the economics of transferring Forum

[yellowjacket2012]

Isn't there a concept of "equivalence" in the value of a student as a commodity in the legal labor market, making transferring a zero-addition effort to the student's intrinsic value as a player in the legal labor market?

Let's make up a "law labor market value" index, where a 4.0 student from the #1 law school is a 100/100, and the very bottom student from the last law school is a 1/100, (lets give him a 1 for getting into law school I guess).

My dilemma is this: what about your value changes from the point you finish your last exam as a 1L, to when you get accepted into a higher program as a transfer student?

For example, in my hypothetical 1-100 scale, a 4.0 student from Northwestern Law (my law school), would get an 90/100 in the national labor market scale, for instance. Say he gets accepted to Harvard Law. Well, what just happened? He was a 90 on the labor market scale, being a top student at a top law school. Now he's at Harvard, but he's an unknown entity who has never performed relative to the student body at Harvard, so he is 90* at best. The median at Harvard, say, is 85, and the top is 100. The student didn't raise his "national" value in the slightest by being admitted into Harvard - arguably, he lowered it by losing his class standing at Northwestern, already a top school.

The "equivalence" construct should peg a law student's opportunities to their value-index, not where they went to law school - based on their intrinsic value's equivalence. The #1 student at Northwestern, should have the same opportunities, as the top 30% student at Columbia (I'm making this one up). Transferring should not technically add anything meaningful to his intrinsic value because the transferring process does not involve learning/applying substantive law.

So then why do people transfer? Is it cost effective at all, if opportunities stay the same?

[megaTTTron]

Can someone translate this for me?

[d34d9823]

I think you're right for 1L OCI, but there's a whole host of other things people consider. How family/people look at their school, what schools have a good shot at academia/prestigious PI, etc. Not to mention that some people will be able to interview with firms that don't even come to their old school.

[solidsnake]

Signaling. After 2L OCI (before which your point might hold up) 1L school can be dropped from the resume. While OCI may the be the only means with which you meaningfully *enter* the relevant labor market, once you somehow are *in* that labor market the index would be based instead on class rank *at graduation* and degree-issuing law school. Saying you graduated from HLS conveys private info to an otherwise uninformed party about whatever innate ability you have as a lawyer that remaining at 1L school with a top X class rank after 1L (with no guarantee that this rank is sustained or improved upon by the time of graduation) will not. And this signaling effect could result in increased quantity demanded, regardless if the *education* attained in transfer school in fact improved your ability.

[arstech]

There is no immediate increase in your value, but it gives you the opportunity to do well at the transferee school and increase past your hypothetical 90.

EDIT: I basically just said the same thing as the above post. But I think solidsnake is right.

[transplantedbuckeye]

The "equivalence" construct should peg a law student's opportunities to their value-index, not where they went to law school - based on their intrinsic value's equivalence. The #1 student at Northwestern, should have the same opportunities, as the top 30% student at Columbia (I'm making this one up). Transferring should not technically add anything meaningful to his intrinsic value because the transferring process does not involve learning/applying substantive law.

If your school doesn't matter, then wouldn't #1 at Northwestern be the same as #1 at Columbia? Otherwise, you are basing one value off of comparing schools and then equating it with a second value and saying the school doesn't matter. As I interpreted it then, all #1 students would be equal because school doesn't matter.

Or, maybe I am just lost.

[luthersloan]

Look at it this way. Let's say that we have a Northwestern Student who is first in the class and we assign them the 90 out of 100 value as you suggest, and compare them to another student from another peer school who is also first in their class and give them the same score of 90. One of these students stays, and the other transfers to Harvard. Now, all the data about value based on past performance is the same, but a prospective employer knows now that one of them will be going back to the Northwestern and the other is going to Harvard. This fact creates a value difference, all other thing being equal, namely one of them will be getting what is generally regarded as a superior legal education for their next two years in school. That, I think, is the major value added by transferring. It is not a change in the credentials of the student, it is not an accomplishment indicative of ability, but rather a higher value-added by the two years at a better school.

[vandalvideo]

Extremely skeptical of your seemingly arbitrary assignments of market value. What makes a top X% at Northwestern X market value, while a median Harvard student X market value? If we were to accept your argument, it must first be established how you came to these market values. One can claim that the market value of a median Harvard student is X, but it is another to prove it. I mean, it could be just as easy to claim a median Harvard student has a market value of X+5% or greater than the top X% at Northwestern. Fuddy math is fuddy.

