Top Law Schools

Bottom 20% HYS here. 2L OCI. Have a V100 SA.

A T14 is better because you get OCI interviews and they are an opportunity to impress. I know plenty of below median people who have callbacks and offers.

Honestly, be a half interesting person and you'll be fine. Be a weird aspie law student with no social skills and only amazing grades will save you.

okay but HYS is a lot different than the rest of the T14

MrAnon wrote:okay but HYS is a lot different than the rest of the T14

Fucking nuance, how does it work?

Oh come on. The Harvard degree is wayyy more in demand than a northwestern degree or a boalt degree or a Michigan degree. Both the students and the employers know which school is better. The T3 rule all hiring.

Anonymous User wrote:Bottom 20% HYS here. 2L OCI. Have a V100 SA.

A T14 is better because you get OCI interviews and they are an opportunity to impress. I know plenty of below median people who have callbacks and offers.

Honestly, be a half interesting person and you'll be fine. Be a weird aspie law student with no social skills and only amazing grades will save you.

I completely agree with you but I would like to point out that one of the reasons it works like this at Harvard, Yale, and Stanford (besides ridiculous amounts of prestige) is their Honors/Pass grading systems.

It hides the true bottom of the class from employers. You might be bottom 20% but your transcript (all P's i assume) looks the same as someone who is just below median.

MrAnon wrote:Oh come on. The Harvard degree is wayyy more in demand than a northwestern degree or a boalt degree or a Michigan degree. Both the students and the employers know which school is better. The T3 rule all hiring.

But the point is, this level of distinction is something you glossed over before. When you said:

MrAnon wrote:Likewise bottom half of T14 is not something any employer wants. Simply put no employer wants to hire from the bottom of any class. You take what you can get from a spot like that.

I guess you didn't actually mean any when you said "any".

Just to add another voice to the crowd, I'm a bottom 25% CCN-er, no work experience, with two V100 SA offers. I had to hustle to get them, and to be honest I have no idea how other people in my situation are faring, but I'm sure as hell glad I'm at CCN. If I knew in advance I'd be this bad at law school, though, I wouldn't have made the investment... freakin' miracle it all worked out.

Anonymous User wrote:Just to add another voice to the crowd, I'm a bottom 25% CCN-er, no work experience, with two V100 SA offers. I had to hustle to get them, and to be honest I have no idea how other people in my situation are faring, but I'm sure as hell glad I'm at CCN. If I knew in advance I'd be this bad at law school, though, I wouldn't have made the investment... freakin' miracle it all worked out.

Uh, you don't have a job offer yet. Those grades will be right back in front of the hiring committee when they sit down to assess the number of offers they can or desire to give. This isn't 2007. A summer position DOES NOT equal post-grad employment, and all these 2Ls shitting rainbows would do well to remember it.

JusticeHarlan wrote:

MrAnon wrote:okay but HYS is a lot different than the rest of the T14

Fucking nuance, how does it work?

The people posting in this thread / reading this thread likely don't need to take HYS into consideration.

ITE8NY wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Just to add another voice to the crowd, I'm a bottom 25% CCN-er, no work experience, with two V100 SA offers. I had to hustle to get them, and to be honest I have no idea how other people in my situation are faring, but I'm sure as hell glad I'm at CCN. If I knew in advance I'd be this bad at law school, though, I wouldn't have made the investment... freakin' miracle it all worked out.

Uh, you don't have a job offer yet. Those grades will be right back in front of the hiring committee when they sit down to assess the number of offers they can or desire to give. This isn't 2007. A summer position DOES NOT equal post-grad employment, and all these 2Ls shitting rainbows would do well to remember it.

Wouldn't it depend what firm he's summering at?

If they have a history of having almost no no offers...

JusticeHarlan wrote: Well, right now you can control a few things; your LSAT, for one. If you do some soul searching and really do want to be a lawyer, your goal is to rock that test. You're not in too deep yet, and no need to be until you have some idea where you stand.

"Really do want to be a lawyer" is such bullshit. 99% of law students (really, 99 out of 100) have no fucking clue what it means to practice law.

And as for the offer rate, firms' offer rates have been very unpredictable in the last few years. Some of the firms at the very top are snapping back to 100% offer rates, but in most markets and for most firms, it's less certain. If you're at one of the NYC or Chicago firms that ATL has reported as having 100% offer rates this last summer, then you've probably made the cut--bad grades or not. But that's going to be an extreme minority of T14 median students.

shoeshine wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Bottom 20% HYS here. 2L OCI. Have a V100 SA.

A T14 is better because you get OCI interviews and they are an opportunity to impress. I know plenty of below median people who have callbacks and offers.

Honestly, be a half interesting person and you'll be fine. Be a weird aspie law student with no social skills and only amazing grades will save you.

I completely agree with you but I would like to point out that one of the reasons it works like this at Harvard, Yale, and Stanford (besides ridiculous amounts of prestige) is their Honors/Pass grading systems.

It hides the true bottom of the class from employers. You might be bottom 20% but your transcript (all P's i assume) looks the same as someone who is just below median.

Nope - bottom 20% means at least 1 LP.

ITE8NY wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Just to add another voice to the crowd, I'm a bottom 25% CCN-er, no work experience, with two V100 SA offers. I had to hustle to get them, and to be honest I have no idea how other people in my situation are faring, but I'm sure as hell glad I'm at CCN. If I knew in advance I'd be this bad at law school, though, I wouldn't have made the investment... freakin' miracle it all worked out.

Uh, you don't have a job offer yet. Those grades will be right back in front of the hiring committee when they sit down to assess the number of offers they can or desire to give. This isn't 2007. A summer position DOES NOT equal post-grad employment, and all these 2Ls shitting rainbows would do well to remember it.

