2011 Top 50 Go-To Law Schools Forum

[mst]

TINTCR. These rankings are extremely helpful if you're Biglaw or bust and plan on entering law school in 2007.

i see what you did there.

[Marionberry]

I'm not even saying that the rankings aren't valuable, I'm saying that everyone's assertions that one school is better than another, or that one school is in decline or ascent, or whatever, is meaningless. No one has enough data to make conclusive statements about school's placement abilities that are any more specific than what the rankings have given us.

Also...

Nobody really has any fucking idea what they're talking about. Take the rankings for what they are, but don't try to read too much into them. Out of my mouth comes lots of caca

FTFY

You really used the anonymous function just to talk shit?

[PomasThynchon]

I'm not even saying that the rankings aren't valuable, I'm saying that everyone's assertions that one school is better than another, or that one school is in decline or ascent, or whatever, is meaningless. No one has enough data to make conclusive statements about school's placement abilities that are any more specific than what the rankings have given us. The caca will just not stop pouring out my mouth

[rman1201]

I'm not even saying that the rankings aren't valuable, I'm saying that everyone's assertions that one school is better than another, or that one school is in decline or ascent, or whatever, is meaningless. No one has enough data to make conclusive statements about school's placement abilities that are any more specific than what the rankings have given us.

That's pretty much the non-ironic version of my post. There are just too many factors (what % goes into Gov't, PI, non-NLJ 250 regional firms, etc) to make any sort of meaningful speculation, in addition to this being published during very awkward times with no reason to believe next year's or the following year's data will look even remotely similar to c/o 2010 data.

[Lawl Shcool]

I haven't read this entire thread but wanted to at Cal showing up despite all the recent TLS hate.

EDIT: also if someone wanted to make this more useful they would average the past however many years the NLJ data has been available.

[PomasThynchon]

I haven't read this entire thread but wanted to at Calca showing up despite all the recent TLS hate.

EDIT: also if someone wanted to make this more useful they would average the past however many years the NLJ data has been available.

[thesealocust]

Dammit so I can't financially justify going to Cornell at sticker?

It depends on your risk/reward calculus. I personally think C/O 2013 will be in decent shape at least within T14 (back over 50% NLJ250 placement), with C/O 2014 being somewhat better. It won't be 2006, 2007 when below median people from CCN were getting V10 offers, but it might be as good as C/O 2004 (did OCI in the 2001-2002 recession) when MVPNDNC placed in the 50-55% range.

I'm curious where you're getting this CCN grouping from since in every year they've (NYU) placed worse than at least one of MVPBDN and last year worse than 3 of them. In addition, they've never placed as well or better than CC.

Dude, give the NYU thing a rest, please. The post you're attacking isn't even about placement in general, it's about V10 firm placement. And CCN is absolutely a 'tier' with respect to top firm placement.

The V10, every year, contains 7-8 enormous NYC law firms that have HUGE biases in favor of NYU. Those are Wachtell, Cravath, S&C, Skadden, DPW, Simpson Thacher, Cleary, and Weil. Here is some hard data about why NYU wipes the fucking floor with MVPB et al.

Cliff notes version: yes, Columbia places a bit better than NYU. These data prove that. NYU also has two to three times the number of attorneys in V10 firms than Penn or UVA. You could try to argue that UVA is self selecting away from NYC, but no way in hell that holds for Penn - and NYU still wipes the floor with Penn.

Firm / Current Attorneys:

WLRK:
-------
Harvard: 46
Columbia: 47
NYU: 31
Penn: 16
UVA: 2

Cravath:
-------
Harvard: 78
Columbia: 96
NYU: 45
Penn: 30
UVA: 8

S&C:
-------
Harvard: 118
Columbia: 96
NYU: 70
Penn: 34
UVA: 37

Skadden:
-------
Harvard: 3 pages worth of results
Columbia: 3 pages worth of results
NYU: 3 pages worth of results
Penn: 1 page of results
Virginia: 1 page of results

DPW:
-------
Harvard: 164
Columbia: 121
NYU: 96
Penn: 24
Virginia: 25

STB (NYC Office only)
-------
Harvard: 73
Columbia: 94
NYU: 74
Penn: 48
UVA: 41

Cleary:
-------
Harvard: 157
Columbia: 138
NYU: 142
Penn: 36
UVA: 10

Weil (may include undegrad / be quite inaccurate)
-------
Harvard: 90
Columbia: 120
NYU: 114
Penn: 91
VA: 50

[PomasThynchon]

Dammit so I can't financially justify going to Cornell at sticker?

