NYC Biglaw Schools Forum

[bretby]

Don't know why OP wouldn't just take the full ride at UT/$$$ at UVA/Duke and work in Texas biglaw. If one wants to be rich, 190k in Houston with no student loans is probably one of the best possible outcomes.

If NYC or bust, Cornell would be a great choice. They would give you a full ride or close to it and as long as you don't royally screw up grades-wise you'd be in at an NYC firm. And even if you were in the 30 percent or so that failed to get biglaw, the lack of debt would make it tolerable.

I don't get the YHS answer at all, given the article below, and Cornell is even less defensible.

http://www.vault.com/blog/vaults-law-bl ... er_ID=7778

Your article answers that:
"Yale doesn’t make the top ten not because BigLaw firms don’t want to hire Yale grads, but because they often make careers outside of BigLaw (for instance in academia)."

That reduces supply and increases demand for Yale grads in big law.

Again this discussion presumes the costs are equal between schools. Cornell was recommended because it often gives good scholarships to high-scoring applicants and still has a respectable big law placement rate in New York.

I understand why Yale was not on the list. My point was that given the rankings, if the goal is NYC Biglaw, Fordham is a better bet than Cornell, and BC and BU are not far behind. Presumably someone who could get a big scholarship at Cornell could also get a better scholarship at those three schools. Plus in general it seems crazy to me to go to Harvard or Stanford without significant financial aid if all you want is NYC BigLaw, but maybe that's just me.

[baseballfan660]

Don't know why OP wouldn't just take the full ride at UT/$$$ at UVA/Duke and work in Texas biglaw. If one wants to be rich, 190k in Houston with no student loans is probably one of the best possible outcomes.

If NYC or bust, Cornell would be a great choice. They would give you a full ride or close to it and as long as you don't royally screw up grades-wise you'd be in at an NYC firm. And even if you were in the 30 percent or so that failed to get biglaw, the lack of debt would make it tolerable.

I don't get the YHS answer at all, given the article below, and Cornell is even less defensible.

http://www.vault.com/blog/vaults-law-bl ... er_ID=7778

Your article answers that:
"Yale doesn’t make the top ten not because BigLaw firms don’t want to hire Yale grads, but because they often make careers outside of BigLaw (for instance in academia)."

That reduces supply and increases demand for Yale grads in big law.

Again this discussion presumes the costs are equal between schools. Cornell was recommended because it often gives good scholarships to high-scoring applicants and still has a respectable big law placement rate in New York.

I understand why Yale was not on the list. My point was that given the rankings, if the goal is NYC Biglaw, Fordham is a better bet than Cornell, and BC and BU are not far behind. Presumably someone who could get a big scholarship at Cornell could also get a better scholarship at those three schools. Plus in general it seems crazy to me to go to Harvard or Stanford without significant financial aid if all you want is NYC BigLaw, but maybe that's just me.

what? fordham does not give one a better chance at big law in NyC than Cornell, that is madness.

[bretby]

Don't know why OP wouldn't just take the full ride at UT/$$$ at UVA/Duke and work in Texas biglaw. If one wants to be rich, 190k in Houston with no student loans is probably one of the best possible outcomes.

If NYC or bust, Cornell would be a great choice. They would give you a full ride or close to it and as long as you don't royally screw up grades-wise you'd be in at an NYC firm. And even if you were in the 30 percent or so that failed to get biglaw, the lack of debt would make it tolerable.

I don't get the YHS answer at all, given the article below, and Cornell is even less defensible.

http://www.vault.com/blog/vaults-law-bl ... er_ID=7778

Your article answers that:
"Yale doesn’t make the top ten not because BigLaw firms don’t want to hire Yale grads, but because they often make careers outside of BigLaw (for instance in academia)."

That reduces supply and increases demand for Yale grads in big law.

Again this discussion presumes the costs are equal between schools. Cornell was recommended because it often gives good scholarships to high-scoring applicants and still has a respectable big law placement rate in New York.

I understand why Yale was not on the list. My point was that given the rankings, if the goal is NYC Biglaw, Fordham is a better bet than Cornell, and BC and BU are not far behind. Presumably someone who could get a big scholarship at Cornell could also get a better scholarship at those three schools. Plus in general it seems crazy to me to go to Harvard or Stanford without significant financial aid if all you want is NYC BigLaw, but maybe that's just me.

what? fordham does not give one a better chance at big law in NyC than Cornell, that is madness.

I was surprised too since it goes against received wisdom, but that's what the Vault article says.

[T3TON]

what? fordham does not give one a better chance at big law in NyC than Cornell, that is madness.

I was surprised too since it goes against received wisdom, but that's what the Vault article says.

We know from big law + fed clerkship statistics that Fordham loses to Cornell in initial placement power.
This leaves two potential explanations:

1. There is skew in the sample of people responding to Vault's survey. I am sure this is somewhat true but it doesnt account for the whole difference.