Agreed. But 2L is another opportunity to improve grades. And the summer is another chance to actually do good work.

Yes, you can't predict. But there is no real logic to the notion that you'd be offered a SA but dinged for poor grades unless the class had to be cut. FWIW, my SA is at a firm in a large market with typically 100% offer rates.

ITE8NY wrote:

JusticeHarlan wrote: Well, right now you can control a few things; your LSAT, for one. If you do some soul searching and really do want to be a lawyer, your goal is to rock that test. You're not in too deep yet, and no need to be until you have some idea where you stand.

"Really do want to be a lawyer" is such bullshit. 99% of law students (really, 99 out of 100) have no fucking clue what it means to practice law.

Probably true in most cases, but, again, I think 99% is hyperbole. Far greater than 1% at my school were paralegals or something similar where they could be around lawyers all day.

It's not that I disagree with the likes of you or MrAnon about how bad things are, I just think you do a poor job of articulating that point. That's why I think nuance is helpful, and hyperbole (everyone below median at T14s are screwed, 99% of people have no idea what the practice of law is, etc.) detracts from your credibility.

Bottom line: the odds are that going to law school is a bad idea. The fact that you're posting on this site asking about it, however, is a good sign. Are you a sadistic psycho willing to change basic things about yourself if it means doing better? If yes, you have a good shot at doing well in school.

johndhi wrote:Are you a sadistic psycho willing to change basic things about yourself if it means doing better?

Yes, and I did.

ITE8NY wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Just to add another voice to the crowd, I'm a bottom 25% CCN-er, no work experience, with two V100 SA offers. I had to hustle to get them, and to be honest I have no idea how other people in my situation are faring, but I'm sure as hell glad I'm at CCN. If I knew in advance I'd be this bad at law school, though, I wouldn't have made the investment... freakin' miracle it all worked out.

Uh, you don't have a job offer yet. Those grades will be right back in front of the hiring committee when they sit down to assess the number of offers they can or desire to give. This isn't 2007. A summer position DOES NOT equal post-grad employment, and all these 2Ls shitting rainbows would do well to remember it.

No.

Very few firms, especially in the big markets, are no-offering anyone these days. More importantly, no-offers are almost always based on either a terrible personality that slipped through the interview process or something really stupid/incompetent done over the summer. No firms no-offers its summer associates on the basis of grades.*

*With the caveat that you could get no-offered if you seriously fuck up as a 2L or 3L, like fail a class or plagiarize your note or something.

^^

Agreed. This is stupid. It's not 2008. Stop the doom and gloom and get mass mailing.

its not 2008? Its worse!

MrAnon wrote:its not 2008? Its worse!

Look, no it's not! People are getting ridiculous. The problem with the 2008-2010 meltdown was it's unpredictability. People were being deferred, classes were being cut, people were being stealthed and no offered. Entire classes. Firms have not dramatically increased class sizes from that time. But now they don't need to stealth people because the work is slowly returning and they are actually being quite cautious in hiring.

Most firms have returned to low no-offer rates. Most firms are doing some hiring. It's not 2006 but it is certainly not 2008.

Saying "many firms" have gone to 100% offers says nothing. The only firms that have returned to ~100% offer rates are the big NYC firms with worldwide reputations and a following on ATL. Many markets never had 100% offer rates, and those only got worse recently. Firms with small summer classes can conjure up a "100%" offer rate through cold offers and conversations that occur before offers are officially given. They can also make an "offer" of a job that doesn't begin for over a year out of law school. Did you know those are considered "offers," for NALP? They are. Those deferred offers have a way of disappearing, too, which is exactly what the firms want.

If you're in at one of the relatively few huge firms with huge classes that get a mention on ATL, then, okay, you're probably safe--good for you for surviving the gauntlet. But otherwise, a 2L offer does not equal employment.

The original thread was about grades. The role of grades in this equation. Yes, people can be no offered and yes I am talking primarily about the big law firms (no sh*t). Tiny firms in secondary markets are never the default model for biglaw assumptions.

The original question was whether good grades at a T1 or lower grades at a t-14 have better odds? Some people pointed out that lower grades at a t14 had still gotten SAs. It is now claimed that this does not guarantee a post ls offer. Obviously. But the claim being made is that there is some much radically higher chance of a no offer to an SA with lower grades. Higher, yes. Some sort of different category where they are very likely to be no offered, I don't really believe.

I haven't seen any evidence of this (even on ATL gossip) and I'm happy to be pointed to incidents of this happening. All of the things mentioned above (deferrals, cold offers, hiring trends) we know about because they were extensively reported on. So please speak up.

Honestly, here's my question: You have some large firms who are reported on by ATL. They have an opportunity to cut the SA class ITE without any criticism. Their class is a fraction of what it was before ITE. It makes no practical difference to anyone (including those who know and affect their reputation) whether their summer class is 29 or 30 summers. A larger SA class COSTS THEM MORE MONEY. No-offering harms their reputation. Yet apparently, there is some conspiracy to give SA offers to students with lower grades in order to no offer them later (with cold offers and deferrals)... for what reason exactly?

EDIT: I think some people on this thread are sore that we are spoiling their doom and gloom narrative and are going to insist regardless that we are screwed. I know - the offer letter I received was addressed to me mistakenly and my callback was a bet between two partners. They're planning to no-offer me because it's too late to correct the mistake. In fact, I won't even have a desk this summer. I'll have to work in a dog bed in the corner of a partner's office and drink rainwater and beg for scraps. True story. Welcome to BIGLAW 2011.