M vs V vs P for corporate law Forum

[quakeroats]

OK, because my brain is literally bleeding, I'm just going to mother fucking do this my self.

Firm: Virginia: attorneys Duke: attorneys
Williams & Connolly: V:27 D: 20
Covington & Burling: V: 25 D: 9
Arnold & Porter: V:13 D: 5
WilmerHale: V: 15 D: 7
Hogan Lovells: V: 50 D: 20

I'm not going to add them up, I'm not going to divide them by any factors. I'm just going to post them. UVA has about 1.75x the number of law students as Duke, that much is true.

There. I'm going to let my brain bleed in other threads now.

Why would you add in anyone other than associates? We're all in the running for associate positions, and who knows what's happened since any given partner was recruited (who knows if s/he was even an associate rather than a lateral)? I don't count partners, etc. because that would risk considering what hiring trends were in the (distant) past, not what they are now.

[SuichiKurama]

Reedie look back at those top firms in DC (Covington, Arnold Porter, Williams Connolly), I don't see how you are coming up with a 33 percent advantage for Duke when you are searching through their profiles.

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This is soul-stompingly hilarious.

In the same way as watching a bus full of mexican children fall of a cliff is hilarious.

I made a long post earlier that pointed out how awful that grid is for listing top DC firms. That's basically a list of the top NYC firms with a couple of top DC one's included.

[RVP11]

Not including Hogan and A&P is just ridiculous.

[quakeroats]

Not including Hogan and A&P is just ridiculous.

N.B. my prior posts for an answer to your critique.

[RVP11]

OK, because my brain is literally bleeding, I'm just going to mother fucking do this my self.

Firm: Virginia: attorneys Duke: attorneys
Williams & Connolly: V:27 D: 20
Covington & Burling: V: 25 D: 9
Arnold & Porter: V:13 D: 5
WilmerHale: V: 15 D: 7
Hogan Lovells: V: 50 D: 20

I'm not going to add them up, I'm not going to divide them by any factors. I'm just going to post them. UVA has about 1.75x the number of law students as Duke, that much is true.

There. I'm going to let my brain bleed in other threads now.

Why would you add in anyone other than associates? We're all in the running for associate positions, and who knows what's happened since any given partner was recruited (who knows if s/he was even an associate rather than a lateral)? I don't count partners, etc. because that would risk considering what hiring trends were in the (distant) past, not what they are now.

Number of partners from each school might be some indicator as to who the firm will be taking in the future.

[quakeroats]

OK, because my brain is literally bleeding, I'm just going to mother fucking do this my self.

Firm: Virginia: attorneys Duke: attorneys
Williams & Connolly: V:27 D: 20
Covington & Burling: V: 25 D: 9
Arnold & Porter: V:13 D: 5
WilmerHale: V: 15 D: 7
Hogan Lovells: V: 50 D: 20

I'm not going to add them up, I'm not going to divide them by any factors. I'm just going to post them. UVA has about 1.75x the number of law students as Duke, that much is true.

There. I'm going to let my brain bleed in other threads now.

Why would you add in anyone other than associates? We're all in the running for associate positions, and who knows what's happened since any given partner was recruited (who knows if s/he was even an associate rather than a lateral)? I don't count partners, etc. because that would risk considering what hiring trends were in the (distant) past, not what they are now.

Number of partners from each school might be some indicator as to who the firm will be taking in the future.

Maybe, but it could mean many other things that aren't germane to our discussion.

[Reedie]

Number of partners from each school might be some indicator as to who the firm will be taking in the future.

If this were true, I'd expect it to already be visible in the hiring patterns for associates.

[quakeroats]

Number of partners from each school might be some indicator as to who the firm will be taking in the future.

If this were true, I'd expect it to already be visible in the hiring patterns for associates.

+1

[vamedic03]

Not including Hogan and A&P is just ridiculous.

