Top Law Schools

share your observations.

T25 (BU/BC) here

no formal statistics (I wonder if they will ever be available) but my guess is that around 60% got full-time/permanent positions

Most law review people do great: biglaw, nice midlaw, PMF programs, state supreme court clerkships. I know of one person who got nothing. There could be 1-2 more.

Some journal people have not done so well. I know about 8-10 people without meaningful employment - by meaningful employment, I discount graduate fellowship or part-time employment sponsored by the school.

People who managed to swing honors - even without journals - are doing great/ fairly well. I know a few got biglaw as 3Ls, other have settled in mid-law or mid-law paying law-related jobs (e.g. compliance/in-house)

Middling people with no journals: Girls with quasi-technical backgrounds did far better than guys. Girls with just college degrees in science got patent law jobs but I know aguy with a science phd has not got anything yet. This was shocking to me.

middling people with strong banking and accounting backgrounds tended to do well also.

Sounds about right. Very few I know at median had a job upon graduation except one guy with a science background. Another girl I know at median landed a midlaw job. She chalks it up to her hustling (mass mailing, networking, etc.). Who knows. Flagship journal people do well. Secondary journals aren't as great a boost.

at one point I thought secondary journals with average grades=no journal with good grades (top 1/3/cum laude)

this does not seem to be the case. grades>>>>> secondary journals.

Anonymous User wrote: this does not seem to be the case. grades>>>>> secondary journals.

Makes sense to me. Good grades are a lot harder to obtain than being on a secondary journal, and thus demonstrate the ability to work hard and win better.

our secondary journal memberships depend on 1L grades (50%) and a writing competition (50%)
so to an extent they reflect good grades - first year, that is.

T2, hard to say exactly but I know lots of people who are still unemployed, including cum laudes and even one magna (really wants specific kind of work, can't get it). The people I know who graduated jobless and have since found work mostly seem to be in govt or non-profit, and in a lot of cases in what sort of seem like 'off-brand' jobs (weird govt offices I've never heard of in areas they weren't particularly interested in, etc.). I do know of a few people who were OCI strikeouts and landed biglaw later, but all had top grades and LR. That said, I do have a few random friends who didn't have particularly stellar grades and still landed the exact kind of jobs they wanted. But I wouldn't be shocked at all if you told me the majority of my class is still jobless.

Anonymous User wrote:our secondary journal memberships depend on 1L grades (50%) and a writing competition (50%)
so to an extent they reflect good grades - first year, that is.

Good grades reflect good grades a lot better than some diluted proxy for good grades, however.

What's shocking to me is that this is shocking to OP.

Has anyone noticed a difference in employment between those who took bar courses and got good grades and those who took mostly smaller, seminar courses and got good grades? At my school the smaller the class the higher the mean GPA, so I'm thinking about loading up on classes with less than 16 students where the average GPA will be above a 3.5 rather than about a 2.7 for the big bar courses.

roguey wrote:Has anyone noticed a difference in employment between those who took bar courses and got good grades and those who took mostly smaller, seminar courses and got good grades? At my school the smaller the class the higher the mean GPA, so I'm thinking about loading up on classes with less than 16 students where the average GPA will be above a 3.5 rather than about a 2.7 for the big bar courses.

Yes, this is true, but there is a double-edged sword here. While the average is higher, smaller courses tend to cover narrower areas of law and therefore other students with a related specialization may self-select and actually make it harder. A very narrow seminar course on feminist law theory may be composed of 80% women's studies majors who will have a much better grasp of the theory of the field then you do.

Anonymous User wrote:share your observations.

T25 (BU/BC) here

no formal statistics (I wonder if they will ever be available) but my guess is that around 60% got full-time/permanent positions

Most law review people do great: biglaw, nice midlaw, PMF programs, state supreme court clerkships. I know of one person who got nothing. There could be 1-2 more.

Some journal people have not done so well. I know about 8-10 people without meaningful employment - by meaningful employment, I discount graduate fellowship or part-time employment sponsored by the school.

People who managed to swing honors - even without journals - are doing great/ fairly well. I know a few got biglaw as 3Ls, other have settled in mid-law or mid-law paying law-related jobs (e.g. compliance/in-house)

Middling people with no journals: Girls with quasi-technical backgrounds did far better than guys. Girls with just college degrees in science got patent law jobs but I know aguy with a science phd has not got anything yet. This was shocking to me.

middling people with strong banking and accounting backgrounds tended to do well also.

BU here and this sounds about right to me also - usually about 5 people also into federal clerkships (roughhhh).