Top Law Schools

Biglaw_Associate_V20 wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Top 10 percent at my T14 has been doing well.

Least helpful post ever.

What I meant was, besides the top 10 percent I haven't heard of people getting CBs.

NYC firms cutting their class sizes seems to have really hit median people at Penn pretty hard. Some people are doing well, but a LOT of people with 0-2 CB's.

Anonymous User wrote:NYC firms cutting their class sizes seems to have really hit median people at Penn pretty hard. Some people are doing well, but a LOT of people with 0-2 CB's.

I'm assuming it's because Columbia and NYU students have priority for those types of spots, and there's not enough to spillover to the Penn "tray"?

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:NYC firms cutting their class sizes seems to have really hit median people at Penn pretty hard. Some people are doing well, but a LOT of people with 0-2 CB's.

I'm assuming it's because Columbia and NYU students have priority for those types of spots, and there's not enough to spillover to the Penn "tray"?

No idea how people at those schools are doing so I can't say.

Chiming in...looks pretty terrible from over here. Top students are doing okay. Past some certain invisible line no one knows about but which seems very high, it's a wasteland. OCI is just the beaches of Normandy with suited-up bodies running into banks of machine guns.

Anonymous User wrote:Top 20% MVPB with work experience... ... BAD!! All my interviews have been so pleasant with personal connections... why!!?!

+1 as to even WE isn't the elixir it once ways. Yay to throwing away careers!

Anonymous User wrote:NYC firms cutting their class sizes seems to have really hit median people at Penn pretty hard. Some people are doing well, but a LOT of people with 0-2 CB's.

This. The New York firms were particularly brutal. I don't have a point of comparison, but yield rates seem low for NY and NY interviewers had a "don't bug me, this interview is meaningless" attitude. Resume drops were met with hostility.

edit: is there anything in the trade press on NYC firms cutting class sizes?

You guys all seem to disagree with David Lat.

http://abovethelaw.com/2013/08/some-tho ... erviewing/

It's probably a little early to be calling things OK or disastrous (we all know "great" or "excellent" will not be words that describe the legal hiring market). Just chill out for a bit and realize that what you're hearing in the stew room is not always a level-headed take on what is really happening.

.

David Lat wrote:I’ve been in touch with a number of 2Ls at top law schools who are going through OCI, and so far it’s going very well for them. One friend, a law review editor at a T6 school, has more than a dozen callbacks; another friend, in the top third of the class at a T14 school, has about ten callbacks. Two other friends, in the top 25 percent of the class at a T14 school, already have offers from V10 firms.

All the firms think they can scoop up top talent ITE. They may be overplaying their hand. There may be late-season offers for students with slightly lower grades. That's one way to explain why it seems so great for students above the invisible line and it is a wasteland for everyone else.

edit: But at any rate, David Lat still says the sky IS falling:

David Lat wrote:Because summer programs have shrunk in size since the Great Recession — and continue to shrink, although modestly — it’s harder to land a summer associate job than before. As one hiring partner said at this year’s NALP conference, “These days we’re looking for any reason not to hire a summer associate. You have to be the A-plus person to get a position these days.”

But contrary to some of the doom and gloom in the media — yes, that includes the pages of ATL — law students and law school graduates are still landing jobs in Biglaw.

median and somewhat above median seem to have fared the worst among my friends (HYS). law review/top of the class appeared to have tons of "prestigious" callbacks and below median had some pleasant surprises and generally good performance at some of the less selective firms. i think our career services office inflated the expectations of the people around top third, meaning they didn't bid on a lot of super safeties but they were shut out of a lot of the more prestigious places. impossible to make any of this more than anecdotal though.

I'm not at a T14, but have heard from two big law firms that last year they got a bigger than expected 2L summer class because more people accepted than expected so this year they are going slowly so that they have a better handle on acceptances. It would make sense to CB top 10% people at HYS and the T14 before dealing with lower people at those schools and top people at non-T14 schools.

At my school (bu/BC/GW/Fordham) it's part lottery part preselected. From people who've told me:
Least amount of interviews: 4
Most amount of interviews: 25

No solid numbers on CBs yet

I'm a 3L, just finished Biglaw SA in DC. FWIW, T14 around top 20%, I had VERY few OCI callbacks. It seemed like firms really overplayed their hands & disproportionately gave out callbacks to the same few students and the rest of us had to scramble. But those top students can only accept 1 offer each, and many firms overestimated their competitiveness for those students. I wound up basically mailing every office of every NLJ250 firm in September and then, sure enough, many of those firms wound up undersubscribed & I netted around 10 callbacks (up through V10) in late September and early October. And I received 2-3 more callbacks, even into late October/early November, from V100 firms that were still looking.

If there's a moral here, it's just to get your materials to every firm, so when they realized they overreached and those top students aren't going to accept their offers, you are there to scoop up callbacks.

It's just hard to measure year by year by how OCI feels while it's going on. I thought my year was harder than the year before and it turned out it was the best year since the crash started.

A lot of people, even with good grades, struggle and only have 2-3 callbacks but they get an offer. And you only need one. The person below median who gets 1 CB -> 1 Offer is just as employed as the person who got 15 callbacks.

There will be people in the top third who get 4 callbacks and 0 offers. But that's just how OCI has been for the last 5 years.

The only question is whether firms really are cutting class sizes.

For what its worth, I'm above median but nowhere near top 10% at t14. I had 25 screeners and am at 10 CBs right now, possibly more as OCI just finished yesterday.