Same as not including Steptoe, Jones Day, Sidley, etc... Who the hell puts WLRK and Cravath on a list for DC offices (last I checked, both are NYC only offices)?

[thechee]

Not including Hogan and A&P is just ridiculous.

Same as not including Steptoe, Jones Day, Sidley, etc... Who the hell puts WLRK and Cravath on a list for DC offices (last I checked, both are NYC only offices)?

I thought it was just a list of the V10 plus a few, with numbers listed for DC offices only.

[vamedic03]

Not including Hogan and A&P is just ridiculous.

Same as not including Steptoe, Jones Day, Sidley, etc... Who the hell puts WLRK and Cravath on a list for DC offices (last I checked, both are NYC only offices)?

I thought it was just a list of the V10 plus a few, with numbers listed for DC offices only.

But the V10 is asinine for the purposes of DC... Vault really only applies to NYC

[thechee]

Not including Hogan and A&P is just ridiculous.

Same as not including Steptoe, Jones Day, Sidley, etc... Who the hell puts WLRK and Cravath on a list for DC offices (last I checked, both are NYC only offices)?

I thought it was just a list of the V10 plus a few, with numbers listed for DC offices only.

But the V10 is asinine for the purposes of DC... Vault really only applies to NYC

Fair enough.

[quakeroats]

Not including Hogan and A&P is just ridiculous.

Same as not including Steptoe, Jones Day, Sidley, etc... Who the hell puts WLRK and Cravath on a list for DC offices (last I checked, both are NYC only offices)?

I thought it was just a list of the V10 plus a few, with numbers listed for DC offices only.

But the V10 is asinine for the purposes of DC... Vault really only applies to NYC

I covered this earlier:

Here is a much better list of the 'top' law firms in Washington, DC:

William & Connolly
Covington & Burling
Arnold & Porter
WilmerHale
Hogan & Hartson

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[vamedic03]

You're still under representing DC...

What about?
Gibson Dunn
Jones Day
Steptoe & Johnson
Sidley
Mayer, etc...

[como]

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[/quote]

I don't understand how you have a ratio greater than 1.0 for Duke. Isn't the whole "DC students" number supposed to indicate how many students went to DC?

[quakeroats]

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I don't understand how you have a ratio greater than 1.0 for Duke. Isn't the whole "DC students" number supposed to indicate how many students went to DC?

The ratio is of each school's associates at the listed firms D.C. office to the overall number sent to D.C. each year.

[como]

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I don't understand how you have a ratio greater than 1.0 for Duke. Isn't the whole "DC students" number supposed to indicate how many students went to DC?

The ratio is of each school's associates at the listed firms D.C. office to the overall number sent to D.C. each year.

?

[vamedic03]

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I don't understand how you have a ratio greater than 1.0 for Duke. Isn't the whole "DC students" number supposed to indicate how many students went to DC?

The ratio is of each school's associates at the listed firms D.C. office to the overall number sent to D.C. each year.

This really doesn't seem to have any relevance... How does the number of students 'sent' to DC in a given year correlate with the total # of alumni at your 'select' firms? They really aren't all that related unless you're controlling for year. Seems to be a complete waste of time.

[quakeroats]

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I don't understand how you have a ratio greater than 1.0 for Duke. Isn't the whole "DC students" number supposed to indicate how many students went to DC?

The ratio is of each school's associates at the listed firms D.C. office to the overall number sent to D.C. each year.

This really doesn't seem to have any relevance... How does the number of students 'sent' to DC in a given year correlate with the total # of alumni at your 'select' firms? They really aren't all that related unless you're controlling for year. Seems to be a complete waste of time.

It's relevant because it gives you an idea of how well a school places students in top firms relative to all positions in the D.C. market. It does rely on a number of assumptions, but describing it as a waste time seems a bit much.

[vamedic03]

It really doesn't help you with knowing how well the schools place in DC:

1) Even if you know how many students from a given year are going to DC from a given school, you haven't matched that with a given year's associate class.