[Bankhead]

EDIT: My theory is exactly OP's. I guess I should have read OP before I posted.

[Matthies]

Isn't there a concept of "equivalence" in the value of a student as a commodity in the legal labor market, making transferring a zero-addition effort to the student's intrinsic value as a player in the legal labor market?

Let's make up a "law labor market value" index, where a 4.0 student from the #1 law school is a 100/100, and the very bottom student from the last law school is a 1/100, (lets give him a 1 for getting into law school I guess).

My dilemma is this: what about your value changes from the point you finish your last exam as a 1L, to when you get accepted into a higher program as a transfer student?

For example, in my hypothetical 1-100 scale, a 4.0 student from Northwestern Law (my law school), would get an 90/100 in the national labor market scale, for instance. Say he gets accepted to Harvard Law. Well, what just happened? He was a 90 on the labor market scale, being a top student at a top law school. Now he's at Harvard, but he's an unknown entity who has never performed relative to the student body at Harvard, so he is 90* at best. The median at Harvard, say, is 85, and the top is 100. The student didn't raise his "national" value in the slightest by being admitted into Harvard - arguably, he lowered it by losing his class standing at Northwestern, already a top school.

The "equivalence" construct should peg a law student's opportunities to their value-index, not where they went to law school - based on their intrinsic value's equivalence. The #1 student at Northwestern, should have the same opportunities, as the top 30% student at Columbia (I'm making this one up). Transferring should not technically add anything meaningful to his intrinsic value because the transferring process does not involve learning/applying substantive law.

So then why do people transfer? Is it cost effective at all, if opportunities stay the same?

Protip: Shit like this is mental masturbation. its obvious you have given allot of thought to this, studied the USNEWS rankings like its the Koran, investigated in minute detail the probability of landing a job at each OCI employer based on stats for people who were not you at least a year ago. Its really fun stuff, it occupies your mind.

but its kind of like mass mailing resumes, its takes you 10 hours to print everything put everything in the right envelope and drive it to the post office afterwards you feel like you have done something really proactive for your job search when in reality you have just burned 10 hours doing something that has about a 1% chance of being successful and a 99% chance of making you feel like shit when every day goes by and no one calls or mails you back.

Not saying I don't disagree with your theory, its actually kind of a novel, well novel not really the word, but it is, in the grand sense pointless. If you transfer to Harvard and get you 100 possible points and still don't land a job from OCI those 100 points are going to call up a hiring partner and offer you a job.

You want to give yourself the best chances of finding a job? tanrfers to whatever better school you can get into and stop studying stats for other people and spend your time learning how to make contacts, write assume resumes and killer cover letters. That will do more for you than creating a theory based on points that does nothing to actually get you a job.

PS: Again, like the theory, just think your time would be better spent on things that would actually land you a job in case, well, your theory does not end up in the result you wanted now. Real world does not work like a stats class.

[yellowjacket2012]

...so I found out you get to graduate with "honors" at transfer schools like Chicago and Berkeley (maybe all others), even if you do just 2 years of uncurved electives there, whereas kids with identical grades as you during their 1L year at your transfer-school, who are the victim of a curve of some sort - would be crowded out as they would not be able to enjoy the "all courses uncurved" advantage.

I'm not sure those kids, however, would not have done as well as transfer-student would've done at his older school - maybe they would've done even better - we'll never know.

Does anyone know the real-world significance of graduating with certain honors other than clerkships (for which the judges will know what graduating with "high honors" from U of C means, AUSA jobs, and laterals? I'm assuming 0Ls don't, neither do I (rising 2L), this is interesting stuff.

I'm tempted to think that schools purposely "graduate" the transfer kids with equivalent honors to have a viable transfer pool for when their own 1Ls transfer out, but I'm surprised that the top law schools like Chicago and Berkeley do this.

[arstech]

I'm tempted to think that schools purposely "graduate" the transfer kids with equivalent honors to have a viable transfer pool for when their own 1Ls transfer out . . .

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.

[yellowjacket2012]

I'm tempted to think that schools purposely "graduate" the transfer kids with equivalent honors to have a viable transfer pool for when their own 1Ls transfer out . . .

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.