It depends on your risk/reward calculus. I personally think C/O 2013 will be in decent shape at least within T14 (back over 50% NLJ250 placement), with C/O 2014 being somewhat better. It won't be 2006, 2007 when below median people from CCN were getting V10 offers, but it might be as good as C/O 2004 (did OCI in the 2001-2002 recession) when MVPNDNC placed in the 50-55% range.

I'm curious where you're getting this CCN grouping from since in every year they've (NYU) placed worse than at least one of MVPBDN and last year worse than 3 of them. In addition, they've never placed as well or better than CC.

Dude, give the NYU thing a rest, please. The post you're attacking isn't even about placement in general, it's about V10 firm placement.

The V10, every year, contains 7-8 enormous NYC law firms that have HUGE biases in favor of NYU. Those are Wachtell, Cravath, S&C, Skadden, DPW, Simpson Thacher, Cleary, and Weil. Here is some hard data about why NYU wipes the fucking floor with MVPB et al.

Firm / Current Attorneys:

WLRK:
-------
Harvard: 46
Columbia: 47
NYU: 31
Penn: 16
UVA: 2

Cravath:
-------
Harvard: 78
Columbia: 96
NYU: 45
Penn: 30
UVA: 8

S&C:
-------
Harvard: 118
Columbia: 96
NYU: 70
Penn: 34
UVA: 37

Skadden:
-------
Harvard: 3 pages worth of results
Columbia: 3 pages worth of results
NYU: 3 pages worth of results
Penn: 1 page of results
Virginia: 1 page of results

DPW:
-------
Harvard: 164
Columbia: 121
NYU: 96
Penn: 24
Virginia: 25

STB (NYC Office only)
-------
Harvard: 73
Columbia: 94
NYU: 74
Penn: 48
UVA: 41

Cleary:
-------
Harvard: 157
Columbia: 138
NYU: 142
Penn: 36
UVA:

Weil (may include undegrad / be quite inaccurate)
-------
Harvard: 90
Columbia: 120
NYU: 114
Penn: 91
VA: 50

[showNprove]

The 2011 OCI data, which has CLS and NYU tied at ~70% placement out of OCI. Also, the scads of NYU grads at every V10 I've seen the summer class lists for.

By my estimates, that would result in about a 50% NLJ250 number in two years.

Start with ~70% OCI placement. I'd subtract for (a) non-NLJ250 OCI hiring, (b) less-than-perfect offer rate, (c) skipping out for clerkships, (d) skipping out for PI/gov't. For (a) and (b) combined, maybe subtract 6%--although it could certainly be higher. For (c) and (d) combined, maybe 15%.

I'd add a little bit for non-OCI NLJ250 hiring and for limited 3L hiring (maybe 2-3% total).

With that, we may be looking at a 50-55% NLJ250 placement for NYU's C/O 2012.

[drylo]

Should I be totally put off of IU Bloomington because of this (not in top 50!), or is there a reasonable explanation?

Hypothesis: Some Indiana firms might be medium law, but not NLJ250.

You can test it by looking up Indiana firms on NALP, and seeing if their entire firm (all offices) add up to less than 160 lawyers, but still pays six figures.

I bet you won't find many. But it's a possibility.

Yeah, the only excuse (and I'm not saying I buy it) is that they are pretty upfront that they don't focus on biglaw placement because, well, they aren't going to get it. Supposedly their focus on medium, small, government, etc. has garnered good results for them, but I can't testify to it. that's just the way they sell it. Remember that their major markets seem to be Indianapolis and Louisville, where you might make market but probably won't be NLJ250.