2) Your sample size of DC firms is way too small and arbitrary

3) Relating back to #1, the top students at both Duke and UVA will be doing a clerkship and won't be in that graduating year's stats for going to a given city

4) Because of the above reasons, trying to run ANY sort of statistics is really just meaningless

[pelmen74]

It really doesn't help you with knowing how well the schools place in DC:

1) Even if you know how many students from a given year are going to DC from a given school, you haven't matched that with a given year's associate class.

2) Your sample size of DC firms is way too small and arbitrary

3) Relating back to #1, the top students at both Duke and UVA will be doing a clerkship and won't be in that graduating year's stats for going to a given city

4) Because of the above reasons, trying to run ANY sort of statistics is really just meaningless

So Harvard is better than Cooley because we feel its better, and any statistical analysis would prove nothing? Statistics obviously have errors and are not perfect but they give us an approximate idea of what to expect from the world around us. Some sort of stat analysis can be useful in any situation.
In this case, I agree that the firm list is too small but in response to #2, more Duke students had clerkships this year than UVA students+ those numbers are so small that they should not really affect the analysis. There are reasons this data is flawed but these do not make the data useless.

[vamedic03]

It really doesn't help you with knowing how well the schools place in DC:

1) Even if you know how many students from a given year are going to DC from a given school, you haven't matched that with a given year's associate class.

2) Your sample size of DC firms is way too small and arbitrary

3) Relating back to #1, the top students at both Duke and UVA will be doing a clerkship and won't be in that graduating year's stats for going to a given city

4) Because of the above reasons, trying to run ANY sort of statistics is really just meaningless

So Harvard is better than Cooley because we feel its better, and any statistical analysis would prove nothing? Statistics obviously have errors and are not perfect but they give us an approximate idea of what to expect from the world around us. Some sort of stat analysis can be useful in any situation.
In this case, I agree that the firm list is too small but in response to #2, more Duke students had clerkships this year than UVA students+ those numbers are so small that they should not really affect the analysis. There are reasons this data is flawed but these do not make the data useless.

The statistics that QuakerOats was trying to run were useless, clearly not all statistics are useless, but, they are only as good as the quality of the underlying sample. I should have rephrased #4.

As to the clerkship issue - it does make a difference when you're examining the 'top' DC firms. While the number of students going into clerkships is relatively small - so is the number of students going into Williams & Connolly, Covington, or WilmerHale. Further, the students MOST likely to get an offer from one of those firms are also the students most likely to get a clerkship.

[quakeroats]

It really doesn't help you with knowing how well the schools place in DC:

1) Even if you know how many students from a given year are going to DC from a given school, you haven't matched that with a given year's associate class.

2) Your sample size of DC firms is way too small and arbitrary

3) Relating back to #1, the top students at both Duke and UVA will be doing a clerkship and won't be in that graduating year's stats for going to a given city

4) Because of the above reasons, trying to run ANY sort of statistics is really just meaningless

You're conflating inexactness and meaninglessness.

With respect to your points:

1. This doesn't matter. Both UVA and Duke send similar numbers of students to D.C. year after year. The idea behind the ratio is to see how many of them end up in top firms. I admit this is inexact--perhaps UVA grads bolt after three years in Big Law whereas Dukies stay around for five on average.

2. I admit the sample was small. It was not, however, arbitrary. I was responding to another poster who complained that I was using the Vault 10 instead of what he thought would be a better sampling of top firms in D.C.--the firms you see are those he suggested. The rest of the data is in a prior post. I originally intended to use this method just for New York, but expanded it to see how UVA did in light of general opinions here. I've run the results further and they still hold down the line.

3. If that's true than they'd net out just like those doing PI and other work. Again, inexact, not meaningless.

4. I think the proper conclusion here is that you're attending UVA Law and the weight of the evidence--my method, Leiter's, OCI 2009, A3 clerkships, etc.--has caused a bit of cognitive dissonance to work its magic on you.