The unfairness is for the following two candidates:
Candidate A at Northwestern Law turns in 8 law school exams in 8 curved classes during 1L year
Candidate B at Loyola Law turns in the exact same exams to the exact same fact patterns (assume) during his 1L year

Candidate A is top 20% at NU Law
Candidate B is top 5% at Loyola

Candidate B transfers to NU Law.
Candidate A and B continue to take the same classes, turn in roughly the same exams, but A graduates top 15%, and graduates with honors, whereas Candidate B ends up graduating top 5% because he starts off with a 4.0, or a 0.0, or whatever it is, and graduates magna, coif.

I don't know whether this makes the slightest difference in the two candidates career prospects in any career, do they? I would venture to say that for "prestige" type positions like DoJ Honors program, federal clerkships, AUSA positions, academia, etc. - this matters. Please correct me if I'm wrong in the relevance of "coif", etc.

[solidsnake]

I'm tempted to think that schools purposely "graduate" the transfer kids with equivalent honors to have a viable transfer pool for when their own 1Ls transfer out . . .

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.

The unfairness is for the following two candidates:
Candidate A at Northwestern Law turns in 8 law school exams in 8 curved classes during 1L year
Candidate B at Loyola Law turns in the exact same exams to the exact same fact patterns (assume) during his 1L year

Candidate A is top 20% at NU Law
Candidate B is top 5% at Loyola

Candidate B transfers to NU Law.
Candidate B then picks seminars, electives, etc. at NU Law 2L/3L and graduates order of the coif, magna cum laude
Candidate A graduates cum laude.

this makes a huge difference for clerkships - if the judge sorts applications in Excel by "honors" - not too ridiculous a means to sort a billion apps by - and seems grossly unfair given that they turned in the same 8 papers during 1L year, I don't get it - maybe someone has an explanation for this scenario.

Assuming judges would automatically throw away apps from cum laude graduates, then candidate B's app is irrelevant -- candidate A simply did not sufficiently excel in law school. If your argument is that there are so many transfers who fit the candidate B profile that judges have the luxury of dismissing candidate As, then look at the amount of aggregate amount of transfers versus native students; the proportion is quite marginal, and even then your argument rather unreasonably assumes that all these candidate B transfers would pad their gpa with soft classes, despite their self-selecting as the hardest workers at their 1L schools (which is what got them the opportunity to transfer in the first place).

As for the candidate Bs with the magna honors from soft classes, while their creds might get the applicant through the preliminary sorting stage (where clerks sort through the apps), they likely won't make it through the judge's vetting. Judges (COA and prestigious D. Ct) are notorious for pouring over transcripts looking for applicants who have excelled in rigorous, doctrinal classes. While there is room for some strategic padding, acing nothing but "Law and My Little Pony" ad infinitum, while perhaps earning you coif, will not get you Kozinski.

[yellowjacket2012]

Extremely skeptical of your seemingly arbitrary assignments of market value. What makes a top X% at Northwestern X market value, while a median Harvard student X market value? If we were to accept your argument, it must first be established how you came to these market values. One can claim that the market value of a median Harvard student is X, but it is another to prove it. I mean, it could be just as easy to claim a median Harvard student has a market value of X+5% or greater than the top X% at Northwestern. Fuddy math is fuddy.

Well, one indicator would be the hiring criteria firms seem to use at OCI, for instance - at Northwestern, Williams Connolly requires top 10% law review preferred - I'm guessing this is a criteria specific to schools like Northwestern, Georgetown, et al, whereas a different cut-off is used for a school like Harvard.

[XxSpyKEx]

Isn't there a concept of "equivalence" in the value of a student as a commodity in the legal labor market, making transferring a zero-addition effort to the student's intrinsic value as a player in the legal labor market?

Let's make up a "law labor market value" index, where a 4.0 student from the #1 law school is a 100/100, and the very bottom student from the last law school is a 1/100, (lets give him a 1 for getting into law school I guess).

My dilemma is this: what about your value changes from the point you finish your last exam as a 1L, to when you get accepted into a higher program as a transfer student?

For example, in my hypothetical 1-100 scale, a 4.0 student from Northwestern Law (my law school), would get an 90/100 in the national labor market scale, for instance. Say he gets accepted to Harvard Law. Well, what just happened? He was a 90 on the labor market scale, being a top student at a top law school. Now he's at Harvard, but he's an unknown entity who has never performed relative to the student body at Harvard, so he is 90* at best. The median at Harvard, say, is 85, and the top is 100. The student didn't raise his "national" value in the slightest by being admitted into Harvard - arguably, he lowered it by losing his class standing at Northwestern, already a top school.

