I think Scrabble is only insinuating that there is and should be no social life in law school. I'd attest to the same general thought process.

I understand where Scrabble is coming from with his general statements. A lot of people that enter the legal profession are not gunners. It was smart of you to go in front of 50 screeners. I think that some of us, myself included obviously, are merely saying that some of us that are seeking out law school right now are already going into it with that mentality. Placing so much importance on only the CSO is wrong. They should be an aid. But you are the driver of you, so to speak.

People who want to think about the social scene of law school should really re-examine why they want to go to law school.

Wrong... but if you know A dealer is constantly selling lemons and B dealer isn't then why go to A dealer and constantly bitch about how afraid you are that you will end up with one of those lemons?

If we were talking about any other class year, I would agree with you. Depending on OCI isn't really a great idea, nor is putting all your eggs in one market. But after OCI, things were totally dead for c/o 2011. They did not have the luxury of hustling for jobs. Firms were trying to make a halfway respectable showing at OCI and then packing it up.

So, what you're saying is that no one should go to Michigan. They are Dealer A in this hypo.

At OCI time, when CSO advice is most relevant, you need to pick at most two regions, because of how lottery bidding works. You can expect to get around 14-15 interviews out of 50 bids. You need to make sure you end up with an interview schedule that has firms of a range of selectivities in each market (a few reaches, a number of targets, a few safeties). With 14-15 interviews, two markets is just about the most you can target while having sufficient depth in each market.

Moreover, firms care intensely about why you want to work in a given market. Spreading yourself thin geographically makes it very difficult to respond credibly to questions about that.

Finally, you can target more broadly in mass-mailing, but that's a Plan B. Most of the slots they have open will be allocated to candidates they meet at OCI.

If you think how well you do has anything to do with how much you socialize, then you are at risk of falling into a dangerous trap. Doing well in law school is all about how quickly you figure out the game. 95% of your grades can be attributed to the last one month before finals. The rest of the semester, you have plenty of time to socialize. Some people choose to or not, depending on their personalities, but everybody guns the last month and grades end up having little to do with how much people were out drinking in September or October.

Also, as someone who went to engineering school, law school has been one of the most fun experiences of my life. I've met great, down-to-earth people, made fun of a lot of uptight douchebags, met my fiancé, and spent 1L in an alcohol-induced haze. None of that affected my grades or my job hunting.

Nope, what I'm saying is if you feel that another school is giving you a better alternative/possible outcome/or social scene depending on your preferences, then perhaps that's where you should go.

I personally don't feel like I'm getting the shaft by going to Michigan and so I'll gladly be there. I presume that Scrabble feels the same as do some other people that I met at ASW. But there are a few people (and this does not include TLSP because I do get what she was saying and I was just being incendiary when I responded to her) that seem to think that Michigan can not provide them with what they're looking for and that they'll inevitably end up with a lemon. Those people should definitely go elsewhere. If they choose to go to Michigan those are the people that all three years are going to be wondering "what if" and after are going to turn back and say "I should've gone to insert T14".

[/quote]

Scrabble et al aren't even blaming you for letting yourself be swindled. They're literally blaming you for evaluating the track record of a dealer for selling lemons, on the grounds that if you do get swindled it will be all your fault anyway.[/quote]

Wrong... but if you know A dealer is constantly selling lemons and B dealer isn't then why go to A dealer and constantly bitch about how afraid you are that you will end up with one of those lemons?[/quote]

Agree with this statement. If you are entering the process not feeling confident, why go at all? You don't choose law school as a fall-back career. You choose law school because you like editing and more editing and more editing and you'd like to get paid for liking editing. You don't enter law school thinking that you like courtrooms. We're not all going to see courtrooms.

I mean, think about it, the guy that is the lawyer for the Zimmerman's aka a high profile potential case right now, went to ONU. It's all a mix.

First, I don't think the intent of this thread is for Michigan admits to bitch about Michigan. I think the data is just a sobering proxy for the employment stats throughout the T14. I think its peers did somewhat better, but if Michigan is funding 20% of its class b/c they don't have jobs at graduation you can be other schools aren't too different. If you're a prospective T14 student, this is relevant information, and if you're not admitted to the T14 it should seriously impact your decision of whether to go to law school.