I bet even in Indie Indy and Louisville most market paying firms are NLJ250

Why do people insist on talking when they have absolutely no idea what they are talking about?

Look at NALP, dude. And if Indy is anything like some other secondary markets I know of, then it is entirely possible, if not (very) likely, that there are market-paying firms that aren't on NALP. I didn't even bother to look at Louisville because a quick look at a few Indy firms confirmed what I suspected to be true--i.e., that you were just making stuff up.

[PomasThynchon]

The 2011 OCI data, which has CLS and NYU tied at ~70% placement out of OCI. Also, the scads of NYU grads at every V10 I've seen the summer class lists for.

By my estimates, that would result in about a 50% NLJ250 number in two years.

Start with ~70% OCI placement. I'd subtract for (a) non-NLJ250 OCI hiring, (b) less-than-perfect offer rate, (c) skipping out for clerkships, (d) skipping out for PI/gov't. For (a) and (b) combined, maybe subtract 6%--although it could certainly be higher. For (c) and (d) combined, maybe 15%.

I'd add a little bit for non-OCI NLJ250 hiring and for limited 3L hiring (maybe 2-3% total).

With that, we may be looking at a 50-55% NLJ250 placement for NYU's C/O 2012[/s].

[BruceWayne]

The 2011 OCI data, which has CLS and NYU tied at ~70% placement out of OCI. Also, the scads of NYU grads at every V10 I've seen the summer class lists for.

What 2011 OCI "data"? Are you referring to released nlj statistics or statistics officially released from the schools? Are you talking about the autoadmit "data" that's been cited frequently on TLS? If you are talking about the former can you post the links? In addition, if you are discussing the former, since none of the other schools have released any data how do you know that they have worse placement (as you are alluding to)?

[09042014]

In years past damn near every t14 student could get big law unless they were really near the bottom of the class. The placement difference wasn't NLJ % but how good of firms you placed into. CNN would place 10-20% more into V10 firms.

Now that there aren't as many big law SA spots available that placement difference has turned into more people getting SAs.

My guess is next years nlj will be

CCN and harvard in the low 50's

MVPDNC in the 40's

[rayiner]

It depends on your risk/reward calculus. I personally think C/O 2013 will be in decent shape at least within T14 (back over 50% NLJ250 placement), with C/O 2014 being somewhat better. It won't be 2006, 2007 when below median people from CCN were getting V10 offers, but it might be as good as C/O 2004 (did OCI in the 2001-2002 recession) when MVPNDNC placed in the 50-55% range.

I'm curious where you're getting this CCN grouping from since in every year they've (NYU) placed worse than at least one of MVPBDN and last year worse than 3 of them. In addition, they've never placed as well or better than CC.

Dude, give the NYU thing a rest, please. The post you're attacking isn't even about placement in general, it's about V10 firm placement.

The V10, every year, contains 7-8 enormous NYC law firms that have HUGE biases in favor of NYU. Those are Wachtell, Cravath, S&C, Skadden, DPW, Simpson Thacher, Cleary, and Weil. Here is some hard data about why NYU wipes the fucking floor with MVPB et al.

Firm / Current Attorneys:

WLRK:
-------
Harvard: 46
Columbia: 47
NYU: 31
Penn: 16
UVA: 2

Cravath:
-------
Harvard: 78
Columbia: 96
NYU: 45
Penn: 30
UVA: 8

S&C:
-------
Harvard: 118
Columbia: 96
NYU: 70
Penn: 34
UVA: 37

Skadden:
-------
Harvard: 3 pages worth of results
Columbia: 3 pages worth of results
NYU: 3 pages worth of results
Penn: 1 page of results
Virginia: 1 page of results

DPW:
-------
Harvard: 164
Columbia: 121
NYU: 96
Penn: 24
Virginia: 25

STB (NYC Office only)
-------
Harvard: 73
Columbia: 94
NYU: 74
Penn: 48
UVA: 41

Cleary:
-------
Harvard: 157
Columbia: 138
NYU: 142
Penn: 36
UVA:

Weil (may include undegrad / be quite inaccurate)
-------
Harvard: 90
Columbia: 120
NYU: 114
Penn: 91
VA: 50

Real mature BruceWayne.

