Hastings Forum

[Borhas]

It's not money, UC Davis just made shit up to boost their employment at graduation numbers. That's pretty much it.

Some shit like 98% employed at graduation

You got to also take into account that difference in a couple points of raw USNWR points can make a big difference in terms of rankings. Regardless there is no reason to believe that a higher USNWR ranking leads to better employment prospects... better #'s from the incoming class? Probably, but not employment. (see WUSTL and IUB)

Most, if not all, schools "make shit up." There is more to this equation.

Well, I actually think Hastings' 68% employed at graduation was actually not made up, because, well, if you were going to make up a number, you'd make one up that's way better than that one.

money spent per student is possible, but really, I have never seen those numbers published, so it could very well be a sort of black box effect

[071816]

Lol when did I ever say Hastings made that 68% figure up?

[Borhas]

Lol when did I ever say Hastings made that 68% figure up?

well dude, you asked for the difference between Hastings and Davis

[vb007]

TLDR: it all comes down to money.

But after reading that Ka-Ching! NY Times article over the weekend, I wonder how much $$$ Davis' law school has to hand over to UC Davis. That article claimed it's not unusual for law schools to kick back in the neighborhood of 30% of their "income" to the main campus, this profit making is argued to explain rising tuition costs nationwide. Hastings would not have to do this. And from that article, Hastings should be making $$$, or at least doing OK (yes CA's expensive, but Hastings is also expensive). I wonder then why tuition keeps rising? And if the state's provisional budget is not approved as is later this year, apparently a mid-year tuition hike is a possibility.

probably because hastings has a funny relationship with the state for its budget. hastings is actually on a separate line from the uc regents (which covers all the other UC schools). this is due to some requirements from when the university of california acquired hastings. thus, the governor can slash hastings' funding individually. schwarzenegger actually did try to cut hastings' funding in essentially its entirety a few years ago but hastings was able to fight it and retain a good portion of the state funding (but did have to take a big cut). this demonstrates how fragile hastings' state funding situation is relative to the other UC schools. i don't have the hard data right now, but i bet the other UC law schools receive more state funding than hastings does right now.

[Borhas]

I think it would be a mistake to say Hastings did not have good placement before the recession.

Well this goes to what Borhas said regarding debt. Did Hastings have decent placement? Sure, but it didn't have decent placement relative to the sticker price of the school.

And now we've come full circle. This is a cost-benefit analysis. If you have no preference towards CA's geography, culture, etc you should not choose Hastings. It's market is saturated, debt is overwhelming, and taxes are insane. You are clearly paying a premium to live in CA over other states like Texas.

However, if you like the geography, culture, etc of CA then you must factor that into your cost-benefit analysis. Most of the people applying to Hastings know their job placement is extremely likely to be confined to CA.

Right now you are only looking at one side of the equation in isolation. A proper cost-benefit analysis will look at both the quantitative and qualitative costs/benefits.

The more expensive Hastings the more you have to want to work in CA.

*There's a really good article in an old Economist about why people prefer to live in California even if it decreases their wealth. It's written in their politics section so it's very straightforward. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find it on their website...

the moral of the story is:

like shitty stuff because you won't have as much competition for it...

Example, I've gotten like 4-5 emails from career services telling people that NYC firms are underbid at OCI. Not surprisingly people are overbidding San Francisco firms. I mean, yeah, NYC is shit compared to SF, but there is so much more of it to go around.

[kapital98]

the moral of the story is:

like shitty stuff because you won't have as much competition for it...

Example, I've gotten like 4-5 emails from career services telling people that NYC firms are underbid at OCI. Not surprisingly people are overbidding San Francisco firms. I mean, yeah, NYC is shit compared to SF, but there is so much more of it to go around.

Amazing climate and culture vs. models and bottles (or whatever Texas has that is like a model.)

[drdolittle]

TLDR: it all comes down to money.

