Top Law Schools

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Erwi ... 152951.php

http://www.ocregister.com/2017/05/17/uc ... in-july-1/

Not surprising, this has been rumored for years at this point.

Edit: By years I mean since Berkeley's Dean disaster a few years ago and then the follow up disaster with the next Dean.

Sucks for all the kids who are still at Irvine. His pull was the main factor behind Irvine's decent federal clerkship numbers.

Mullens wrote:Sucks for all the kids who are still at Irvine. His pull was the main factor behind Irvine's decent federal clerkship numbers.

Do you think this will have a huge impact on Irvine's employment numbers? I was thinking about attending C/O 2021

para219 wrote: Do you think this will have a huge impact on Irvine's employment numbers?

Overall employment numbers? Probably not. Clerkship placement? Probably yes.

Low opinion of him. He started an unnecessary law school in California (and boosted it through his own connections) at the worst time to go to law school.

He's right up there with the Indiana Tech guys to me. The only difference is that they didn't have the personal capital he did to launch a school.

Now he's leaving his school.

I'm sure he will be a fine Dean just watch your wallet around him.

[/quote]
Overall employment numbers? Probably not. Clerkship placement? Probably yes.[/quote]

Why do you say that?

para219 wrote:

Overall employment numbers? Probably not. Clerkship placement? Probably yes.[/quote]

Why do you say that?[/quote]

It's pretty simple. Employers hire based on general perception of quality of students, which won't change appreciably now that UCI has carved out a piece of the SoCal/PI market. But federal clerkships can be much more about who you know and who is going to bat for you. Without a powerhouse phone call coming from Dean Chem., UCI students may not be able to pull down fed clerk positions at near their current clip. Those students will trickle down to other desirable employment, because the people getting Dean Chem phone calls to judges will land on their feet with desirable employment.

Npret wrote:Low opinion of him. He started an unnecessary law school in California (and boosted it through his own connections) at the worst time to go to law school.

He's right up there with the Indiana Tech guys to me. The only difference is that they didn't have the personal capital he did to launch a school.

Now he's leaving his school.

I'm sure he will be a fine Dean just watch your wallet around him.

I'm sure the kids on huge scholarships from their first few years who got clerkships/ good outcomes really hold that against him.

I don't love the guy, but Irvine isn't fucking Indiana tech.

UVA2B wrote:

para219 wrote:

rpupkin wrote: Overall employment numbers? Probably not. Clerkship placement? Probably yes.

Why do you say that?

It's pretty simple. Employers hire based on general perception of quality of students, which won't change appreciably now that UCI has carved out a piece of the SoCal/PI market. But federal clerkships can be much more about who you know and who is going to bat for you. Without a powerhouse phone call coming from Dean Chem., UCI students may not be able to pull down fed clerk positions at near their current clip. Those students will trickle down to other desirable employment, because the people getting Dean Chem phone calls to judges will land on their feet with desirable employment.

Yep.

No of course Irvine isn't Indiana Tech. But it was an unneeded California school in a supersaturated market that I feel was basically an ego exercise for him. That's how I equate him with the leaders behind Indiana Tech.

Just my opinion that he's another out of touch law school leader. Obviously he is a brilliant, well-connected scholar. Maybe he could have made Indiana Tech a law school powerhouse if he handpicked the class and gave full scholarships and promised them jobs.

Npret wrote:No of course Irvine isn't Indiana Tech. But it was an unneeded California school in a supersaturated market that I feel was basically an ego exercise for him. That's how I equate him with the leaders behind Indiana Tech.

Just my opinion that he's another out of touch law school leader. Obviously he is a brilliant, well-connected scholar. Maybe he could have made Indiana Tech a law school powerhouse if he handpicked the class and gave full scholarships and promised them jobs.

And it worked out, relatively. There are several California law schools that shouldn't exist. I don't know that uci is one of them. Especially since, their placement is/was pretty solid.

para219 wrote:

Mullens wrote:Sucks for all the kids who are still at Irvine. His pull was the main factor behind Irvine's decent federal clerkship numbers.

Do you think this will have a huge impact on Irvine's employment numbers? I was thinking about attending C/O 2021

Not across the board but the fed clerkship numbers will probably regress to Davis levels before you get there.

sublime wrote:

Npret wrote:No of course Irvine isn't Indiana Tech. But it was an unneeded California school in a supersaturated market that I feel was basically an ego exercise for him. That's how I equate him with the leaders behind Indiana Tech.