[270910]

4. I think the proper conclusion here is that you're attending UVA Law and the weight of the evidence--my method, Leiter's, OCI 2009, A3 clerkships, etc.--has caused a bit of cognitive dissonance to work its magic on you.

Usually when it gets down to moments like this, I just quote and respond with a simple

But this... oh my goodness. An ad hominim, against the poster as well as the way the damn school decides to name its fall recruitment program (I see what you did there), citing to BRIAN LEITER for authority (really?), somehow claiming Duke "yaaay first SCOTUS clerk in a decade" Law has anything like a tangible advantage over UVA in the clerkship beat (the most recent numbers have duke > UVA by 1% in total A3 placement, the year before UVA > duke by ~1% - way to be), and coming on the heels of taking V1 through V13 or some bullshit, counting only current associates in their (occasionally existent) DC offices then dividing by the square root of the distance between the moon and Durham or some fucking thing to approximate DC placement. It's just too fuckin' much, friend.

Duke is an excellent school. So is UVA. In many respects they are frighteningly similar. A student will receive a top-notch education and bountiful employment prospects out of either school, and putting the data under a microscope will not yield ammunition for trolls for either school. But when you, trolling as hard and as naively as possible for Duke, start calling out somebody for responding to your random ass trolly data and accusations with sanity and knowledge... it's just priceless. Absofuckinglutely priceless. There's no better term. It's TLS at it's finest.

While I do wish that God will have mercy on your soul, and while I must award you no points, you can have this as a consolation:

[vamedic03]

It really doesn't help you with knowing how well the schools place in DC:

1) Even if you know how many students from a given year are going to DC from a given school, you haven't matched that with a given year's associate class.

2) Your sample size of DC firms is way too small and arbitrary

3) Relating back to #1, the top students at both Duke and UVA will be doing a clerkship and won't be in that graduating year's stats for going to a given city

4) Because of the above reasons, trying to run ANY sort of statistics is really just meaningless

You're conflating inexactness and meaninglessness.

With respect to your points:

1. This doesn't matter. Both UVA and Duke send similar numbers of students to D.C. year after year. The idea behind the ratio is to see how many of them end up in top firms. I admit this is inexact--perhaps UVA grads bolt after three years in Big Law whereas Dukies stay around for five on average.

2. I admit the sample was small. It was not, however, arbitrary. I was responding to another poster who complained that I was using the Vault 10 instead of what he thought would be a better sampling of top firms in D.C.--the firms you see are those he suggested. The rest of the data is in a prior post. I originally intended to use this method just for New York, but expanded it to see how UVA did in light of general opinions here. I've run the results further and they still hold down the line.

3. If that's true than they'd net out just like those doing PI and other work. Again, inexact, not meaningless.

4. I think the proper conclusion here is that you're attending UVA Law and the weight of the evidence--my method, Leiter's, OCI 2009, A3 clerkships, etc.--has caused a bit of cognitive dissonance to work its magic on you.

Oh come on... its not a matter of inexactness, its a matter of the numbers being useless. Look, I don't care whether UVA places better or worse than Duke or Penn or any other school. What I do care about is someone throwing useless numbers into a spreadsheet, adding an equation, and acting like it provides some sort of meaningful insight.

1) You're missing the point - for this to have meaning, you have to look at 1 year, or a series of years - simply looking at the firm's website doesn't tell you much - did the Associate lateral into the firm from another firm, did they do a stint at DOJ, etc. You need information that you simply don't have access to - i.e., for class of 2009 - how many people from UVA received offers from XYZ DC firms.

2) A random poster's list is still rather meaningless... how about using a Vault ranking for a particular city or using Chambers rankings as a start

3) You're way oversimplifying this...

4) As I state above, since I'm already at UVA, I really don't care how you're numbers turn out - they don't affect me in any way... However, as I stated above, I'm calling you out because they have little meaning and are likely to be misleading.