2. Cornell students get into big law firms at a higher rate but also attrition at a higher rate.
This could be spun in a negative or positive way:
(a) Negative: Cornell grads are "special snowflakes." Their educational privilege means they arent willing to put up with tough conditions in big law firms. By comparison the Fordham grads who make it into big law are gritty and driven and therefore stick around longer. This argument has been made before though not about Cornell in particular (http://thecareerist.typepad.com/thecare ... g-law.html)
(b) Positive (and I think more likely): Cornell's pedigree places its graduates into more prestigious firms. From there it is easier for them to move in-house or take coveted government positions. The short answer is that after a few years of practice they might just have better Plan Bs available.

[bretby]

what? fordham does not give one a better chance at big law in NyC than Cornell, that is madness.

I was surprised too since it goes against received wisdom, but that's what the Vault article says.

We know from big law + fed clerkship statistics that Fordham loses to Cornell in initial placement power.
This leaves two potential explanations:

1. There is skew in the sample of people responding to Vault's survey. I am sure this is somewhat true but it doesnt account for the whole difference.

2. Cornell students get into big law firms at a higher rate but also attrition at a higher rate.
This could be spun in a negative or positive way:
(a) Negative: Cornell grads are "special snowflakes." Their educational privilege means they arent willing to put up with tough conditions in big law firms. By comparison the Fordham grads who make it into big law are gritty and driven and therefore stick around longer. This argument has been made before though not about Cornell in particular (http://thecareerist.typepad.com/thecare ... g-law.html)
(b) Positive (and I think more likely): Cornell's pedigree places its graduates into more prestigious firms. From there it is easier for them to move in-house or take coveted government positions. The short answer is that after a few years of practice they might just have better Plan Bs available.

Either/both of those could be true. I was just talking about those whose goal is BigLaw in NYC and who want to get there as cheaply as possible. So the BigFed stats aren't relevant, and the hypothesis about going in-house/into the government may be true but given the absence of data, it is just a hypothesis.

[existentialcrisis]

what? fordham does not give one a better chance at big law in NyC than Cornell, that is madness.

I was surprised too since it goes against received wisdom, but that's what the Vault article says.

We know from big law + fed clerkship statistics that Fordham loses to Cornell in initial placement power.
This leaves two potential explanations:

1. There is skew in the sample of people responding to Vault's survey. I am sure this is somewhat true but it doesnt account for the whole difference.

2. Cornell students get into big law firms at a higher rate but also attrition at a higher rate.
This could be spun in a negative or positive way:
(a) Negative: Cornell grads are "special snowflakes." Their educational privilege means they arent willing to put up with tough conditions in big law firms. By comparison the Fordham grads who make it into big law are gritty and driven and therefore stick around longer. This argument has been made before though not about Cornell in particular (http://thecareerist.typepad.com/thecare ... g-law.html)
(b) Positive (and I think more likely): Cornell's pedigree places its graduates into more prestigious firms. From there it is easier for them to move in-house or take coveted government positions. The short answer is that after a few years of practice they might just have better Plan Bs available.

Either/both of those could be true. I was just talking about those whose goal is BigLaw in NYC and who want to get there as cheaply as possible. So the BigFed stats aren't relevant, and the hypothesis about going in-house/into the government may be true but given the absence of data, it is just a hypothesis.

I can't tell if you're trolling or just super misinformed. Regardless, it's substantially easier to land NYC biglaw from Cornell or any t14 than Fordham.

[timbs4339]

I work in NYC biglaw. OP, why do you want to work NYC specifically? The salary goes much farther in basically anywhere else.

[notgreat]

NYC Biglaw is a dream, sure, but that dream is a nightmare.

[Lavitz]

what? fordham does not give one a better chance at big law in NyC than Cornell, that is madness.

I was surprised too since it goes against received wisdom, but that's what the Vault article says.

Dude, this Vault article is complete garbage.

Let's take a look at just a few of the flaws in this.

There were 15,673 BigLaw associates who participated in Vault’s 2016 survey and identified their ABA-approved law school attended.

So it's based on every single associate who self-selected into taking this survey. It is not based on the number of associates in the most recent graduating class.

Perhaps the most interesting school on both these lists is Fordham. The NYC law school is ranked only 37th by U.S. News & World Report, but is one of the biggest feeders into BigLaw no matter how you slice the data.

Again, because this article does not account for time, this just means that over the last 10 years, Fordham has sent a bunch of people into biglaw that have stayed there. It does not mean that if you go to Fordham now, you will have a better chance of getting biglaw than at Cornell. Thus, Fordham is not currently "one of the biggest feeders."

The employment numbers clearly show that more Cornell grads go into biglaw than Fordham grads each year. It isn't even close: https://www.lstreports.com/compare/cornell/fordham/

[doc b]

Fordham sends more - numbers of grads. Cornell sends more - a higher percentage