Harvard Student(s) Answering Your Questions Forum

[094320]

..

[wert3813]

Telling future classmates to stfu is a nice touch.

Serious question: are people like this at Harvard a lot? Or are people like this an anomoly?

there are 550+ students each year...personalities run the gamut. it's pretty easy to avoid people you can't stand.

My favorite thing about here is who my classmates are. Period.

[wert3813]

anyone know if there are grade cutoffs for the boston offices of ropes, wilmerhale, or goodwin? top half-ish? thanks.

I will eventually to write up a longer post about EIP & grades. Actually, I might cowrite it with ph14, englawyer, doublechecks, and tomwatts (specific call out to these people because I know who all of these people are IRL, and have hung out with some of them) to post on the first page if y'all are down.

I would say very few firms have "cut-offs" in the entire EIP experience. It's mostly a sliding scale where they take into account other factors: how likable they find you at interviews, your work experience, the prestige of your undergrad, your undergrad degree, your references (for the few firms that check that), your status as an URM, etc. A Harvard undergrad alum who worked at McKinsey for a few years before law school with strong interviewing skills will probably be able to get most firms in NYC & Boston even with straight Ps. A non-prestigous undergrad alum who went straight through who interviews at a normal or slightly below normal skill set probably won't do as well, even with a few Hs over the former example.

Straight Ps with an LP or more mixed in, however, may actually be below the floor for many places, including Ropes, WilmerHale, Goodwin.

That being said, if you don't have work experience and your undergrad wasn't prestigious at all and you're an average interviewer at best, you better have at *least* median grades at Ropes-Boston & Wilmerhale-Boston. Don't know as much about Goodwin's standards, but probably them too.

Keep in mind also that if you are an average interviewer and still nail your interview with Ropes you could probably get them with blah grades.

This was totally ATL's point, but I just want to remind those who are easily freaked out that if you are an average interviewer that means you will likely have some good interviews and some bad ones and thus be gainfully employed.

[wert3813]

anyone know if there are grade cutoffs for the boston offices of ropes, wilmerhale, or goodwin? top half-ish? thanks.

I will eventually to write up a longer post about EIP & grades. Actually, I might cowrite it with ph14, englawyer, doublechecks, and tomwatts (specific call out to these people because I know who all of these people are IRL, and have hung out with some of them) to post on the first page if y'all are down.

I would say very few firms have "cut-offs" in the entire EIP experience. It's mostly a sliding scale where they take into account other factors: how likable they find you at interviews, your work experience, the prestige of your undergrad, your undergrad degree, your references (for the few firms that check that), your status as an URM, etc. A Harvard undergrad alum who worked at McKinsey for a few years before law school with strong interviewing skills will probably be able to get most firms in NYC & Boston even with straight Ps. A non-prestigous undergrad alum who went straight through who interviews at a normal or slightly below normal skill set probably won't do as well, even with a few Hs over the former example.

Straight Ps with an LP or more mixed in, however, may actually be below the floor for many places, including Ropes, WilmerHale, Goodwin.

That being said, if you don't have work experience and your undergrad wasn't prestigious at all and you're an average interviewer at best, you better have at *least* median grades at Ropes-Boston & Wilmerhale-Boston. Don't know as much about Goodwin's standards, but probably them too.

Way to earlier to make this years EIP thread but there was some good stuff from gp and hlsperson in prior year threads I was planning on reposting when the time comes. Just FYI if you want to stick them here.

[DoubleChecks]

anyone know if there are grade cutoffs for the boston offices of ropes, wilmerhale, or goodwin? top half-ish? thanks.

I will eventually to write up a longer post about EIP & grades. Actually, I might cowrite it with ph14, englawyer, doublechecks, and tomwatts (specific call out to these people because I know who all of these people are IRL, and have hung out with some of them) to post on the first page if y'all are down.

Haha I'm up for contributing if you are, when I'm not busy at work. Just let me know. I've obviously mostly focused on TX firms

[charlie.black]

anyone know if there are grade cutoffs for the boston offices of ropes, wilmerhale, or goodwin? top half-ish? thanks.

I will eventually to write up a longer post about EIP & grades. Actually, I might cowrite it with ph14, englawyer, doublechecks, and tomwatts (specific call out to these people because I know who all of these people are IRL, and have hung out with some of them) to post on the first page if y'all are down.