[rayiner]

The 2011 OCI data, which has CLS and NYU tied at ~70% placement out of OCI. Also, the scads of NYU grads at every V10 I've seen the summer class lists for.

By my estimates, that would result in about a 50% NLJ250 number in two years.

Start with ~70% OCI placement. I'd subtract for (a) non-NLJ250 OCI hiring, (b) less-than-perfect offer rate, (c) skipping out for clerkships, (d) skipping out for PI/gov't. For (a) and (b) combined, maybe subtract 6%--although it could certainly be higher. For (c) and (d) combined, maybe 15%.

I'd add a little bit for non-OCI NLJ250 hiring and for limited 3L hiring (maybe 2-3% total).

With that, we may be looking at a 50-55% NLJ250 placement for NYU's C/O 2012.

I can totally see that being the case.

[rayiner]

The 2011 OCI data, which has CLS and NYU tied at ~70% placement out of OCI. Also, the scads of NYU grads at every V10 I've seen the summer class lists for.

What 2011 OCI "data"? Are you referring to released nlj statistics or statistics officially released from the schools? Are you talking about the autoadmit "data" that's been cited frequently on TLS? If you are talking about the former can you post the links? In addition, if you are discussing the former, since none of the other schools have released any data how do you know that they have worse placement (as you are alluding to)?

Data has been leaking out of OCS-es for quite awhile now. Concrete data exists for CLS, NYU, Cornell, Duke, and NU.

[FiveSermon]

How big are the differences in pay from top top firms vs middling biglaw firms?

[rayiner]

How big are the differences in pay from top top firms vs middling biglaw firms?

The only pay difference is re: whether your firm pays NYC bonus or not, but offer rate during the recession was markedly correlated with Vault rank: http://abovethelaw.com/2010/04/summer-o ... 5-are-hot/

BTW, that offer data is from C/O 2010, the class in question. It shows clearly where a lot of the discrepancy comes from:

Most of the NYC V10 had 95%+ offer rates, with the sole exception of Weil. Even Weil had a 90%+ offer rate in NYC - it's overall was dragged down by its other offices (less than 50% in Silicon Valley).

The top Chicago firms in comparison, Kirkland, Sidley, and Mayer, had a 78% average offer rate. The top West-coast firms (Gibson, Latham, OMM had 88% offer rate. The top southern firm on the list (K&S) had a 60% offer rate (and Alston's wasn't any better).

[BruceWayne]

Data has been leaking out of OCS-es for quite awhile now. Concrete data exists for CLS, NYU, Cornell, Duke, and NU.

I'm not finding it on google. Where is it? Or again, are we talking about the OCS "data" that's been "available" on/from autoadmit for a while? I know that that was "leaked" some time ago. But I haven't been able to find anything else.

[thesealocust]

Data has been leaking out of OCS-es for quite awhile now. Concrete data exists for CLS, NYU, Cornell, Duke, and NU.

I'm not finding it on google. Where is it? Or again, are we talking about the OCS "data" that's been "available" on/from autoadmit for a while? I know that that was "leaked" some time ago. But I haven't been able to find anything else.

Most schools either release or make available a substantial amount of data about OCI to their rising 2L classes. Most schools express in strict terms that all information is confidential and not to be distributed, for some good and some bad reasons. Many 2Ls/3Ls on this board have been in contact with each other during OCI and have seen spreadsheets and heard reports from various schools (Rayiner and I included).

You will not find anything on google. Very little has ever been publicly posted.

Anyway, plenty of proxies exist. Searching firm websites will give you a very good sense about firm popularity / hiring preferences. Almost all large firms have searchable attorney databases.