Just my opinion that he's another out of touch law school leader. Obviously he is a brilliant, well-connected scholar. Maybe he could have made Indiana Tech a law school powerhouse if he handpicked the class and gave full scholarships and promised them jobs.

And it worked out, relatively. There are several California law schools that shouldn't exist. I don't know that uci is one of them. Especially since, their placement is/was pretty solid.

Let's see what happens when he's gone. You're right. He did a good job. But creating a law school in 2009 was just a poor choice given the already saturated market. It's not as if UCI created long term jobs for their grads. He was able to poach top students and get them clerkships. But those jobs would have just gone to other grads. I'm curious to see where the school stands in another 8 years.

Npret wrote:

sublime wrote:

Npret wrote:No of course Irvine isn't Indiana Tech. But it was an unneeded California school in a supersaturated market that I feel was basically an ego exercise for him. That's how I equate him with the leaders behind Indiana Tech.

Just my opinion that he's another out of touch law school leader. Obviously he is a brilliant, well-connected scholar. Maybe he could have made Indiana Tech a law school powerhouse if he handpicked the class and gave full scholarships and promised them jobs.

And it worked out, relatively. There are several California law schools that shouldn't exist. I don't know that uci is one of them. Especially since, their placement is/was pretty solid.

Let's see what happens when he's gone. You're right. He did a good job. But creating a law school in 2009 was just a poor choice given the already saturated market. It's not as if UCI created long term jobs for their grads. He was able to poach top students and get them clerkships. But those jobs would have just gone to other grads. I'm curious to see where the school stands in another 8 years.

He wanted to create a good law school and he did. That's awesome. Now that it is established, he no longer has to hold its hand. Other people will take over. And if the student body continues to be about the same at UCI, I don't see their employment numbers, even clerkship numbers, falling that much. And I'm not sure what you mean by long term jobs. But I see nothing wrong with what he did and what he's doing.

I mean, it turned out well, and UCI seems to be a very decent school. But if you'd asked anyone before it was founded, I'm not sure anyone would have said that California needs another law school.

Npret wrote:

sublime wrote:

Npret wrote:No of course Irvine isn't Indiana Tech. But it was an unneeded California school in a supersaturated market that I feel was basically an ego exercise for him. That's how I equate him with the leaders behind Indiana Tech.

Just my opinion that he's another out of touch law school leader. Obviously he is a brilliant, well-connected scholar. Maybe he could have made Indiana Tech a law school powerhouse if he handpicked the class and gave full scholarships and promised them jobs.

And it worked out, relatively. There are several California law schools that shouldn't exist. I don't know that uci is one of them. Especially since, their placement is/was pretty solid.

Let's see what happens when he's gone. You're right. He did a good job. But creating a law school in 2009 was just a poor choice given the already saturated market. It's not as if UCI created long term jobs for their grads. He was able to poach top students and get them clerkships. But those jobs would have just gone to other grads. I'm curious to see where the school stands in another 8 years.

IRC I don't think Chemerinsky was actually involved in with the actual starting of UCI and was later brought on after the school had already cleared the UC Board of Regents/received some initial start up money. I believe it was a group of Orange County lawyers/UCI administrators/the Irvine Company and Donald Bren that were mostly responsible for the schools creation, there reasoning being they believed there was a lack of quality law schools in Orange County and perceived that other top CA graduates were less committed to coming to work in Orange County long term.

LurkerTurnedMember wrote:

Npret wrote:

sublime wrote:

Npret wrote:No of course Irvine isn't Indiana Tech. But it was an unneeded California school in a supersaturated market that I feel was basically an ego exercise for him. That's how I equate him with the leaders behind Indiana Tech.

Just my opinion that he's another out of touch law school leader. Obviously he is a brilliant, well-connected scholar. Maybe he could have made Indiana Tech a law school powerhouse if he handpicked the class and gave full scholarships and promised them jobs.

And it worked out, relatively. There are several California law schools that shouldn't exist. I don't know that uci is one of them. Especially since, their placement is/was pretty solid.

Let's see what happens when he's gone. You're right. He did a good job. But creating a law school in 2009 was just a poor choice given the already saturated market. It's not as if UCI created long term jobs for their grads. He was able to poach top students and get them clerkships. But those jobs would have just gone to other grads. I'm curious to see where the school stands in another 8 years.

