Top Law Schools

GFox345 wrote:I've gone through the T-14 in an attempt to get some other FTST Job Totals, and these were my results.

GULC 8.25% (56)
Michigan 5.93% (21)
Chicago 2.56% (5)
Cornell 2.09% (4)
Duke 0.96% (2)
Berkeley 0.72% (2)
NYU 0.67% (3)
Harvard 0.51% (3)
Yale 0.50% (1)
UPenn 0.41% (1)
UVA 0.27% (1)
Northwestern 0% (0)
Columbia 0% (0)
Stanford 0% (0)

Based on this, the schools for which these FTST PI and Gov Jobs represent a significant portion of the class are: GULC, Michigan, Chicago, Cornell, and Duke. Thoughts?

The Georgetown and UMich FT/ST numbers are based on their bridge fellowships (Georgetown's is called the "Entry into Practice Fellowship" and is similar to the MLaw Bridge Fellowship)

I want to give students a realistic look at: What schools offer me a good chance at FT/LT PI/Gov employment? You can disagree with this, and that's fine. I'll be the first to defend the concept of school-funded fellowships, but I won't defend a subset that are essentially padding the employment stats of schools (such as bridge fellowships). These are people who, if not for the bridge funding, would be unemployed. Let's not forget that we should all be happy that they are at least getting some money, but let's not also pretend that this is the outcome that: (1) they wanted, or (2) prospective students want.

Nebby wrote:

GFox345 wrote:I've gone through the T-14 in an attempt to get some other FTST Job Totals, and these were my results.

GULC 8.25% (56)
Michigan 5.93% (21)
Chicago 2.56% (5)
Cornell 2.09% (4)
Duke 0.96% (2)
Berkeley 0.72% (2)
NYU 0.67% (3)
Harvard 0.51% (3)
Yale 0.50% (1)
UPenn 0.41% (1)
UVA 0.27% (1)
Northwestern 0% (0)
Columbia 0% (0)
Stanford 0% (0)

Based on this, the schools for which these FTST PI and Gov Jobs represent a significant portion of the class are: GULC, Michigan, Chicago, Cornell, and Duke. Thoughts?

The Georgetown and UMich FT/ST numbers are based on their bridge fellowships (Georgetown's is called the "Entry into Practice Fellowship" and is similar to the MLaw Bridge Fellowship)

I want to give students a realistic look at: What schools offer me a good chance at FT/LT PI/Gov employment? You can disagree with this, and that's fine. I'll be the first to defend the concept of school-funded fellowships, but I won't defend a subset that are essentially padding the employment stats of schools (such as bridge fellowships). These are people who, if not for the bridge funding, would be unemployed. Let's not forget that we should all be happy that they are at least getting some money, but let's not also pretend that this is the outcome that: (1) they wanted, or (2) prospective students want.

No, I totally agree with the idea that the primary purpose of these numbers is to give students a realistic look at their FT/LT PI/Gov employment prospects. If schools are misrepresenting their employment numbers, then that is something that absolutely should be exposed. What I am pushing back against is the immediate assumption that these FT/ST jobs are jobs that do not give students a good chance at FT/LT PI/Gov jobs. If students frequently go from these jobs into FT/LT positions, are they not something that should be counted.

Meowsworth mentioned that the difference between the Bridge fellowships and the fellowships at NU largely consist of how the Universities choose to sell them. Michigan comes at it from the perspective of the Bridge fellowships not being the most desired outcome. NU, on the other hand, mentions a competitive application process. But, in essence, these fellowships do the exact same thing. They employ a graduate at a government agency or nonprofit at the expense of the school for roughly a year's time. Your choice to exclude Bridge fellowships seems to me to be largely arbitrary. Absent the way that the schools choose to spin the fellowships, it seems to me that the only reason that you would include the NU fellowships in your numbers and exclude the Bridge fellowships is that the former last a year or more and the latter do not.

Mrs Featherbottom wrote:

GFox345 wrote:I've gone through the T-14 in an attempt to get some other FTST Job Totals, and these were my results.

GULC 8.25% (56)
Michigan 5.93% (21)
Chicago 2.56% (5)
Cornell 2.09% (4)
Duke 0.96% (2)
Berkeley 0.72% (2)
NYU 0.67% (3)
Harvard 0.51% (3)
Yale 0.50% (1)
UPenn 0.41% (1)
UVA 0.27% (1)
Northwestern 0% (0)
Columbia 0% (0)
Stanford 0% (0)

Based on this, the schools for which these FTST PI and Gov Jobs represent a significant portion of the class are: GULC, Michigan, Chicago, Cornell, and Duke. Thoughts?

