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Re: Why is Biglaw the only financially viable option?

Posted: Fri Dec 10, 2010 5:23 pm
by 09042014
Unless you are taking about a T14 vs a TTT I doubt top 10% at one school equals top 50% at another.

And even if it was getting top 10% would still be risky as fuck. TTTs have hard curves and getting a C on an exam because you missed a huge issue sinks you below top 10%.

Being unemployed because you forgot vested remainder subject to open is subject to the Rule against perpituties is fucking insane.

Re: Why is Biglaw the only financially viable option?

Posted: Fri Dec 10, 2010 10:20 pm
by XxSpyKEx
ToTransferOrNot wrote:
sperry wrote:
SBL wrote:
nealric wrote:
It seems like the T25 types like WUSTL, Emory, GW got hit the hardest by the recession. They were semi-national, so never got in as well with the good-ol boy network in their local markets. But they were also the first schools the big national firms dropped off their OCI lists when they needed to cut class sizes. As a result, they seem to have gone from placing 30-40% in biglaw to placing 5%-10%. By contrast, most of the lower T14 went from placing 50-60% to placing 25%-35%. The local T2's went from placing 5% to placing 1-2%- not nearly as dramatic of a shift in terms of the numbers affected.

I'm just pulling out numbers off the top of my head, but I think they are pretty good ballpark figures. Bottom line: if you can't swing T14 ITE, there may not be that much advantage for attending middling T1 schools over the local schools.
IDK. I attend a middling T1 school, and it seems like anyone in the top-25% or so had a shot at a firm job. That's not to say everyone with those grades got one, but you definitely didn't need to be top-10% to land a firm job through OCI. By contrast, I'd be incredibly surprised if more than 5% of kids from the local T2 (in my case Santa Clara) has a shot at those jobs. The difference between 5% and 25%, all things being equal, is pretty substantial even if 25% ain't great.

It depends on the quality of student at each school though. At my state's best law school, which is not a particularly great law school, the top 10% has a reasonable shot at very good jobs that pay $100k, while top 2-3% has a chance at national big law. By contrast, the 50-60% of my current school will land big law, but it is much easier to land in that top 10% than it is to land in the top 50% at my school, and it's easy to see why. Way less than 10% of people at my state's school would have had any shot at all to get into the school I'm at now. Pretty much anyone at my current school would be on full ride at the state school.
God damnit, not this idiocy again.
+10000000. Seriously, how many times is this stupid ass argument going to be played through on TLS? And it always ends the same.

Re: Why is Biglaw the only financially viable option?

Posted: Fri Dec 10, 2010 10:52 pm
by irishman86
nealric wrote:
Gunner Clerkship Courses:
Admin
Corporations
Fed Courts
Evidence
Securities Regulation
Income Tax
I don't think Corporations, Evidence, and Tax I really belong there. Almost everyone (at least at Georgetown) took Corporations and Evidence. The subject matter of Tax I is pretty basic. Upper level tax classes can be pretty brutal- but the problem there tends to be the ringers (i.e. CPAs taking Income Tax Accounting).
I have CPAs in my basic income tax course...and the remainder seemed to have majored in a science or business.

Re: Why is Biglaw the only financially viable option?

Posted: Fri Dec 10, 2010 10:53 pm
by ToTransferOrNot
irishman86 wrote:
nealric wrote:
Gunner Clerkship Courses:
Admin
Corporations
Fed Courts
Evidence
Securities Regulation
Income Tax
I don't think Corporations, Evidence, and Tax I really belong there. Almost everyone (at least at Georgetown) took Corporations and Evidence. The subject matter of Tax I is pretty basic. Upper level tax classes can be pretty brutal- but the problem there tends to be the ringers (i.e. CPAs taking Income Tax Accounting).
I have CPAs in my basic income tax course...and the remainder seemed to have majored in a science or business.
QFBottom10% (Of your tax class. If you're not in that group of people.)

Actually, in the tax classes I've taken, the people with accounting/business backgrounds have sucked it up. Being able to crunch the numbers doesn't mean you do the law aprt well - but they come in overconfident because of their background.

Re: Why is Biglaw the only financially viable option?

Posted: Fri Dec 10, 2010 11:01 pm
by irishman86
ToTransferOrNot wrote:
irishman86 wrote:
nealric wrote:
Gunner Clerkship Courses:
Admin
Corporations
Fed Courts
Evidence
Securities Regulation
Income Tax
I don't think Corporations, Evidence, and Tax I really belong there. Almost everyone (at least at Georgetown) took Corporations and Evidence. The subject matter of Tax I is pretty basic. Upper level tax classes can be pretty brutal- but the problem there tends to be the ringers (i.e. CPAs taking Income Tax Accounting).
I have CPAs in my basic income tax course...and the remainder seemed to have majored in a science or business.
QFBottom10% (Of your tax class. If you're not in that group of people.)