Second, law school is a fall back career for plenty of people. And they do just as well and possibly better. Humility is more useful in law school than unfounded confidence. As a 0L you have no idea how you're going to do. You might quickly get how to play the law school game, or you might not. Skepticism and some second-guessing yourself about whether you're doing it right is absolutely helpful in making sure you don't walk blithely into finals, confident but having prepared the wrong way.

Oh I don't disagree with your general assessment in both of your comments. I am saying that law school, to those of us not in it, is a whole new ballgame and since it's a new ballgame, we won't know how well we know/get the game until we're there. Attending mock classes during tour visits starts to get you engaged in the process, but until you're in it, you won't know whether it's for you or not. That's part of the gamble. I also meant that people shouldn't be having much of a social life due to the fact that most drinks in large cities cost on average $10 and so you really can't be complaining about debt when you are spending $50 a night on avg. or so. Obviously this will change based on the person and their financial stability.

I've gone to various schools, for various reasons, and so my ties are general in nature (resume experience in multiple regions) and so I'm less worried about the where and more worried about the "any" job aspect. And I don't mean worried, but like you said, am flexible and will treat my situation as I did with applying to schools. You apply to reaches, you apply to avg. that can get you reaches down the line and then you apply to safeties that are within your comfort zone. That's my general mentality at least. And I think that there are some people that will perform solid whether they go to a T14 vs. a TTTT and it's up to that person in conjunction with their CSO to make it happen.

I really see rebirth going on in the legal industry, but I also am not "banking" on the short-term interests and instead am looking for outlier years (7 yrs or so) in my general assessment. I think you should do that with multiple industries.

Preach.

But would you choose a law school based on how easy the environment around the law school made it possible for you to do this?

FWIW, I think this is seriously off-topic as it was only mentioned by Scrabble as an aside to other threads but there are people legitimately asking about how easy it is to sleep with other law students as part of their decision process. This is where Scrabble might be thinking that this person might not fare well because they clearly don't have the best decision making skills.

I personally agree with most of what you've said but I think there have to be two sides to every coin and everyone should be looking at both sides objectively and ultimately make the decision that's best for them. The only thing that I could say is I am grateful Michigan posted these numbers because it makes it easier to see the likely outcomes if things were to once again turn for the worst. And also I can confidently say that if I thought Michigan was doing a shit job then I wouldn't go there and I would instead pack it up and go elsewhere. Cautious optimism is never a bad thing but going to law school like you're already losing is probably not going to end up turning into a pleasant experience.

If people are using law school as a fall-back career, then it's on them. Law school isn't some fall-back career to me. It may be for others. Others may be naturally talented at studying case law, but until you've worked in a legal office, I have no clue why you would enter the field. I'd say this for any career.

And I agree with your last paragraph. I think that a humble egotistical person is the best, but I say that it's the best for any career. You should have confidence in yourself and you should be humble about this confidence. I come from a very, very small town and relocated to a large city and was given many good opportunities and I firmly believe that it was humble "people-centered" personality that gave me these opportunities. I also think that skepticism is ok, but I don't think that second-guessing yourself is a general good strategy. I think we're just arguing semantics though.

Also, in my statements, I didn't mean peer as in T14s against other T14s. I meant T14s and TTTT. I will network and be friendly to all. That's my strategy and I won't budge from it. Some people will think that only T14 matters and that's ok for them. However, I've seen more people from non-T14s in the real world and for that reason, we all command a certain level of general respect. You will make me better. I will make you better, so to speak. But that's just how I feel about competition in general.

ITT: Big Ten Matchup - NU vs UMich

As someone that graduated from a different Big 10 (12) UG than NU and UMich, everyone knows that there is no athletic contest involved in either of those match-ups.

Some thoughts on this debate from a 3L at another T10 school:

1) Props to Michigan for releasing this information and I wish my school and others would follow through.

2) Campos' style gets a lot of attention because he doesn't write or speak in the same way that most law professors write or speak- with every word carefully measured, every argument nitpicked in oblivion, and every point hedged over and over again. He writes like his audience of prospective and current law students. Sometimes he is wrong- but I'd say he's brought a lot of attention to this issue and obviously has prompted responses from schools, such as Michigan's releasing of stats and CLS/NYU's strong rebuttals.

This only proves his point. These schools should be releasing these stats and information WITHOUT provocation. They are supposed to be ethical, both as lawyers and educators. Instead you have to claw the information out of them bit by bit and it's always couched in the most misleading way. It takes an army of bloggers following this to cut through all the bullshit.