Anonymous User wrote:For what its worth, I'm above median but nowhere near top 10% at t14. I had 25 screeners and am at 10 CBs right now, possibly more as OCI just finished yesterday.

I'm similarly situated: MVP, slightly above median with 14 NYC/DC CBs (including a healthy dose of V10 and V25s). No WE/URM.

A part of me thinks that everyone thinks it is a worse market, because people go in thinking "well, the market may be bad, but it's a problem for other students, not me." And then they realize that it's harder than they thought. Also, class sizes at law schools are smaller, which means less competition overall.

However, at the same time, just by reading a particular BU/BC/GW/Fordham thread, it seems to be rougher this year than last year. I definitely seem to remember more callbacks there last year. But who knows... fewer top students on these threads?

Anonymous User wrote:A part of me thinks that everyone thinks it is a worse market, because people go in thinking "well, the market may be bad, but it's a problem for other students, not me." And then they realize that it's harder than they thought. Also, class sizes at law schools are smaller, which means less competition overall.

However, at the same time, just by reading a particular BU/BC/GW/Fordham thread, it seems to be rougher this year than last year. I definitely seem to remember more callbacks there last year. But who knows... fewer top students on these threads?

Maybe the Mayer Brown article was right. Maybe all this shit is crashing down. I mean, what we know is that, inflation-and-headcount-adjusted, firms profitability is at best flat since 2007. That's five years of no growth. I think it's just too much some of these firms. Attrition is probably down because of fewer exit-ops in finance. I think the ladder is being pulled-up. We basically chose the wrong industry.

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:A part of me thinks that everyone thinks it is a worse market, because people go in thinking "well, the market may be bad, but it's a problem for other students, not me." And then they realize that it's harder than they thought. Also, class sizes at law schools are smaller, which means less competition overall.

However, at the same time, just by reading a particular BU/BC/GW/Fordham thread, it seems to be rougher this year than last year. I definitely seem to remember more callbacks there last year. But who knows... fewer top students on these threads?

Maybe the Mayer Brown article was right. Maybe all this shit is crashing down. I mean, what we know is that, inflation-and-headcount-adjusted, firms profitability is at best flat since 2007. That's five years of no growth. I think it's just too much some of these firms. Attrition is probably down because of fewer exit-ops in finance. I think the ladder is being pulled-up. We basically chose the wrong industry.

I don't the biglaw model itself is coming crashing down, but the recruitment model could be changing because of a "buyers" lateral market.

If I were a firm, I wouldn't hire many junior associates. I'd just bring in lateral midlevels when I needed them.

And I'd stop firing senior associates because they got too senior. Though I suspect the reason for this, is really just they are afraid of getting clients poached. So maybe we'd still fire senior associates.

Data.

http://www.nationaljurist.com/content/l ... ummer-2013

http://www.americanlawyer.com/PubArticl ... 0717160346

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog ... -law-.html

Desert Fox wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:A part of me thinks that everyone thinks it is a worse market, because people go in thinking "well, the market may be bad, but it's a problem for other students, not me." And then they realize that it's harder than they thought. Also, class sizes at law schools are smaller, which means less competition overall.

However, at the same time, just by reading a particular BU/BC/GW/Fordham thread, it seems to be rougher this year than last year. I definitely seem to remember more callbacks there last year. But who knows... fewer top students on these threads?

Maybe the Mayer Brown article was right. Maybe all this shit is crashing down. I mean, what we know is that, inflation-and-headcount-adjusted, firms profitability is at best flat since 2007. That's five years of no growth. I think it's just too much some of these firms. Attrition is probably down because of fewer exit-ops in finance. I think the ladder is being pulled-up. We basically chose the wrong industry.

I don't the biglaw model itself is coming crashing down, but the recruitment model could be changing because of a "buyers" lateral market.

If I were a firm, I wouldn't hire many junior associates. I'd just bring in lateral midlevels when I needed them.

And I'd stop firing senior associates because they got too senior. Though I suspect the reason for this, is really just they are afraid of getting clients poached. So maybe we'd still fire senior associates.

AKA the Jersey model

Anonymous User wrote:median and somewhat above median seem to have fared the worst among my friends (HYS). law review/top of the class appeared to have tons of "prestigious" callbacks and below median had some pleasant surprises and generally good performance at some of the less selective firms. i think our career services office inflated the expectations of the people around top third, meaning they didn't bid on a lot of super safeties but they were shut out of a lot of the more prestigious places. impossible to make any of this more than anecdotal though.

This somewhat describes my impression of OCI at MVP too. Top 20% did extremely well, below median appropriately targeted less selective firms and did decently, and among median and slightly above median students it's absolutely "feast or famine" with a few having 10 or so callbacks but the vast majority left with 0-5.

At my HYSCCN, it seems like maybe a third of firms have started issuing callbacks en masse, and I don't know a single person (even those with terrible--and we're talking ~3.0--grades) who doesn't have at least one. Majority around median have 3-4 already. Even most of my friends a little below have multiple. Those top third and above are straight cleaning up. I know callbacks aren't offers, but if the consensus is around a 40% callback-->offer rate, this doesn't seem too terrible of a cycle, at least for us. More specifically, I'm at median, maybe slightly above, with zero work experience, from a shitty state school, on a secondary journal nobody had heard of, and a generally unimpressive resume and have 4 already. Maybe I'm just that charismatic, but I tend to doubt it.

My best friend goes to Columbia and is top 20%. Went to like 20 OCI, but got no call backs.