuses on BL + federal clerkship because those are arguably the only consistent, controllable and positive national outcomes (doc review is another consistent and controllable outcome, but it's certainly not positive.) Other outcomes are directly fed from BL exits, unicorn jobs, uncommon/rare government and PI jobs, and shitlaw. TLS is extremely risk-averse in this sense, but that's because the majority of outcomes from law school - and the vast majority of those from non-elite law schools - are exceedingly poor.

Even with a lower bar to clear than the one TLS uses, however, SLU fails on all counts. According to the school's ABA-required employment disclosure (http://law.slu.edu/sites/default/files/ ... y2013_.pdf), only 167 of 301 graduates were employed in long-term positions requiring a JD nine months after graduation. That's piss-poor. Even worse than that, only 21 out of those 167 were employed in LT legal jobs in firms of over 10 attorneys, which excludes JD government jobs, shingle hangers, and being a barista. That is awful and gives you little to no chance of achieving your goals.

Older lawyers have very little capacity to speak on the structure of the job market because it's changed radically since they entered the profession (and mostly since 2008,) and current students never know anything about anything in any profession. Seriously, you might as well be talking to an infant.

Specialty rankings are bullshit meant to paper over poor employment statistics for the schools at the bottom of the food chain. A quick LinkedIn search shows that only 450 of SLU's 9,000+ living alumni have EVER been employed in a job that has health anywhere in the employer name, job title or description. This is not 1,200+.

Law school is not and will not be the only American institution built on the dead dreams of those who believed that their grit and hustle would propel them above the riff-raff. Los Angeles only exists because of that quintessentially American idea. Don't be trampled underfoot.

[BigZuck]

I mean, there you go.

Sounds like your mind is made up OP. Good luck at SLU.

[TheSpanishMain]

Keep in mind no one is telling you that you will absolutely, for sure fail if you go to SLU. People get lucky all the time, and maybe it would work out for you. But you'd be paying way too much for bad odds, when with a retake you could be paying much less and simultaneously getting better odds.

I think you should retake, and I highly doubt your reasons for refusing to retake are actually as compelling as you think they are. That said, it's your call. Good luck in whatever you decide.

[KMart]

Is that you Michael A Wolff?

[Rigo]

Don't do it dude. Flipping burgers at In-N-Out while studying for your retake is better than paying that much for those schools. Your future self will thank you for retaking.

[AReasonableMan]

I realize that, which is why I would work from Missouri or the surrounding area first, gain valuable experience and additional contacts, and only then consider moving back.

It doesn't really worry me more. Sometimes going to the employer instead of having the employer come to you can be just as fruitful. I'm not betting on having an easy time or admission to employment because of a mere name on a diploma. But I'm also aware that for as shoddy as so many other schools are in the country, they still have good lawyers that come out of them, employed in good positions.

It's good that you can respond to the arguments being made against this decision in a rational way. However, your analysis of the issues other point out is superficial. These are some factors you should consider:

Going to the employer/having them come to your school: You're 100% right going to the employer could be just as fruitful as that employer coming to you. Once you meet with them in an interview type setting, the difference between rather they came to your school or you came to them is marginal. You're in a position where you can impress them, and get a job.

The issue with this is every employer, even those soliciting FREE LABOR is bombarded with e-mail for every open position. Even if you had great grades the odds of you getting picked over the other 100's for the position just to come in for an interview are very low. When employers actually PAY MONEY just to have an interview room at a school, they are going to your school with the intent to hire from your school. This is why on campus recruiting provides the best opportunity.

Not being able to wait and your career plan: You presumably majored in something, and are probably in the top 1/2 of all college graduates. Most college graduates are able to parlay their degree into some form of meaningful living wage. If you can't do this then the idea that you'll be able to parlay a relatively no name school where you have no real ties into a career that enables you to not only earn a living wage but also pay off your loans in a very niche practice area is incredibly optimistic and short sighted.

"I don't have the ability to turn my BA into a job, but I'll be the minority who does well out of SLU" is extremely flawed logic. Will you suddenly be great at hustling in 3 years? You should also consider that you're already going to be in a worse position than other students going in, because you don't have any backbone in the area.

You're going back to the strawman of these schools still have some graduates who do well, so why can't you be part of that "some" demographic? This argument is not false. They do certainly have a successful minority, and you don't have a 0.0% chance of being in this minority. What you should consider is the followup strawman that some college graduates are able to do well with just a BA. Why can't you be 1 of them? The odds of you being able to parlay your current degree into a 30k salary are far, far, far greater (~85% according to the most recent data) than the odds of you parlaying SLU into the 50k salary you'd need to handle the additional debt.

The most likely results for you are either going to be unemployment or working very long hours for roughly a BA type salary (~35k). It's worth noting that there is a lifestyle cost to working long hours that you aren't considering. If you have a 40 hour a week job it's very easy to save ~30-50% on field by reviewing circulars and the like and buying loss leader items in bulk each week. This is 1 example, but similar tactics can be used across the board in living expenses. You simply won't have the time to take such measures working 60-80 hours per week so you really need add'l salary to offset the cost. The odds of getting this out of SLU are very unlikely.

Why do you have to be in law school this second. This may be an unwarranted assumption, but my guess is you came to college with the goal of being doctor and being prestigious. Hence, neuroscience. You considered being a brain surgeon. The thought of waiting tables even for a short period is grotesque to you, and nobody will disagree that being a doctor is more prestigious than being a waiter. The idea of quickly transitioning it to being a lawyer is understandably tempting, and will allow you to keep that same sense of self you came into college with. But your giving up on getting a pre-law job to retake the LSAT and make being a successful lawyer much more realistic suggests a fear or insecurity of being able to take on the real world. Vanishing off into a library for 3 years won't suddenly make you more charismatic or able to do this. Further, being a law student is not prestigious in and of itself. You're using it as a gateway to achieve this goal, if this is your goal. Why not go to a school that makes victory most likely?

The legal profession is saturated with successful attorneys who waited tables, worked in construction and worked minimum wage jobs into their late 20s. If we used the analogy of going to war, what these successful people did was wait until the cards were aligned and their odds at success were maximized (i.e. getting into a school with great placement). Starting off in such a highly disadvantaged position would be analogous to a country going to war for the sake of going to war versus waiting until their technology and military gave them a truly realistic shot at actually winning the said war. In any position where the goal is to win, you want to be in class #2, not class #1. There's an assumption that those attorneys who graduate unemployed are losers or just couldn't shake it. While this may be true for some, it's generally not true, and most of these individuals particularly those at top schools would be very successful in many other industries. The fact is that much of it, at least out of the gate, is luck. Please consider these points, and think them over before making your decision.