Not sure Duke should make the cut here with only two students representing less than 1% of the class. Cornell and Chicago's numbers seem pretty statistically insignificant too for that matter.

I would be interested to see what these positions look like at GULC however, since that's a pretty big chunk of the graduating class.

I respectfully disagree. When only 5% of your class goes into PI in the first place 1% starts to look a little more significant. This is especially true in the case of Chicago. It sent 6% of it's class into PI/Gov, and these FTST positions account for an additional 2.5% of the class. That's nearly a third of the students that the school sent into PI not being accounted for. This applies to Cornell to a slightly lesser degree (but still to an important one). Michigan and GULC are statistically significant even in the context of the total graduating class.

You make good points and I would hope people take them into consideration. I am not going to include bridge fellowships because they are still different than a one-year, traditional fellowship.

Sort of unrelated but still good info for people deciphering this data: Students who pursue a government placement in any school-funded fellowships can only work in the state and local government. Federal appropriation law forbids any federal entity from employing a fellow who is funded outside of the budget, unless the entity is not funded by the general fund (such as the USTR).

GFox345 wrote:I've gone through the T-14 in an attempt to get some other FTST Job Totals, and these were my results.

GULC 8.25% (56)
Michigan 5.93% (21)
Chicago 2.56% (5)
Cornell 2.09% (4)
Duke 0.96% (2)
Berkeley 0.72% (2)
NYU 0.67% (3)
Harvard 0.51% (3)
Yale 0.50% (1)
UPenn 0.41% (1)
UVA 0.27% (1)
Northwestern 0% (0)
Columbia 0% (0)
Stanford 0% (0)

Based on this, the schools for which these FTST PI and Gov Jobs represent a significant portion of the class are: GULC, Michigan, Chicago, Cornell, and Duke. Thoughts?

The schools you listed have all had either bad recent employment numbers or so few graduates going into PI that one is left to conclude it is really not a priority for the school. That seems pretty informative of what sort of opportunities those positions offer.

TBH I am highly suspicious of everything coming out of GULC and could be persuaded to remove them from my dataset

Hikikomorist wrote:

GFox345 wrote:I've gone through the T-14 in an attempt to get some other FTST Job Totals, and these were my results.

GULC 8.25% (56)
Michigan 5.93% (21)
Chicago 2.56% (5)
Cornell 2.09% (4)
Duke 0.96% (2)
Berkeley 0.72% (2)
NYU 0.67% (3)
Harvard 0.51% (3)
Yale 0.50% (1)
UPenn 0.41% (1)
UVA 0.27% (1)
Northwestern 0% (0)
Columbia 0% (0)
Stanford 0% (0)

Based on this, the schools for which these FTST PI and Gov Jobs represent a significant portion of the class are: GULC, Michigan, Chicago, Cornell, and Duke. Thoughts?

The schools you listed have all had either bad recent employment numbers or so few graduates going into PI that one is left to conclude it is really not a priority for the school. That seems pretty informative of what sort of opportunities those positions offer.

I am not sure what exactly you are trying to say. Which schools do you have in mind? Chicago sent 6% of its class into PI/Gov and based on these numbers that figure could be more like 9%. Mind you there is not much room left for PI/Gov jobs when you send over 80% of your class into BigLaw and Federal Clerkships. Cornell posted excellent BL+FC numbers as usual and sent 10% of its class into PI/Gov. Michigan's BL+FC numbers improved significantly from last year and it sent 13% of its class into PI/Gov. Based on these numbers, that figure could be more like 19%.

I am totally confused as to what you mean when you suggest "That seems pretty informative of what sort of opportunities these positions offer." You mean that since Chicago only sends 6% of its class into PI that it has no placement power/the students must be getting shitty PI jobs and therefore that the FTST jobs must be shittier still? What on Earth are you talking about? Your post just comes off to me as totally unfounded cynicism.

EDIT: I'll raise you some cynicism to match yours. If schools were instituting these fellowships to fudge the employment numbers, wouldn't they at least fudge them properly? GULC especially has a hell of a lot more unemployed students than the 56 that it put into FTST PI/Gov fellowships. What reason do we have to be suspicious of these fellowships when we are not at all suspicious of the Fulltime Long Term positions? As we've seen in this thread already, schools like NU have identical fellowships that last for precisely one year, yet no one here is casting doubt on the accuracy of the FTLT numbers for NU. Is there something that you're putting down that I am not picking up here?