Actually, in the tax classes I've taken, the people with accounting/business backgrounds have sucked it up. Being able to crunch the numbers doesn't mean you do the law aprt well - but they come in overconfident because of their background.
I have an econ/math background, but I'm not feeling too good. I have people who went to MIT and majored in math in my classes, who probably think this material is a joke. (Not to mention, LLMs who worked in tax.) True, it's not about crunching numbers, it's mainly statutory analysis...we'll see how the exam goes, but I definitely don't think people are on equal footing in this class, unlike in 1L courses.

Re: Why is Biglaw the only financially viable option?

Posted: Fri Dec 10, 2010 11:04 pm
by ToTransferOrNot
Experienced LLMs are the best curve food known to law school, tbh.

Re: Why is Biglaw the only financially viable option?

Posted: Sat Dec 11, 2010 2:39 am
by sperry
XxSpyKEx wrote: +10000000. Seriously, how many times is this stupid ass argument going to be played through on TLS? And it always ends the same.

I'm talking about a specific state school, not a range of schools. The dynamics are a lot different there then at a place like Fordham or American or GW that is full of a bunch of gunners who want big law and/ or to transfer to the T14.

Re: Why is Biglaw the only financially viable option?

Posted: Sat Dec 11, 2010 9:44 am
by RVP11
Tax, Corps, and SecReg are not "gunner clerkship" courses where I am.

Evidence, Legislation (Statutory Interpretation), Federal Courts, and Conflict of Laws are.

Re: Why is Biglaw the only financially viable option?

Posted: Sat Dec 11, 2010 9:47 am
by A&O
Tax, Corps, and SecReg are not "gunner clerkship" courses where I am.
My rationale for including those courses is that virtually everyone takes them, clerkship gunning or not.

Anyways, I think we can all agree that these are all doctrinally difficult courses. If not conceptually difficult, they are competitively difficult. One or the other.

But one can avoid all of these in law school, take seminars and "Law & xyz" courses, and easily end up in the 10%. That's my point.

I forget how everyone here is so ADD in threads (though, to be sure, even if the case is closed on what courses are difficult, we're still debating on tangent not super relevant to the thread).

Re: Why is Biglaw the only financially viable option?

Posted: Sat Dec 11, 2010 11:07 am
by ck3
nealric wrote:
I don't think going to a school like UNC, Bama, or Tulane means you have only a 5-10% shot at a market paying job.
It depends on what you mean by a "market paying job". I understand that biglaw is a nebulous term, but I would define it as a firm that pays 160k market, or a slightly under market branch office of a firm that pays 160k in major markets. I doubt more than a tiny handful of people from Alabama get such jobs. I really wouldn't consider a firm paying 90k in Alabama to be biglaw.


It depends upon what you mean by "financially viable" also. I've lived in the South all my life and I'm over 40 so I do know a little about the cost of living. 90K in Birmingham may not be considered "big law", but, if you are willing to live in Birmingham, it will probably give you a good deal of left over funds to apply toward your loans. You might not have as much disposable income as you would making 160K in NY or DC, but considering the difference in cost of living, it would still be enough to pay off your loans in a reasonable time frame.

So the 160K job in the big city would still be preferable financially but I would definitely say that if you live in Birmingham or Atlanta and are starting out at 90K you will be fine paying off your 150K in loans over 10 years because in Birmingham, or Atlanta, or Nashville, you can live very nicely off a salary as low as 50K per year. Also, if you are in these citieis and starting at 90K at a law firm, within the first 5 years you will probably be significantly above 100K and this definitely makes this a financially viable option.

However, having said all that, I don't know how many law firm jobs are available at 90K in Birmingham or Atlanta or how likely any person would be to obtain one coming from any particular school. So, it could be that 90K in Birmingham will allow you to pay off your loans and live pretty comfortably but it also might be very hard to come by that 90K job in Birmingham.

Re: Why is Biglaw the only financially viable option?

Posted: Sat Dec 11, 2010 8:56 pm
by General Tso
ck3 wrote: However, having said all that, I don't know how many law firm jobs are available at 90K in Birmingham or Atlanta
I dunno...like 3 or 4 maybe?

Re: Why is Biglaw the only financially viable option?

Posted: Sat Dec 11, 2010 9:30 pm
by Aqualibrium
General Tso wrote:
ck3 wrote: However, having said all that, I don't know how many law firm jobs are available at 90K in Birmingham or Atlanta
I dunno...like 3 or 4 maybe?
Incorrect. Please stop being ridiculous.

Re: Why is Biglaw the only financially viable option?

Posted: Sat Dec 11, 2010 10:29 pm
by General Tso
Aqualibrium wrote:
General Tso wrote:
ck3 wrote: However, having said all that, I don't know how many law firm jobs are available at 90K in Birmingham or Atlanta
I dunno...like 3 or 4 maybe?
Incorrect. Please stop being ridiculous.
Well, I was being sarcastic. But from the OCI threads it seems ATL is a total bloodbath, one of the weakest markets in the country right now. And Birmingham was probably never big to begin with.