For example, however, you want to read the fine print of what the Dean said, however you want to squabble over the exact wording, the point is that she should be boldly and affirmatively disclosing that 70 Michigan graduates were being paid $4000 total by the school for nine months. CLS should do it. NYU should do it. If schools want to act like used car salesmen they should start to be treated like used car salesmen.

3) Personal responsibility is a red herring. You can stand on your soapbox and scream PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY over and over again and it won't stop peopel from making dumb decisions because they just aren't hardwired that way. It is well documented that people do not think like wonderful little rational actors all the time. The question is whether their poor decisions will affect all of us. You may think you are immune because you go to a top law school and have a fallback job or whatever. But were all in this profession together. The negative publicity that surrounds law school right now is going to have a huge effect on the reputation of the legal profession in the decades to come and that's going to hit all lawyers, not just the unemployed.

And what about the personal responsibility of the deans, professors, and the CSO? Why is it always the people with the most to lose, the least information, and who are looking in from the outside trying to make sense of intentionally confusing information that get blamed?

4) That you should be 100% secure about law school is idiotic. Nobody is 100% sure about anything. I play poker and I might have a flush K high but when that river drops I'm still scared shitless my opponent is holding the ace. Every decision involves an element of risk.

Well said.

1) That's not true. They were being paid $4000 for 12 weeks. The question posed at ASW referred to how many people were in jobs funded by the university at the time the NALP data was reported. The answer was 8 but there will be more detail about the specifics coming out over the next few days. As far as I can tell, they haven't recanted on that number. They've simply said at graduation the number was closer to 70 some of those people found full-time employment, some didn't. Nine months out it's still the same 8 people that were somewhere in the process of their 12 week fellowship.

2) Believing everything a law professor says simply because he's going against the grain is also idiotic. I'd be more inclined to take his word at face value if he were to quit his professorship because of the poor state of law school academics. That would at least follow what he's saying with some action. But he's simply talking the talk and some people seem to be buying too much stock in it.

I know someone who treated the first couple of months of 1L as an exercise in upping their count, finished top 15% and is going to a top firm. Graduate school is actually a great place to meet girls, and tons of people meet their fiancés, etc, in law school. I don't think taking these things into account is a sign of particularly bad decision making skills at all. When you're choosing between two otherwise equivalent schools, the other stuff becomes quite relevant.

In a way, folks who realize that the true nature of the first couple of months of 1L are ahead of the curve.

I just remembered something else about Michigan's OCS. For OCI 2010, our OCS gave out callback data for both pre-recession, and for OCI 2009 individually. Michigan's gave averaged data from like 2006-2009. It's this kind of thing that no amount of "personal responsibility" will fix. They have access to this data, and you don't. It's entirely reasonable to depend on them to leverage the data they have to help you make the best decisions about bidding, firm selection, etc.

Actually, most folks in graduate school already tend to have their group of local friends and relationship partners. Obviously, that's not everyone, but using that as a barometer is not exactly the best.

That person was willing to risk his situation and it paid off. Most people on TLS would tell you to not go that route. If people chose their schools by romantic prospects, the T14 would not even be worth a mention.

As students, it's our debt and our personal responsibility. Period. (I truly don't say that in a mean tone so I hope it doesn't come across as such.)

I think the personal responsibility talk is moot as it's a given in any industry. As I said, you are the driver of you.

Actually, I think that depends on whether you're talking to 0L's or current students/graduates. 0Ls are much more likely to say if you don't have a social life and try super duper hard everything will work out. People who have been through the process are much more likely to comment on how random and unpredictable grades are.

This is a stupid platitude. The conduct of Michigan's OCS is borderline plain conspiracy against students getting jobs. Kind of hard to be in control of your own destiny when someone's in your way, wouldn't you say?

Yes, there's always a degree of personal responsibility, but you're paying 170,000$ to a school for a reason. You expect solid information and benefits so that you can exercise your personal responsibility... responsibly.

Legal employment really is unusual compared to other industries, so your analogies aren't strong and your past experience does not apply to the degree that you think it does.

The fact is, if you don't get a job out of OCI or a good career fair like the patent fair or a diversity fair, there aren't many jobs left. Even with all the personal responsibility and hustle in the world, in 2009, if you didn't get a job out of OCI, you were incredibly, possibly irreparably fucked. There weren't back-up plans or alternatives like there are for grads of other programs, at least not ones that would allow people to service their debt. Law is too bimodal, too snobby, and too stodgy for that.