But after reading that Ka-Ching! NY Times article over the weekend, I wonder how much $$$ Davis' law school has to hand over to UC Davis. That article claimed it's not unusual for law schools to kick back in the neighborhood of 30% of their "income" to the main campus, this profit making is argued to explain rising tuition costs nationwide. Hastings would not have to do this. And from that article, Hastings should be making $$$, or at least doing OK (yes CA's expensive, but Hastings is also expensive). I wonder then why tuition keeps rising? And if the state's provisional budget is not approved as is later this year, apparently a mid-year tuition hike is a possibility.

probably because hastings has a funny relationship with the state for its budget. hastings is actually on a separate line from the uc regents (which covers all the other UC schools). this is due to some requirements from when the university of california acquired hastings. thus, the governor can slash hastings' funding individually. schwarzenegger actually did try to cut hastings' funding in essentially its entirety a few years ago but hastings was able to fight it and retain a good portion of the state funding (but did have to take a big cut). this demonstrates how fragile hastings' state funding situation is relative to the other UC schools. i don't have the hard data right now, but i bet the other UC law schools receive more state funding than hastings does right now.

Well sure, but I think this unique funding relationship is what should make Hastings relatively better off. The writer of the Ka-Ching! article made the point there, as well as before, that law schools typically generate a net profit. Law schools affiliated with larger universities evidently end up kicking back a portion of this to the main university. If Hasting doesn't have to do this (the unique funding arrangement also means independence from UC), and it's not doing much, much worse than other law schools around the country (it's certainly not much cheaper anymore), then it should at least be OK & stable financially. Continuous rising tuition suggests otherwise, and I'm just wondering what might be behind this. Either the Ka-Ching! article is very misleading or Hastings is significantly less financially efficient than other law schools. It's definitely in an expensive area of the country but the school's also expensive now too.

[Borhas]

Hastings has an inefficient bureaucracy, and I think top 5 highest paid professors in the world (including other academia like med schools).

Frankly, there is a lot of fat to be cut

[drdolittle]

...and I think top 5 highest paid professors in the world (including other academia like med schools).

Really? Any idea which profs and about how much?

[Borhas]

you know, I don't think that's true, I saw an article about it earlier in the year, but double checking it makes me doubt it

so nvm

[drdolittle]

you know, I don't think that's true, I saw an article about it earlier in the year, but double checking it makes me doubt it

so nvm

Actually, I'm sure we'd be surprised by some profs' salaries. And their total compensations as well, for profs who basically moonlight as full-time Hastings profs and earn extra $ writing books, consulting, etc., on the side. I think some of the better/higher profile profs do this quite often.

[Lasers]

to the people pondering about the reason behind the now wide discrepancy between the rankings of hastings and davis: i talked to a hastings professor a couple months ago about it, and he told me it was due largely to davis' sketchy employment percentages (as speculated by most people here). he also told me that hastings, now under dean wu, had only recently made active strides toward helping their ranking; in fact he said for the first time that they reverse engineered the us news methodology and have been using it to calculate how new decision-making would affect hastings' ranking if everyone else stayed stagnant.

i don't know how much of this was him talking out of his ass, but he certainly seemed genuine in telling me this (and it makes sense considering it never really seemed hastings was too concerned with their decline in the rankings before).

[missinglink]

I think it would be a mistake to say Hastings did not have good placement before the recession.

Well this goes to what Borhas said regarding debt. Did Hastings have decent placement? Sure, but it didn't have decent placement relative to the sticker price of the school.

And now we've come full circle. This is a cost-benefit analysis. If you have no preference towards CA's geography, culture, etc you should not choose Hastings. It's market is saturated, debt is overwhelming, and taxes are insane. You are clearly paying a premium to live in CA over other states like Texas.

However, if you like the geography, culture, etc of CA then you must factor that into your cost-benefit analysis. Most of the people applying to Hastings know their job placement is extremely likely to be confined to CA.

Right now you are only looking at one side of the equation in isolation. A proper cost-benefit analysis will look at both the quantitative and qualitative costs/benefits.

The more expensive Hastings the more you have to want to work in CA.

*There's a really good article in an old Economist about why people prefer to live in California even if it decreases their wealth. It's written in their politics section so it's very straightforward. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find it on their website...

the moral of the story is:

like shitty stuff because you won't have as much competition for it...

Example, I've gotten like 4-5 emails from career services telling people that NYC firms are underbid at OCI. Not surprisingly people are overbidding San Francisco firms. I mean, yeah, NYC is shit compared to SF, but there is so much more of it to go around.

That happens every year, from what I've heard.

And with predictably poor results.

[kapital98]

Example, I've gotten like 4-5 emails from career services telling people that NYC firms are underbid at OCI. Not surprisingly people are overbidding San Francisco firms. I mean, yeah, NYC is shit compared to SF, but there is so much more of it to go around.

That happens every year, from what I've heard.

And with predictably poor results.