I would say very few firms have "cut-offs" in the entire EIP experience. It's mostly a sliding scale where they take into account other factors: how likable they find you at interviews, your work experience, the prestige of your undergrad, your undergrad degree, your references (for the few firms that check that), your status as an URM, etc. A Harvard undergrad alum who worked at McKinsey for a few years before law school with strong interviewing skills will probably be able to get most firms in NYC & Boston even with straight Ps. A non-prestigous undergrad alum who went straight through who interviews at a normal or slightly below normal skill set probably won't do as well, even with a few Hs over the former example.

Straight Ps with an LP or more mixed in, however, may actually be below the floor for many places, including Ropes, WilmerHale, Goodwin.

That being said, if you don't have work experience and your undergrad wasn't prestigious at all and you're an average interviewer at best, you better have at *least* median grades at Ropes-Boston & Wilmerhale-Boston. Don't know as much about Goodwin's standards, but probably them too.

Keep in mind also that if you are an average interviewer and still nail your interview with Ropes you could probably get them with blah grades.

This was totally ATL's point, but I just want to remind those who are easily freaked out that if you are an average interviewer that means you will likely have some good interviews and some bad ones and thus be gainfully employed.

thanks for the responses!

[kcam1991]

I was hoping if someone could give me there thoughts on the following professors for

Constitutional Law 1st amendment:

Field
Feldman
Parker

Taxation:

Warren
Kaplow
Shay
Halperin

[politics89]

anyone know if there are grade cutoffs for the boston offices of ropes, wilmerhale, or goodwin? top half-ish? thanks.

I will eventually to write up a longer post about EIP & grades.

This would be amazing!

[kcam1991]

anyone know if there are grade cutoffs for the boston offices of ropes, wilmerhale, or goodwin? top half-ish? thanks.

I will eventually to write up a longer post about EIP & grades.

This would be amazing!

+1

[Pneumonia]

anyone know if there are grade cutoffs for the boston offices of ropes, wilmerhale, or goodwin? top half-ish? thanks.

I will eventually to write up a longer post about EIP & grades.

This would be amazing!

+1

So much!

[Doorkeeper]

I was hoping if someone could give me there thoughts on the following professors for

Constitutional Law 1st amendment:

Field
Feldman
Parker

Taxation:

Warren
Kaplow
Shay
Halperin

Feldman for 1st and Warren for tax. Stay away from Shay or Halperin for tax. Field and Parker both have very distinctive style of teaching Con Law, so I would read up on them and/or ask current students about them.

[tomwatts]

anyone know if there are grade cutoffs for the boston offices of ropes, wilmerhale, or goodwin? top half-ish? thanks.

I will eventually to write up a longer post about EIP & grades. Actually, I might cowrite it with ph14, englawyer, doublechecks, and tomwatts (specific call out to these people because I know who all of these people are IRL, and have hung out with some of them) to post on the first page if y'all are down.

Haha I'm up for contributing if you are, when I'm not busy at work. Just let me know. I've obviously mostly focused on TX firms

Same here, and only know about SF/SV and NY.

Also, anyone who's already thinking about this sort of thing, check the table on this page. It has some interesting ways of talking about grades.

I was hoping if someone could give me there thoughts on the following professors for

Constitutional Law 1st amendment:

Field
Feldman
Parker

Taxation:

Warren
Kaplow
Shay
Halperin

Agree with the prior post on this. Feldman gets good reviews. Field gets polarized reviews (some really good, some really bad) from people I've talked to in those classes. Don't know about Parker.

Warren is a consensus great Tax prof. Kaplow gets good reviews, but for some reason I've never heard anyone say that Kaplow is good. I kind of suspect this is a hidden gem, like Admin with Vermeule (no one talks about it as a great class, the way they do with Klarman for Con Law, but it's a great class). Judging by the statistics, Shay and Halperin both get crummy evals.

Frankly, this project should get a lot more airtime than it has. It was linked earlier in the topic, and it looks pretty solid. It also links to the similar ACS project, which is also pretty solid.

[politics89]

Also, anyone who's already thinking about this sort of thing, check the table on this page. It has some interesting ways of talking about grades.

Can any other admitted students not log on to this link? Or am I doing it wrong?

[Person1111]

California market. How do HLS students fare?

Complete speculation: Better than other schools' students.