He wanted to create a good law school and he did. That's awesome. Now that it is established, he no longer has to hold its hand. Other people will take over. And if the student body continues to be about the same at UCI, I don't see their employment numbers, even clerkship numbers, falling that much. And I'm not sure what you mean by long term jobs. But I see nothing wrong with what he did and what he's doing.

I meant long term jobs as opposed to any 1year school funded fellowships that UCI might have created.

Basically all he did was increase the number of schools churning out lawyers in California into an already oversaturated market for lawyers at a time all (but maybe 1or 2) law firms were struggling and many top grads were not finding jobs.

If you think that was a wise decision and a benefit to the legal community, I disagree.

Just for reference here's the January 2009 ATL story about the 2008 layoffs.
http://abovethelaw.com/2009/01/top-bigl ... s-layoffs/

LurkerTurnedMember wrote:And if the student body continues to be about the same at UCI, I don't see their employment numbers, even clerkship numbers, falling that much.

Since it's fairly widely accepted that most of UCI's federal clerkship placement was a direct result of Chemerinsky going to bat for students, I think that's way too optimistic. I'm sure the students who were placing that well in the class will still have options, but at that level, the judges are looking at dozens-to-hundreds of candidates with stellar GPAs at their schools. Recommendations and connections are way more important at that point, and UCI just lost their main boost in that area.

Since it's fairly widely accepted that most of UCI's federal clerkship placement was a direct result of Chemerinsky going to bat for students,,,

Exactly. And, AIII clerkships is a zero-sum game. Now, Dean Chem takes his gravitas to Boalt where he makes calls on behalf of those students. UCI clerkships down, Boalt up.

I agree generally with what people are saying here. But the whole clerkship hiring process makes little sense to me. If the students are of equal caliber but this time Chem isn't there to call on their behalf, they should still be just as fit for the job as before. It's weird to think a bunch of judges are now going to just shift over to hiring Boalt grads because Chem is saying the same routine comments to them about the applicants but this time he switched over to saying them for Boalt students. If a call to chambers has that much sway in the hiring process then the whole process is f'd up. I'm not disagreeing with people here, just tired of the gamesmanship.

Anyway, congrats to Boalt for hitting T7 in the upcoming rankings (if it happens, I say we call it the "Chem bump").

LurkerTurnedMember wrote:I agree generally with what people are saying here. But the whole clerkship hiring process makes little sense to me. If the students are of equal caliber but this time Chem isn't there to call on their behalf, they should still be just as fit for the job as before. It's weird to think a bunch of judges are now going to just shift over to hiring Boalt grads because Chem is saying the same routine comments to them about the applicants but this time he switched over to saying them for Boalt students. If a call to chambers has that much sway in the hiring process then the whole process is f'd up. I'm not disagreeing with people here, just tired of the gamesmanship.

Of course they're as fit for the job as they were before. But there are tons of people who are fit for the job; the trick isn't even to be qualified, but to have some way of standing out from all the other qualified applicants. Calls are a huge part of the process, especially for judges who hire a new clerk every year and get inundated with hundreds of applications every time. It's not surprising that they would use calls from people they know/respect to identify suitable candidates. I mean, yes, it sucks for people who don't make the connections (which is why everyone who is interested in clerking is advised to get to know their profs), but from the judges' point of view it's reasonable behavior.

this is devastating for UCI law (and totally expected)

there's no other way to spin it

jbagelboy wrote:this is devastating for UCI law (and totally expected)

there's no other way to spin it

You're right. My understanding from reading a few online articles is that Cathrine Fisk, who is well known in the employment sector, is also planning to leave UCI for Boalt. If true, that's two really good gains for Boalt and two big losses for UCI. I wouldn't be surprised to see Boalt go T7 in the next round of rankings and UCI to fall out of T30.

LurkerTurnedMember wrote:

jbagelboy wrote:this is devastating for UCI law (and totally expected)

there's no other way to spin it

You're right. My understanding from reading a few online articles is that Cathrine Fisk, who is well known in the employment sector, is also planning to leave UCI for Boalt. If true, that's two really good gains for Boalt and two big losses for UCI. I wouldn't be surprised to see Boalt go T7 in the next round of rankings and UCI to fall out of T30.

Yeah. That's the important point, impact on students and other faculty. The commercial US news magazine rankings aren't relevant. I don't know why that would matter. On the margins it matters more for a relatively new school but even there I'm doubtful. The connections and energy were important--Chemerinsky was deeply involved in student affairs and was successful at attracting other notable scholars to the school--and that will not last without him unless someone equally substantial took the role.