Hastings seems to have many firms (~300 according to LSN) attend OCI. It seems like a lot of firms from NY and Texas, relative to other schools come to Hastings for OCI. Assuming you are in the top ~15% of your class, do you have an equal shot at the NYC firms compared to SF?

A better question: Is bidding for these firms worth it? Do decent biglaw firms come to Hastings and offer a comparable and realistic chance at employment?

I'm really interested in this.

[FireNextTime]

Hastings seems to have many firms (~300 according to LSN) attend OCI. It seems like a lot of firms from NY and Texas, relative to other schools come to Hastings for OCI. Assuming you are in the top ~15% of your class, do you have an equal shot at the NYC firms compared to SF?

A better question: Is bidding for these firms worth it? Do decent biglaw firms come to Hastings and offer a comparable and realistic chance at employment?

I'm really interested in this.

Sadly, LSN is out of date. We have 134 total interviewers this fall. Many of these are from same firm. Like, Morgan Lewis & Bockius, Sheppard Mullin, Orrick, etc. offering 2-3 different interviews for different California cities. Most of our interviewers are looking to hire Hastings students only for California jobs. There are some firms that allow us to list preferred cities out of several options — Jones Day, for example, offering up SF to Atlanta and many cities in between. There are some resume collections for NY firms. I don't see any Texas locations.

Hard to say what the GPA cutoff is for having an equal shot at NYC as you do SF. If I had to guess, I'd bet even the top-ranked student is more likely to get an offer for an SF office than for one in NYC.

And, yes, bidding for the firms is totally worth it. First, you don't get hired if you don't apply. Second, the OCI process is probably the easiest path to employment you could make up. It's not easy to be qualify for an OCI job, but if you qualify by virtue of top 25% or better/law review/etc., then you'd be stupid not to max out your bids. This is the ONLY system where the post-grad employers come to you. Upload a couple of documents, click "bid" and wait for the interviews to pile up.

There may be some strategy involved, like, say, don't use all 35 bids on 20-atty satellite offices to the detriment of bidding on 65-atty or 120-atty local firms who pay below market. But you MUST bid.

[kapital98]

Sadly, LSN is out of date. We have 134 total interviewers this fall. Many of these are from same firm. Like, Morgan Lewis & Bockius, Sheppard Mullin, Orrick, etc. offering 2-3 different interviews for different California cities. Most of our interviewers are looking to hire Hastings students only for California jobs. There are some firms that allow us to list preferred cities out of several options — Jones Day, for example, offering up SF to Atlanta and many cities in between. There are some resume collections for NY firms. I don't see any Texas locations.

Hard to say what the GPA cutoff is for having an equal shot at NYC as you do SF. If I had to guess, I'd bet even the top-ranked student is more likely to get an offer for an SF office than for one in NYC.

And, yes, bidding for the firms is totally worth it. First, you don't get hired if you don't apply. Second, the OCI process is probably the easiest path to employment you could make up. It's not easy to be qualify for an OCI job, but if you qualify by virtue of top 25% or better/law review/etc., then you'd be stupid not to max out your bids. This is the ONLY system where the post-grad employers come to you. Upload a couple of documents, click "bid" and wait for the interviews to pile up.

There may be some strategy involved, like, say, don't use all 35 bids on 20-atty satellite offices to the detriment of bidding on 65-atty or 120-atty local firms who pay below market. But you MUST bid.

Thank you for the advice. It's greatly appreciated.

134 still seems impressive for a T1 school (~1 interview for every 4-5 students.)

[vb007]

Example, I've gotten like 4-5 emails from career services telling people that NYC firms are underbid at OCI. Not surprisingly people are overbidding San Francisco firms. I mean, yeah, NYC is shit compared to SF, but there is so much more of it to go around.

That happens every year, from what I've heard.

And with predictably poor results.

Hastings seems to have many firms (~300 according to LSN) attend OCI. It seems like a lot of firms from NY and Texas, relative to other schools come to Hastings for OCI. Assuming you are in the top ~15% of your class, do you have an equal shot at the NYC firms compared to SF?

A better question: Is bidding for these firms worth it? Do decent biglaw firms come to Hastings and offer a comparable and realistic chance at employment?

I'm really interested in this.

I have a couple of friends who wound up at NY firms for their 2L summer. I don't know where they are ranked, but I guess it is possible to get NY out of Hastings. It's hard to say whether it's realistic though, since the vast majority end up in CA.

