V50 with 1 H is super doable, but specific firms vary. As acrossthelake said, it depends on the firm and the rankings are not a very good metric per se (ex: plenty of V10 firms are easier to get into than W&C).

do students think employment opportunities are better from small schools like S or Y? Do they lament the large class size in that regard?

I mean employment opportunities *are* better at YLS. It's YLS. I don't lament the large class size, but I also haven't gone through EIP yet.

What about Stanford?

I have no data on Stanford. I assume the people at the bottom of their class have it easier than the ppl at the bottom of ours. I'm not at the bottom, though, so I don't care either way.

My personal experience with grades is that they are random. At least for me; I don't know enough about other people's study habits or what grades they got to say whether that is true for everyone. But effort does not correlate to grades in my case, no. I have had classes where I worked really hard and destroyed the exam and gotten a P. I had a class I didn't go to half the time because it was early and I didn't find the discussions helpful, used someone else's outline on the exam, thought said exam was terrible, and got an utterly shocking DS.

The lack of fine gradations enhances the feeling of randomness; do not mistake that to mean, however, that I do not like the P/H/DS grading system. In general I like it.

This is my experience exactly.

I am super impressed by the faculty at HLS. It seems to blow small schools out of the water...just having so many top names in one place. My question is this, though. Do you feel that you're able to connect to the professors?

I've heard that some professors are really hard to access--for instance, that even if you go to office hours, they will shoo you out quickly so they can deal with 50 other people at office hours. Is that true? Any other comments on this?

Like normal people, the friendliness of professors varies just as widely. I managed to cultivate at least an LOR-worthy relationship with a prof both semesters, enough for one to ask me if I would be willing to do research with her for the summer on top of my internship. In my experience, office hours usually don't have any people lined up. In the first half of the semester, most of the time profs are sitting there twiddling their thumbs. On the days when it's busy, they're going to try to get through each person so it's fair, but if you want a relationship with your professor you don't try to do it during the last 3 OH of the semester anyway.

I should also note that I'm a gunner when it comes to that sort of stuff, so YMMV.

there are two counter-arguments to the whole "small schools place better" thing:

(1) Harvard's EIP is literally massive, and thus more firms and offices come for interviews. i have no idea if it perfectly scales up in a #employers/#students sense, but it must be close. It is the largest law firm interview program in the country.

(2) Bigger school = more alumni = more depth in your options. For example, HALB (law and biz) sends out emails every once in a while with some alum looking for people to interview with their hedge fund etc.

Do you guys have any comments on the practical/theoretical divide in classes? From my limited perspective, it seems like Harvard is a bit more on the theoretical side (than Stanford, for instance), which I gravitate to.

I don't want to spend three years thinking about how lawyer A should have argued an 1843 property case. I'd rather think/talk about and discuss the larger issues involved in property law in general--theory behind it, comparison to other legal systems, etc. For instance, I find it very interesting to consider hypotheticals at the margins and really nail down the doctrine we're talking about--and to consider how the doctrine/law could have been different or is in fact applied differently.

Do you think that matches with what you get at HLS?

What are your thoughts on Legislation and Regulation?

I know that's terribly open ended. I'm interested because (a) as of now I think I'd like to ultimately do legislative advocacy work and (b) while not completely unique to Harvard, it's not one of the traditional doctrinal classes.

Depends on the professor. To be honest, I wouldn't be able to tell you what the general trend is at HLS versus SLS. I'd imagine you'd have to spend some time at both, and even then, it may be simply determined by the handful of professors you were in contact with.

For your first year, since you can't pick your profs, it'll be very luck of the draw. Some of mine really far into theory, some didn't very much at all. For the rest of your two years, though, you'll be able to ask around. I guess it's one of the good things about having so many profs...even if we have the same % of theory-oriented profs, that's still a larger number overrall.

Re LegReg: I think it's a bit sparse. We went at the speed of like 1 case an hour and it sometimes felt like they were filling space. It's a useful sort of statutory interpretation + baby admin. I think it's a good addition to the 1L curriculum.

Hate to pull the 'depends on the professor' card again, but...lol. Some big names are kind of hard to get in touch with; other big names are extremely down to earth and helpful (ex: John Manning being the country's leading textualist and probably one of the most genuinely kind human beings I have met in my life).

Thanks for this thread guys! It's been really helpful.

A question on housing: I'm looking around the area and I keep seeing "laundry machines in basement" or "community laundry facilities" listed as amenities. They mean that they're coin-operated, right?

I think so, unless you live in Gropius, in which case they don't operate

I've heard that some of them let you use Crimson Cash.

If you're referring to the laundry machines for the HLS dorms, these can be operated with your HLS ID (money u use for food/printing/ etc.)... Quite convenience in that you don't need $4 in quarters every time

In my experience with Leg Reg, you will think the class is stupid and afterwards think it's useful. Leg Reg is, among other things, a primer on administrative law. Many, many classes do not require admin but are a lot easier if you understand it. Thus if you cannot or do not take admin until substantially later, leg reg can be very helpful. Because of scheduling I'm not taking admin until next year, but I've been taking environmental classes since spring of 1L. It was a lot easier to take environmental law because, when the professor asked what the court's Chevron analysis was in a given case, I actually had some notion what she meant.

Muchos gracias to all the HLS students taking time to answer questions.

My question is, how much partying goes on during the school year in Gropius/Hastings/North? I like to drink and screw around as much as the next guy, but this is law school and I don't want to have the same level of distraction I had in undergrad. It seems from visiting during ASW that the walls in those facilities aren't exactly sound-proof, so I would definitely consider other more expensive options if it would make a difference.

Varies by floor. Some are dead quiet, others are more lively. I haven't heard anybody complain about it disrupting them though. If it were bothering you, you could also easily ask them to quiet down. This is law school, most people understand what's on the line.

Great, thanks for the quick response! Also, I was wondering where most students prefer to do their studying. It seemed like a lot of students hang out in Wasserstein during the day as opposed to going back to dorms. Is that generally the case most of the time?

I dunno about acrossthelake, but I was poasting disputing the "operate" part, not what they operate on. I think my dorm has had a full set of working machines for like one week out of the year.

Don't live on a floor with a lounge and you'll be set