The Brainalist wrote:I don't think that. I have yet to see any data about ITE that says anything about that kind of placement. As with "international" reach. I think it is largely unsupported with anything other than speculation combined with echo chamber Harvard lust. The 2L in the NYU Q's thread suggested that everyone who wanted a firm job in CA got one, but I have no reason to trust that anymore than the Harvard grad who came on here saying she knew no one who was not employed (even I know someone from Harvard who got hosed).ali & ali wrote:
You make some really good points Brainalist, but you don't think that, especially ITE, a degree from Harvard would have more clout in, say, San Fransisco, than a degree from NYU? And about the five years of slavery...I think I would want to start off at a larger firm anyway, just to get my feet on the ground in the profession. I want to work in the private sector, so I might be spending five years at that firm anyway.
This is the same BS I got from a used car salesman last year. Yes, the monthly payments are lower, but I don't want to be making payments for 30 years. Here is an easier calculation. Say you are class of 2006 at Harvard and you take a big law firm job. You want to get out of Loans fast so you pay 40k every year on your 200k loan. When you pay off your loans, you are going to do what you really wanted to do, become a federal prosecutor. Lots of job openings at US Attorney's offices 2007 and 2008. You have a coworker class of 2006 U Penn, he leaves in 2008 for US Attorney's Office because he only had 80k in loans. It is now 2010. Congratulations, your loans are now down to an acceptable level and you are sick of Biglaw and want to be a federal prosecutor. Too bad the economy is in the pooper, they aren't hiring at federal prosecutor's office. They aren't hiring anywhere. This is the effect of lost opportunity costs, things you miss out on while indentured.sayan wrote:HLS tuition and CLS tuition are roughly the same at around 45k. Let's say you get half tuition scholarship from CLS. You save 23k a year for 69k savings over 3 years.
Amortized over a 30-year career, that's only 2.3k per year. Just having the better clerking opportunities and lateral mobility make it worth it IMO.
There's also less pressure at HLS also with the H/P system vs. CLS grading system. Even if you argue that the H will now become mandatory to succeed at HLS, 35% of the class gets it as opposed to 5-10% A's in other law schools.
Also, H/P grades are pretty. They make me feel warm and fuzzy. Jury is maybe still out on the effect. Before ITE, 99% of people form Columbia did fine with grades. If there is a significant employment rate difference between H and Col when the numbers come out for ITE, it may be because of the grades, it may just be because H is better. I won't care either way.
This is a given. There are going to be many appellate judges that only hire from certain schools. I read somewhere on leiter's site that, for SCOTUS clerks anyway, the number of students placed from certain schools is more a reflection of having a couple judges in their pockets. Some judges, only Yale and Harvard. Scalia, usually good for 1 Chicago clerk. I PROMISE you that I am not going to clerk for the supreme court. I guarantee it. I love me. I can do 50 push ups. I don't think a supreme court clerkship is in my future even from Yale.Dignan wrote: You'd be surprised. Over at Volokh Conspiracy, there was a thread this summer about how competitive federal clerkships were this past year. A current COA clerk was assigned the responsibility of taking an initial pass at the 1,200 clerkship applications. The judge instructed the clerk to look only at applications submitted by graduates of Harvard, Stanford, or Yale; all other applications were immediately discarded. If you had finished first in your class at Columbia or NYU, your application would not have even been looked at by this judge.
Even from Harvard, the odds of me getting an appellate clerkship with a judge who refuses to even look at the #1 grad from Columbia are not even worth thinking about. Once that judge limited the scope to the 200 YHS grads, I'm pretty sure she's not looking for a median grad from a state UG.
At any rate, we are all well aware of the clerking numbers for the top 10 schools, that data is readily available. I'm willing to bet 90% of people who clerk just go to being a lawyer afterwards anyways. If I decided to take out full boat to go to H just because there are a couple judges who have school preferences for clerks, either before or after clerking I'd still be forced to do 5 years indentured servitude in Biglaw. No thanks. If, after a couple of years in a top law firm I decide I want to go into government or go into a small firm, seek a doctorate, or have kids, I don't think adding the extra year of clerking for crappy pay in front of my indentured servitude would have been worth it. It just adds an extra year in front without increasing my ability to seize upon opportunities in that scenario. Not that I think clerking is bad, I just think it is a sacrifice that can be better made if you don't compound it with having to pay off full loans.