[FireNextTime]

134 still seems impressive for a T1 school (~1 interview for every 4-5 students.)

I should note that included in that number are the SF & Alameda DA/PD offices, plus Fed PDs. There are only a couple of non-profits, but Hastings & other area schools holds a wholly separate OCI in the spring for the do-gooders.

And, thanks to a smaller incoming class size, the interviewer-to-student ratio this year will actually be about 1-to-3.

[bilbobaggins]

134 still seems impressive for a T1 school (~1 interview for every 4-5 students.)

I should note that included in that number are the SF & Alameda DA/PD offices, plus Fed PDs. There are only a couple of non-profits, but Hastings & other area schools holds a wholly separate OCI in the spring for the do-gooders.

And, thanks to a smaller incoming class size, the interviewer-to-student ratio this year will actually be about 1-to-3.

In my experience, Hastings places pretty well in PD/DA jobs.

[missinglink]

Sadly, LSN is out of date. We have 134 total interviewers this fall. Many of these are from same firm. Like, Morgan Lewis & Bockius, Sheppard Mullin, Orrick, etc. offering 2-3 different interviews for different California cities. Most of our interviewers are looking to hire Hastings students only for California jobs. There are some firms that allow us to list preferred cities out of several options — Jones Day, for example, offering up SF to Atlanta and many cities in between. There are some resume collections for NY firms. I don't see any Texas locations.

Hard to say what the GPA cutoff is for having an equal shot at NYC as you do SF. If I had to guess, I'd bet even the top-ranked student is more likely to get an offer for an SF office than for one in NYC.

And, yes, bidding for the firms is totally worth it. First, you don't get hired if you don't apply. Second, the OCI process is probably the easiest path to employment you could make up. It's not easy to be qualify for an OCI job, but if you qualify by virtue of top 25% or better/law review/etc., then you'd be stupid not to max out your bids. This is the ONLY system where the post-grad employers come to you. Upload a couple of documents, click "bid" and wait for the interviews to pile up.

There may be some strategy involved, like, say, don't use all 35 bids on 20-atty satellite offices to the detriment of bidding on 65-atty or 120-atty local firms who pay below market. But you MUST bid.

Thank you for the advice. It's greatly appreciated.

134 still seems impressive for a T1 school (~1 interview for every 4-5 students.)

It's better when you consider that Hastings also does 75% preselect / 25% lottery. Preselect takes most of the challenge out of bidding, since employers pre-screen applicants. Practically, what that means is that not every student will be participating in OCI, or even have a shot at interviewing.

Not sure how things will pan out this year. I know last year was challenging, for many of the reasons mentioned previously here - people overbid SF firms. It's a relatively small, competitive market, and being geographically flexible is good.

I'm not sure what it would take for a NYC firm, but anecdotally I've heard NY firms care less about local ties, and because of the relatively large class sizes, are willing to dip lower into a class.

[horrorbusiness]

Can anyone tell me about LEOP? Does it give you a boost in admissions? Whether it does or not, is it worth being in as a student?

[Lasers]

Can anyone tell me about LEOP? Does it give you a boost in admissions? Whether it does or not, is it worth being in as a student?

don't know about the LEOP admissions process, but i've heard from some students in LEOP it is an advantage during the year.

i'm actually kind of jealous and i almost think it's unfair, considering the materials they seem to be getting.

[thedumbwaiter]

Unfortunately I don't know anything about the LEOP application process so I'm not much use there but I do know that a lot of people at Hastings are LEOP students.

I don't envy their extra workload at all. Apparently they have practice exams every Saturday and I've been in the law cafe when their mentor goes over the answers with them and he's a complete douchebag. So self-righteous and really freaking loud so everyone in the room gets to hear all about how the person messed up in the exam. Not much fun.

[llachans]

How is job placement in regards to the DA?

[Lasers]

Unfortunately I don't know anything about the LEOP application process so I'm not much use there but I do know that a lot of people at Hastings are LEOP students.

I don't envy their extra workload at all. Apparently they have practice exams every Saturday and I've been in the law cafe when their mentor goes over the answers with them and he's a complete douchebag. So self-righteous and really freaking loud so everyone in the room gets to hear all about how the person messed up in the exam. Not much fun.

hm, that's funny, because i would GLADLY do that.

i'm all for practice exams and feedback. sounds like a huge advantage to me.