The "equivalence" construct should peg a law student's opportunities to their value-index, not where they went to law school - based on their intrinsic value's equivalence. The #1 student at Northwestern, should have the same opportunities, as the top 30% student at Columbia (I'm making this one up). Transferring should not technically add anything meaningful to his intrinsic value because the transferring process does not involve learning/applying substantive law.

So then why do people transfer? Is it cost effective at all, if opportunities stay the same?

Because in the past it did add substantial "intrinsic value as a player in the legal labor market." There's a guy on here, PKSebben, and he can tell you how well transfers did in past year by transferring. While I don't think getting at law firms that only take top of the class at the transfer school was ever typical, transferring definitely got the transfer student access to law firms and markets that they would not have stood a chance at in the past. This last year, and probably this upcoming fall, have just been rough because there are practically no jobs and a shitload of law students that all want the few that are out there... I mean you know things are shitty when law firms like Skadden Chicago take something like 8 summer associates. I think Mathies is probably dead on about networking because it matters now more than ever. For the most part law firms don't appear to have gotten significantly more selective in terms of grades at top schools, but they have gotten a lot more selective in terms of personality, which is why knowing people at the firm you want to work for can be extremely helpful (because those people will attest that you are exactly what the law firm wants). OCI is more of a crapshoot w/o contacts. However, obviously, networking at with students at your transfer class prior to OCI is basically impossible (it is just too late), which is why I think now it matters that you start at a law school that you want to finish at and one that will provide you with alumni that you can make contacts with during 1L.

[ahshav]

My dilemma is this: what about your value changes from the point you finish your last exam as a 1L, to when you get accepted into a higher program as a transfer student?

. . . .

Transferring should not technically add anything meaningful to his intrinsic value because the transferring process does not involve learning/applying substantive law.

You're looking at this from the wrong perspective.

One mistaken premise here is that a school's ranking is directly correlated to the quality of education it provides. Highly ranked schools are not necessarily better at teaching law. More highly ranked schools generally have a higher caliber of students, which is where their real value lies, at least from the indirect perspective of employers.

As for employers, your value as a transfer students absolutely does change. Employers themselves might not care about the name of your school - and care more about the quality of your work. But employers have to market themselves to clients - and "better" schools sound better to clients. So, when you interview in the summer before you even had a minute of class at your new school - the employer already knows that they will have one more "top school" grad.

This is not to say that transfers actually do better/worse/same at OCI - I have no experience to speak to that. This is only why transferring isn't value-neutral.

[daesonesb]

Isn't there a concept of "equivalence" in the value of a student as a commodity in the legal labor market, making transferring a zero-addition effort to the student's intrinsic value as a player in the legal labor market?

Let's make up a "law labor market value" index, where a 4.0 student from the #1 law school is a 100/100, and the very bottom student from the last law school is a 1/100, (lets give him a 1 for getting into law school I guess).

My dilemma is this: what about your value changes from the point you finish your last exam as a 1L, to when you get accepted into a higher program as a transfer student?

For example, in my hypothetical 1-100 scale, a 4.0 student from Northwestern Law (my law school), would get an 90/100 in the national labor market scale, for instance. Say he gets accepted to Harvard Law. Well, what just happened? He was a 90 on the labor market scale, being a top student at a top law school. Now he's at Harvard, but he's an unknown entity who has never performed relative to the student body at Harvard, so he is 90* at best. The median at Harvard, say, is 85, and the top is 100. The student didn't raise his "national" value in the slightest by being admitted into Harvard - arguably, he lowered it by losing his class standing at Northwestern, already a top school.

The "equivalence" construct should peg a law student's opportunities to their value-index, not where they went to law school - based on their intrinsic value's equivalence. The #1 student at Northwestern, should have the same opportunities, as the top 30% student at Columbia (I'm making this one up). Transferring should not technically add anything meaningful to his intrinsic value because the transferring process does not involve learning/applying substantive law.

So then why do people transfer? Is it cost effective at all, if opportunities stay the same?

Obfuscation of a simple point.

Don't transfer unless you get into a much better school OR you know you can get good grades at said school.

[rando]

Extremely skeptical of your seemingly arbitrary assignments of market value. What makes a top X% at Northwestern X market value, while a median Harvard student X market value? If we were to accept your argument, it must first be established how you came to these market values. One can claim that the market value of a median Harvard student is X, but it is another to prove it. I mean, it could be just as easy to claim a median Harvard student has a market value of X+5% or greater than the top X% at Northwestern. Fuddy math is fuddy.

hence the title - economics, where all numbers are arbitrary. That is kind of the point when you are trying to break down a theoretical construct. It doesn't take away from his point. Whether the point is effective or not, haven't decided. Either way, the arbitrary numbers are not the problem.