Sry to slightly derail, but does anyone know what the maximum salary for clerks is (fed/state/local). GULC lists 21 public sector employees making >$70k or more (on page 4 of its ABA report http://www.law.georgetown.edu/admission ... ebsite.pdf and I was wondering whether any of these could be clerkships or are more likely to be government employment.

Actually, wouldn't a good proxy to determine a "good" versus "bad" school funded job just be to use salary data for the public sector? In the case of GULC's class of 2015, e.g., we could take the 116 graduates who are making at least $50,000 in the public sector and subtract the number of clerkships from that amount to avoid double-counting (state, federal, local and "Other", which in GULC's case is 50). That gives us at least 66 out of 133 "Public Interest" positions, or approximately 50% of the LTFT PI jobs that were decent, without casting aspersions on which were "good" school funded fellowships and bad school funded fellowships.

lulzsec54 wrote:Sry to slightly derail, but does anyone know what the maximum salary for clerks is (fed/state/local). GULC lists 21 public sector employees making >$70k or more (on page 4 of its ABA report http://www.law.georgetown.edu/admission ... ebsite.pdf and I was wondering whether any of these could be clerkships or are more likely to be government employment.

Clerkship salary data from NYU says their 75th percentile is about $65k. So I'm guessing that's federal clerk pay.

It would be so incredibly awesome if schools published salary information for non-BigLaw jobs. That would certainly make a difference.

zot1 wrote:It would be so incredibly awesome if schools published salary information for non-BigLaw jobs. That would certainly make a difference.

Most T14 schools (at least all the ones I looked at) publish their salary 25/50/75 data by the category of work. They all break it down to a different degree, but the data is provided separately from biglaw info.

I think they do in NALP reports. Still Awaiting this year's releases.

cavalier1138 wrote:

zot1 wrote:It would be so incredibly awesome if schools published salary information for non-BigLaw jobs. That would certainly make a difference.

Most T14 schools (at least all the ones I looked at) publish their salary 25/50/75 data by the category of work. They all break it down to a different degree, but the data is provided separately from biglaw info.

But I want more!

I'm going to turn this into a massive megathread to compile relevant info for prospective students interested in PI/Gov at the T14 schools. My current project is compiling the various school's LRAP programs so they can be easily compared. I've added two to OP, and will slowly add more.

Nebby wrote:I'm going to turn this into a massive megathread to compile relevant info for prospective students interested in PI/Gov at the T14 schools. My current project is compiling the various school's LRAP programs so they can be easily compared. I've added two to OP, and will slowly add more.

Thank you so much for doing this. Someone already made a LRAP comparison spreadsheet though, so no need to go any further on that aspect: http://top-law-schools.com/forums/viewt ... 5&t=262492

somethingelse55 wrote:

Nebby wrote:I'm going to turn this into a massive megathread to compile relevant info for prospective students interested in PI/Gov at the T14 schools. My current project is compiling the various school's LRAP programs so they can be easily compared. I've added two to OP, and will slowly add more.

Thank you so much for doing this. Someone already made a LRAP comparison spreadsheet though, so no need to go any further on that aspect: http://top-law-schools.com/forums/viewt ... 5&t=262492

Oh good thank god

Nebby wrote:

somethingelse55 wrote:

Nebby wrote:I'm going to turn this into a massive megathread to compile relevant info for prospective students interested in PI/Gov at the T14 schools. My current project is compiling the various school's LRAP programs so they can be easily compared. I've added two to OP, and will slowly add more.

Thank you so much for doing this. Someone already made a LRAP comparison spreadsheet though, so no need to go any further on that aspect: http://top-law-schools.com/forums/viewt ... 5&t=262492

Oh good thank god

Now you can add 15-50.

zot1 wrote:Now you can add 15-50.

(Speaking as someone who's school is in this range and is also gunning for PI/govt):

There's actually not a lot of purpose in doing this except to demonstrate that some states have stronger legal markets than others. The reality is, people should not take into account that ASU's PI/govt score is better than University of Florida. If you want to be a public defender in Florida, don't attend ASU. If you want to be a city attorney in Baltimore, don't go to University of Washington.

twenty wrote:

zot1 wrote:Now you can add 15-50.