[rayiner]

Data has been leaking out of OCS-es for quite awhile now. Concrete data exists for CLS, NYU, Cornell, Duke, and NU.

I'm not finding it on google. Where is it? Or again, are we talking about the OCS "data" that's been "available" on/from autoadmit for a while? I know that that was "leaked" some time ago. But I haven't been able to find anything else.

The Cornell data was posted to ATL. The Duke data (similar) is being circulated as a spreadsheet. The NYU data is also in a spreadsheet. The NU data was disclosed in town hall meetings at the school.

[BruceWayne]

Most schools either release or make available a substantial amount of data about OCI to their rising 2L classes. Most schools express in strict terms that all information is confidential and not to be distributed, for some good and some bad reasons. Many 2Ls/3Ls on this board have been in contact with each other during OCI and have seen spreadsheets and heard reports from various schools (Rayiner and I included).

You will not find anything on google. Very little has ever been publicly posted.

Anyway, plenty of proxies exist. Searching firm websites will give you a very good sense about firm popularity / hiring preferences. Almost all large firms have searchable attorney databases.

It's funny that you mention that. I've done that, and it tends to quickly display 2 things.

H and Y are ahead of everyone nationwide, with Stanford being pretty close.

C and C seem to be a little better than everyone other than the aforementioned

All the rest of the top 14 seem to be about the same except that they are stronger in their home markets.

Firm searches tend to show that the TLS tier thing is over done: basically it looks like HYS to a lesser extent CC and then everyone else.

[BruceWayne]

Data has been leaking out of OCS-es for quite awhile now. Concrete data exists for CLS, NYU, Cornell, Duke, and NU.

I'm not finding it on google. Where is it? Or again, are we talking about the OCS "data" that's been "available" on/from autoadmit for a while? I know that that was "leaked" some time ago. But I haven't been able to find anything else.

The Cornell data was posted to ATL. The Duke data (similar) is being circulated as a spreadsheet. The NYU data is also in a spreadsheet. The NU data was disclosed in town hall meetings at the school.

If it's so readily available( and reliable) then why hasn't it been put on Google? People are not that honest nowadays or the school's requests to be enough. In addition, how do you know that these numbers are better than the schools that don't/haven't released data (like UVA, HYS, Penn, Boalt etc.)?

[jcunni5]

liff notes version: yes, Columbia places a bit better than NYU. These data prove that. NYU also has two to three times the number of attorneys in V10 firms than Penn or UVA. You could try to argue that UVA is self selecting away from NYC, but no way in hell that holds for Penn - and NYU still wipes the floor with Penn.

in all fairness if you adjust for class size, NYU may come out ahead of Penn but i wouldn't say it's wiping the floor with them from those numbers

[rayiner]

Data has been leaking out of OCS-es for quite awhile now. Concrete data exists for CLS, NYU, Cornell, Duke, and NU.

I'm not finding it on google. Where is it? Or again, are we talking about the OCS "data" that's been "available" on/from autoadmit for a while? I know that that was "leaked" some time ago. But I haven't been able to find anything else.

The Cornell data was posted to ATL. The Duke data (similar) is being circulated as a spreadsheet. The NYU data is also in a spreadsheet. The NU data was disclosed in town hall meetings at the school.

If it's so readily available( and reliable) then why hasn't it been put on Google? People are not that honest nowadays or the school's requests to be enough. In addition, how do you know that these numbers are better than the schools that don't/haven't released data (like UVA, HYS, Penn, Boalt etc.)?

What do you mean "put on Google"? Google just indexes websites. It'll crawl TLS, but forum posts don't tend to end up high on the ranking b/c nobody links to them. And nobody is going to put up a website with data their OCI told to keep under wraps.

As for Penn, etc, my point isn't that CCN is a cluster based on the data showing NYU and CLS having similar placement. I use "HYSCCN" because it's a known benchmark right now, not to imply that Penn, etc, didn't do as well.