I just haven't seen anything that supports any difference between where 90% of people at Columbia end up and 90% of people from Harvard end up as to their 2nd, 3rd, or 4th jobs. The clerkship stat is there, but if they just end up going to the same job practicing law in a v10 law firm as a columbia grad after that, then it the statistic stands for nothing more than the ability to get clerkships, not long term potential. Harvard grads with clerkships are working right along side undistinguished columbia grads who never clerked. My understanding is that people clerk, then often return to the same firm they had summered at 2L (although I read on ATL that there was a firm in LA with a ton of SCOTUS clerks, which, again, I will never work in such a firm even from Yale). Once you are at this high level of acheivement, which is where all Harvard and (just to change schools) Chicago grads stand, people spend so much time trying to differentiate the schools based on what only 10 students from Harvard acheived and 1 from Chicago. At the end of the day, though, it either doesn't matter for 99% of us or, even those who do acheive the higher levels of distinction don't really have anywhere to go after that but to the same careers as the people who were just above median in T6, unless it is teaching. Congratulations, you clerked for SCOTUS! We'd like to offer you a job at wachtell, the number 1 firm in the US, where you can work with 49 Columbia grads, none of whom clerked for the Supreme Court.bahama wrote:
The first job you get affects what options you have for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th job etc. As does the network that you have. So where you start can make a difference 5-10 yrs down the road.
Just so you know you are sort of merging the types of firms that say a grad of HLS with a COA clerkship goes for with the types of firms that an elite CLS grad goes for, they are different types of firms. Most people who clerk for SCOTUS for example are not going to be going to a V10 firm (because outside of Cov and Kirkland these firms are essentially all transactional focused). People who clerk for a COA judge and/or a SCOTUS judge tend to go to litigation type firms (these firms essentially require a federal or better clerkship to even get an after graduation offer. So the clerkship is a LOT more important than what you were making it out to be in your post), where honestly HLS does seriously outdo Columbia (not firms like Wachtell and most of the V10). They also tend to do DOJ and other government jobs.
Your comments do make a lot of sense and do hold weight (when it comes to the clerkship not being worth it, and HLS not being worth it) if you are talking about going for transactional jobs. If you want a job at say Kellog Huber, you better have a clerkship and really you want to be applying with a HLS or YLS JD on your resume, not a CLS one (at extremely elite lit firms like Kellog Huber, Munger, or Robbins Russell you will not being working alongside 49 CLS grads with no clerkship). I think a lot of people don't realize how different lit and transactional are in terms of their school preferences and the fact that they practically require clerkships at the more elite lit firms.
My guess is that you actually are aiming for transactional jobs because that seems to be what almost all of TLS is aiming for (to a point where I'm starting to wonder if people are actually a little confused about legal options, because frankly a lot of the elitism that people on here have is actually overkill if you are only really interested in NYC transactional big law). For that there really isn't much of a difference between HYS and CCN, and even MVP do really well if that's all you care about. Really, if you just want NYC transactional biglaw it does make sense to go to Penn for free over say Stanford sticker, unless you are just that worried about being at the bottom of the class.
The reason you probably haven't seen any difference between where a HLS grad with a top clerkship goes as opposed to a CLS grad with no clerkship, is because you are heavily focusing on transactional firms (probably in NYC). If you were to look at DC and Cali lit firms you would see a BIG difference (and especially when you look at people moving over to the DOJ). Top Harvard grads with a clerkship are not working alongside undistinguished CLS grads when you look at a place like Williams and Connolly. All that said if you are looking at transactional big law (especially in NYC) you are totally right, it does make more sense to take the big cash at CLS rather than Harvard (or big cash at NYU, Chicago, or Penn for that matter too).
