CHICAGO MARKET - UIUC v. GULC Forum

[slv123086]

My objective is Biglaw Chicago.

1) OCI at UIUC has ~46 Chicago Firms, OCI at GULC has ~15
2) Chicago will be a less competitive market at GULC, and will be the most competitive at UIUC
3) GULC has the better rank/prestige, and will be better on my resume if OCI does not work out.
4) UIUC has more Chicago firms at OCI, but will be worse on my resume if OCI does not work out.


Votes/Thoughts? Thanks in advance.

[Dany]

Oops.

[slv123086]

UIUC is cheaper - 33k/year v. 46k/ year at GULC.

Of course, the cost of living in DC will be much more expensive than Champaign.

[Dany]

.

[slv123086]

I want to remove that element out of the equation, as naive as it may sound. I saved with a scholarship for 1L.

[buckilaw]

13k a year difference between the two schools honestly should not be a make or break factor for you. If you do transfer you want to max your shot at ANY legal job, not just Chicago firms.

While UIUC has more Chicago firms than GULC every single student at UIUC will be gunning/bidding for these firms, at GULC you would likley have a much easier go of the Chicago firms that do show up. Also, GULC gives you a shot at NYC where with UIUC you are basically looking at Chicago and nothing else. All other things being equal a firm is more probably more likely to hire a GULC grad than a UIUC grad.

Assuming you don't get a job with a firm you could pursue LRAP at GULC. I don't know if UIUC has an LRAP or how it compares to GULC's. I would assume that GULC's is superior.

[XxSpyKEx]

I really don't think it makes sense to go to GULC, if you solely want Chicago biglaw. I've talked to a few recruiters, including a v10 hiring partner, and they all told me that firms look at you the same way as if you didn't transfer for purposes of 2L OCI (because you have no grades at the new school, so they can only evaluate you relative to your peers at your old school, where you do have grades). Career services at the school I went to also told me the same thing prior to OCI when I asked them about this as well. The one major thing you typically gain from transferring when it comes to biglaw hiring is that you get screening interviews at OCI with firms that you would not have gotten otherwise (e.g. if you are at the top of your class at john marshall, you still won't get many chicago biglaw firms to consider you, but if you transfer to NU, you at least get looked at because of blind OCI). In this situation, transferring doesn't seem to make sense because it sounds like pretty much all the Chicago biglaw firms hiring 2L summer associates are coming to UIUC's OCI, and they are not coming to GULC's OCI. Therefore, by transferring you actually don't gain anything, but will probably lose screening interviews that you might have gotten if you stayed at UIUC. So looking at this from strictly from a biglaw hiring/OCI perspective, it doesn't seem to make much sense to transfer.

3) GULC has the better rank/prestige, and will be better on my resume if OCI does not work out.
4) UIUC has more Chicago firms at OCI, but will be worse on my resume if OCI does not work out. .

Depends on what you want... If you want to work at a large law firm, it really won't matter if you strike out at OCI because you most likely won't be able to get that. For midsize firms- well, there aren't many of them in Chicago, and the ones there are usually hire through SA hiring (just like biglaw firms), so if you don't get one of those, going to GULC is unlikely to help there. In terms of smaller shitlaw firms, going to GULC is unlikely to help as well. These firms are almost all TTT grads, and they don't really want someone who went to a top school for a number of reasons. For one, they went to a TTT themselves and would rather not hire someone that went to their school (or one like it). Also it really doesn't matter as much where their attorneys went to school because their personal injury clients don't know the difference between NYU and NYLS (unlike with biglaw's corporate clients). One of the biggest reasons not to hire a t14 grad, though, is the fear that they are going to waste a lot of money on someone who doesn't want to be there. I mean let's get real here, you don't attend Yale to go work at some 4 person personal injury law firm. These law firms know that as well, and would rather invest in hiring someone that actually wants to be at their firm, rather than someone who is potentially going to jump ship as soon as the economy picks up (or that they think is going to jump ship). To be frank, being at UIUC for chicago shitlaw is actually much better. There's a lot of UIUC grads in Chicago shitlaw, so you'll have more of an alumni base to work with (even during the boom, only around 1/3 of UIUC grads got biglaw).

On the other hand, if you do really well at GULC, it opens the possibility of federal government and clerkships. UIUC has those options as well, but it's tougher. (Overall whether going to GULC will help you out by being on your resume really all depends on your goals).

[Dany]

Hey OP - Sorry! I'm a 0L, and I somehow totally missed the forum this was posted in. I thought you were asking where to go to start off for 1L. Please disregard my advice and listen to the other law students who actually know about transfers. My bad!

[blurbz]

OP: Are you at Illinois already or are you going to transfer to one of these two schools? I ask because if you're at Illinois already and you leave, Chicago/midwest firms might question your desire to be in the midwest.

[ndirish2010]

Yeah I mean, if you want Chicago and you got good enough grades to transfer to GULC, you should definitely stay if you're at UIUC. I am assuming you're at a Chicago T2, at which point it makes no sense to leave for UIUC because you'll get preselected for most interviews at the T2 with a GPA good enough to transfer to GULC.

[slv123086]

To clarify, I am transferring out of a Chicago T3/T4 (This should be hard to figure out)

My options for transferring are UIUC and GULC.

At GULC I will be guaranteed to get interviews based on their lottery system. But, some firms at Illinois OCI have been historically receptive to transfer students.

I'm literally 50/50 right now, but need to make this decision very soon.

[09042014]

To clarify, I am transferring out of a Chicago T3/T4 (This should be hard to figure out)

My options for transferring are UIUC and GULC.

At GULC I will be guaranteed to get interviews based on their lottery system. But, some firms at Illinois OCI have been historically receptive to transfer students.

I'm literally 50/50 right now, but need to make this decision very soon.

Do you have any scholarships at John Marshall? How many firms go to their OCI?

[XxSpyKEx]

To clarify, I am transferring out of a Chicago T3/T4 (This should be hard to figure out)

My options for transferring are UIUC and GULC.

At GULC I will be guaranteed to get interviews based on their lottery system. But, some firms at Illinois OCI have been historically receptive to transfer students.

I'm literally 50/50 right now, but need to make this decision very soon.

Okay, this is a completely different situation than I thought it was (I thought you were already at UIUC and considering transferring to GULC). John Marshall is a pretty terrible law school, especially in this economy. You should definitely transfer out. UIUC is pretty fucking expensive, even for just 2 years, so you might as well just transfer to GULC (i.e. either way you are going to pay a ton for those last 2 years). I think your odds of getting something out of GULC's OCI will be better because it's a higher ranked school, and the odds of you actually getting screening interviews are much better since GULC doesn't allow pre-screening (this second point being the more important one). Also, if you transfer to UIUC, firms are going to assume that's the best school you got into as a transfer. A transfer from John Marshall --> UIUC is impressive, but not nearly as impressive as John Marshall --> GULC.

To clarify, I am transferring out of a Chicago T3/T4 (This should be hard to figure out)

My options for transferring are UIUC and GULC.

At GULC I will be guaranteed to get interviews based on their lottery system. But, some firms at Illinois OCI have been historically receptive to transfer students.

I'm literally 50/50 right now, but need to make this decision very soon.

How many firms go to their OCI?

According to what's recorded on NALP's directory for last year, Jenner is the only non-IP Chicago law firm that came to John Marshall's OCI. Ice Miller from Indiana also showed up. (There's a couple other non-IL firms I never heard of that are listed on there as well though).