(Speaking as someone who's school is in this range and is also gunning for PI/govt):

There's actually not a lot of purpose in doing this except to demonstrate that some states have stronger legal markets than others. The reality is, people should not take into account that ASU's PI/govt score is better than University of Florida. If you want to be a public defender in Florida, don't attend ASU. If you want to be a city attorney in Baltimore, don't go to University of Washington.

Yep. I am not going to put in the effort to compile data that is largely unrelated to the school's a selected which are the only ones with national reach, and that is even pushing it w/r/t the lower T14

twenty wrote:

zot1 wrote:Now you can add 15-50.

(Speaking as someone who's school is in this range and is also gunning for PI/govt):

There's actually not a lot of purpose in doing this except to demonstrate that some states have stronger legal markets than others. The reality is, people should not take into account that ASU's PI/govt score is better than University of Florida. If you want to be a public defender in Florida, don't attend ASU. If you want to be a city attorney in Baltimore, don't go to University of Washington.

Let me pick on Nebby! I have nothing else to look forward to in life.

zot1 wrote:

Nebby wrote:

somethingelse55 wrote:

Nebby wrote:I'm going to turn this into a massive megathread to compile relevant info for prospective students interested in PI/Gov at the T14 schools. My current project is compiling the various school's LRAP programs so they can be easily compared. I've added two to OP, and will slowly add more.

Thank you so much for doing this. Someone already made a LRAP comparison spreadsheet though, so no need to go any further on that aspect: http://top-law-schools.com/forums/viewt ... 5&t=262492

Oh good thank god

Now you can add 15-50.

If we each take a school and provide the numbers, it will make quick work for Nebby to compile on the front page. I took Wake Forest because my daughter is a grad in government:

Wake Forest

Employed at 10 months Government PI Both Percentage
2015 127 15 9 24 18.9%
2014 171 22 10 32 18.7%
2013 124 22 5 27 21.8%
2012 137 21 7 28 20.4%
2011 137 22 8 30 21.9%

FamilyLawEsq wrote:

zot1 wrote:

Nebby wrote:

somethingelse55 wrote:

Nebby wrote:I'm going to turn this into a massive megathread to compile relevant info for prospective students interested in PI/Gov at the T14 schools. My current project is compiling the various school's LRAP programs so they can be easily compared. I've added two to OP, and will slowly add more.

Thank you so much for doing this. Someone already made a LRAP comparison spreadsheet though, so no need to go any further on that aspect: http://top-law-schools.com/forums/viewt ... 5&t=262492

Oh good thank god

Now you can add 15-50.

If we each take a school and provide the numbers, it will make quick work for Nebby to compile on the front page. I took Wake Forest because my daughter is a grad in government:

Wake Forest

Employed at 9 months Government PI Both Percentage
2015 127 15 9 24 18.9%
2014 171 22 10 32 18.7%
2013 124 22 5 27 21.8%
2012 137 21 7 28 20.4%
2011 137 22 8 30 21.9%

I decided I will do the schools from 40-50 and report back.

Rank School 2015 2014 2013 2012

40 U Arizona 24/130 (18.5%) 24/125 (19.2%) 24/118 (20.3%) 25/124 (20.2%
40 U Colorado 39/152 (25.7%) 34/154 (22.1%) 44/159 (27.7%) 31/158 (27.7%)
40 U Illinois 27/153 (17.6%) 32/168 (19.0%) 41/199 (20.6%) N/A
40 Wake Forest 24/127 (18.9%) 32/171 (18.7%) 27/124 (21.8%) 28/137 (20.4%)
40 Wash & Lee 29/152 (19.0%) 21/105 (20.0%) 10/117 (05.6%) 18/87 (20.7%)
45 George Mason 38/146 (26.0%) 41/175 (23.4%) 66/235 (28.1%) 54/205 (26.3%)
45 SMU 20/217 (09.2%) 15/236 (06.3%) 13/224 (05.8%) 21/273 (07.7%)
48 U Florida 50/259 19.3%) 49/266 (18.4%) 65/288 (22.6%) 59/264 (22.3%)
48 U Maryland 54/245 (22.0%) 60/268 (22.4%) 43/258 (16.7%) 57/291 (19.6%)
50 Florida State

50 Florida State 69/220 (31.7%) 74/237 (31.2%) 67/211 (31.8%)