[grobbelski]

Isn't there a concept of "equivalence" in the value of a student as a commodity in the legal labor market, making transferring a zero-addition effort to the student's intrinsic value as a player in the legal labor market?

Let's make up a "law labor market value" index, where a 4.0 student from the #1 law school is a 100/100, and the very bottom student from the last law school is a 1/100, (lets give him a 1 for getting into law school I guess).

My dilemma is this: what about your value changes from the point you finish your last exam as a 1L, to when you get accepted into a higher program as a transfer student?

For example, in my hypothetical 1-100 scale, a 4.0 student from Northwestern Law (my law school), would get an 90/100 in the national labor market scale, for instance. Say he gets accepted to Harvard Law. Well, what just happened? He was a 90 on the labor market scale, being a top student at a top law school. Now he's at Harvard, but he's an unknown entity who has never performed relative to the student body at Harvard, so he is 90* at best. The median at Harvard, say, is 85, and the top is 100. The student didn't raise his "national" value in the slightest by being admitted into Harvard - arguably, he lowered it by losing his class standing at Northwestern, already a top school.

The "equivalence" construct should peg a law student's opportunities to their value-index, not where they went to law school - based on their intrinsic value's equivalence. The #1 student at Northwestern, should have the same opportunities, as the top 30% student at Columbia (I'm making this one up). Transferring should not technically add anything meaningful to his intrinsic value because the transferring process does not involve learning/applying substantive law.

So then why do people transfer? Is it cost effective at all, if opportunities stay the same?

I have a feeling this assumes that the scale is linear

[MrKappus]

OP: you have an interesting point, but I think your analysis starts to stray towards the end. You assume that it is possible for one to "lower" their intrinsic value by transferring to another school and being an unknown quantity (i.e., your NU --> H example). But transferring to H doesn't "lower" that student's score on your quality index, because his/her performance during NU 1L is a fact that stays with that student forever. In this sense, a transfer student has nowhere to go but up, b/c they've already measured up on the universal scale for assessing future lawyers (i.e., 1L year). A new school simply opens doors for that student's score on your quality index that might not otherwise have existed at the other school.

[traydeuce]

^^ I think the notion is that they lose out on the NU connections they created in 1L. It may be harder to get recommendations from professors who have only known you for a semester or two. Then there's journals.

[MrKappus]

^^ I think the notion is that they lose out on the NU connections they created in 1L. It may be harder to get recommendations from professors who have only known you for a semester or two. Then there's journals.

I'm not sure that was the notion of OP's post. My understanding was that OP was describing this vast continuum of law students, ranked by "intrinsic" quality, on which place was a factor of (1) rank and (2) school prestige. OP didn't even mention journals or profs...?

[traydeuce]

True. I guess he's just assuming some kind of irrationality on the part of employers - that once the top 5% kid at N goes to H, the employer sees him at H and sees him as this purely unknown quantity because he has no H grades yet. I could see how that could happen, but it kind of belies OP's entire theory, which assumes that employers are extremely rational.

[bgdddymtty]

While the framework of this analysis is fairly solid, it doesn't account for several factors:
1. It wrongly assumes/implies that transfers will perform at or below their "expected" place in the transfer school's class. I'd bet that for most transfers the UGPA/LSAT combo under-predicted law school performance. A high achiever at N may very well be a high achiever at H. Since the ceiling is higher at H, the N student has the potential to increase his market value.

2. Not all transfers are one-step moves. In the N-H example, the ceiling increase isn't that much. But what about, for example, BYU-H? Or WUSTL-H? These transfers happen, and they provide a huge potential benefit to the transfer student.

3. Not all of the economic benefit of a transfer is realized during 1L/2L OCI. As has been stated already, the name on the degree/resume follows you for the rest of your life. Class rank? Not as much.

4. Connections. Setting aside the fact that a transfer student has two schools at which to make connections, it stands to reason that the connections one makes at a more elite school will be more economically valuable in the long run.

5. Actual quality of education. This is, of course, not necessarily directly correlated with USNWR ranking, but it's probably a factor in many potential transfers' decisions, particularly the ones who transfer up more than one "rung." These students probably feel that receiving a better legal education during their last two years in school will make them better lawyers, therefore improving their overall career prospects.