They do fine. You might have trouble if you have mediocre (1-3 H's) grades. I had above-median grades and did fine, but was not swimming in offers. Having strong CA ties helps (less important in LA, more important everywhere else), as does having a specific reason why you want to practice in CA. SF and LA are not fungible and you should try hard not to suggest that they are if you are interviewing in both markets. I recommend trying to get an offer from Quinn during the summer so that you can be a bit more ambitious come EIP. Make sure you look very carefully at bidding stats from previous years when you are ordering your bids - I did not and didn't get a few firms that probably should be on everyone's all-CA bid list (e.g. MoFo SF).

[TripTrip]

Also, anyone who's already thinking about this sort of thing, check the table on this page. It has some interesting ways of talking about grades.

Can any other admitted students not log on to this link? Or am I doing it wrong?

Are you using the format "jsmith.jd17" for your username?

[liammial]

.

[hop]

Also, anyone who's already thinking about this sort of thing, check the table on this page. It has some interesting ways of talking about grades.

Can any other admitted students not log on to this link? Or am I doing it wrong?

Are you using the format "jsmith.jd17" for your username?

I tried that format and also my hls email and neither worked.

[rathgra]

Also, anyone who's already thinking about this sort of thing, check the table on this page. It has some interesting ways of talking about grades.

Can any other admitted students not log on to this link? Or am I doing it wrong?

Are you using the format "jsmith.jd17" for your username?

I tried that format and also my hls email and neither worked.

I recall not being able to access certain areas of the website last spring - I suspect admitted students and enrolled students have different privileges and you'll switch over sometime this summer.

For future reference - your username for everything password-protected on the HLS website is the jsmith.jd17 format

[wert3813]

I recall not being able to access certain areas of the website last spring - I suspect admitted students and enrolled students have different privileges and you'll switch over sometime this summer.

For future reference - your username for everything password-protected on the HLS website is the jsmith.jd17 format

me too. The one sentence synopsis is OCS is a little less hesitant than TLS wisdom.

[DoubleChecks]

California market. How do HLS students fare?

Complete speculation: Better than other schools' students.

They do fine. You might have trouble if you have mediocre (1-3 H's) grades. I had above-median grades and did fine, but was not swimming in offers. Having strong CA ties helps (less important in LA, more important everywhere else), as does having a specific reason why you want to practice in CA. SF and LA are not fungible and you should try hard not to suggest that they are if you are interviewing in both markets. I recommend trying to get an offer from Quinn during the summer so that you can be a bit more ambitious come EIP. Make sure you look very carefully at bidding stats from previous years when you are ordering your bids - I did not and didn't get a few firms that probably should be on everyone's all-CA bid list (e.g. MoFo SF).

This is all probably good advice, but I just want to note that there are, as always, exceptions. If you end up with mediocre grades (like 1-2 H's for your whole 1L yr), you aren't necessarily shut out of the CA market (not suggesting this is what hlsperson111 was implying, however). It's just an extra obstacle/burden you have to get over. Being a very strong, professional interviewer will help you get a ton of offers, i.e., a lot of these firms, CA included, don't necessarily have strict grade cutoffs for HLS students it seems.

Case in point, a friend of mine is a very good interviewer, but had pretty middling grades. OCS told her to do like 30 screeners to be safe, especially since she wanted CA (targeted multiple markets though). She ended up getting 29 callback offers o.O. Only notable resume experience I believe was did TFA for 2 yrs.

[t-14orbust]

Will I need boots for ASW next weekend?

[politics89]

Will I need boots for ASW next weekend?

Boots? Like rain/snow boots? No.

[t-14orbust]

Will I need boots for ASW next weekend?

Boots? Like rain/snow boots? No.

lol thanks. Wasn't sure if oxfords/boat shoes/sneakers were ok for the weather there.

[politics89]

Will I need boots for ASW next weekend?

Boots? Like rain/snow boots? No.

lol thanks. Wasn't sure if oxfords/boat shoes/sneakers were ok for the weather there.

No it's mid-50s here and is supposed to be next weekend as well. You'll be fine. It's always possible it might rain though.

[t-14orbust]

Will I need boots for ASW next weekend?

Boots? Like rain/snow boots? No.

lol thanks. Wasn't sure if oxfords/boat shoes/sneakers were ok for the weather there.

No it's mid-50s here and is supposed to be next weekend as well. You'll be fine. It's always possible it might rain though.

Coming from CA I see 50s and think thunderstorm/blizzard/arctic tundra. Lol jk that's more like 40s.