H v. T10 for appellate lit Forum

[smaug]

Here's the thing buddy, in this and in many other aspects of life, you don't get to mandate which advice is given to you.

Moreover, the NO, I REALLY UNDERSTAND, I SWEAR foot-stomping thing doesn't help. At all. It's like a child screaming through tears that no, she can stay up late without problems, she promises.

You seem to care a lot about my pedigree. That's cool. I'll talk about it with you via PM if you like. I hope you recognize that I could be a Cooley graduate (I'm not) and still give good advice here, though. Part of the gatekeeping seems to be "no, I only want to talk to people who made the mistake that I made so I can have them tell me it's OK."

The reason I give you so much crap here is because I don't think this is a close choice worthy of hard questions, and each time you respond I just envision you hemming and hawing with "but but what about um huh, the value of it in the long term!?"

There are valid questions to ask. Whether Harvard is worth 200k over Duke for (1) appellate lit or (2) vague "long term hiring" outcomes don't strike me as valid questions, though.

[kaiser]

How is this topic still going? Literally every actual grad on here has told OP that the marginal cost doesn't outweight the marginal benefit, especially given the details OP provided. What else is there to gain from this?

[Desert Fox]

Now I hope you take the Harvard deal and kill yourself after SKadden obliterates your personality.

[rpupkin]

Now I hope you take the Harvard deal and kill yourself after SKadden obliterates your personality.

Also, must start TLS thread titled: "V5 Associate Taking Questions"

[DetroitRed]

*sigh*

[Desert Fox]

*sigh*

Now go home and get yer fuckin' shine box

[smaug]

*sigh*

It must be so vexing when you ask a question and get a near unanimous response that you don't like.

[kaiser]

*sigh*

Oh, stop. You got more than sufficient response to your question, even when you discount the needless snark and condescension from some people.

Look, if you have your heart deadset on going to a certain school or pursuing a certain goal, then just go for it. You aren't going to get other people to agree that the marginal cost justifies the marginal benefit when it objectively doesn't (and subjectively doesn't given your stated circumstances and details). But you don't need anyone's approval to make these choices.

[radio1nowhere]

*post deleted. not worth the argument.*

[Tiago Splitter]

(guy who lives in a world without cost-benefit analysis)

(guy who is an economics major and is forced to work on cost-benefit analyses every day)

Then why make such a ridiculous post? By your logic OP would be justified in taking out millions in debt to shoot for the unicorn goal

[bjsesq]

Looks like we got an economics major on our hands, fellas.

[notgreat]

*sigh*

Just do act like an utter tool and then play innocent when people tell you are a shit stain.

[Desert Fox]

*sigh*

Just do act like an utter tool and then play innocent when people tell you are a shit stain.

The Harvard Law story

[bjsesq]

*sigh*

Just do act like an utter tool and then play innocent when people tell you are a shit stain.

The Harvard Law story

You have to admit, given the way dude came across in this thread and the way TLS H students frequently behave, he might fit right in.

[romothesavior]

Now I hope you take the Harvard deal and kill yourself after SKadden obliterates your personality.

Let's keep this kind of talk out of the on topics, please.

[rpupkin]

Now I hope you take the Harvard deal and kill yourself after SKadden obliterates your personality.

Let's keep this kind of talk out of the on topics, please.

Agreed. It's rudely insensitive to suggest to a 0L that he might end up at Skadden.

[Desert Fox]

Now I hope you take the Harvard deal and kill yourself after SKadden obliterates your personality.

Let's keep this kind of talk out of the on topics, please.

Agreed. It's rudely insensitive to suggest to a 0L that he might end up at Skadden.

I'm sorry, I'll talk to my spirtual advisor.

[20160810]

I honestly don't know the answer here but if we assume for a second that biglaw/DC/federal appellate lit is out of reach for non SCOTUS clerks, aren't there plenty of state court appellate lawyers all over? It seems like if OP really was just boned up about the appellate process (s)he could just find whoever specializes in appeals in, like, Anchorage, and just work for that dude.

[redsoxfan1989]

I honestly don't know the answer here but if we assume for a second that biglaw/DC/federal appellate lit is out of reach for non SCOTUS clerks, aren't there plenty of state court appellate lawyers all over? It seems like if OP really was just boned up about the appellate process (s)he could just find whoever specializes in appeals in, like, Anchorage, and just work for that dude.

There are no state appellate litigators. There are litigators at local firms whose cases occasionally require appellate work. Their clients don't shell out to engage a whole new firm to do the appeal.

[Lions1913]

.

[Nomo]

Most states have a small office of appellate prosecutors and a small office of appellate defenders. These jobs normally go to people who clerked (often for the state supreme court) and then worked as for the DA or PD for at least 5-10 years doing trials. Going to Harvard won't give OP a much greater chance at this goal.

Most states also have a small civil appellate group in their AG's office. These attorneys normally clerked (often for the state supreme court) and then worked for 5-10 years in a trial section of the AG's office. They might farm out really big cases to law firms (especially cases that go to SCOTUS) but most cases will be handled by the AG's office. Again, Harvard won't give OP a much better chance if this is the goal.

[Skool]

I honestly don't know the answer here but if we assume for a second that biglaw/DC/federal appellate lit is out of reach for non SCOTUS clerks, aren't there plenty of state court appellate lawyers all over? It seems like if OP really was just boned up about the appellate process (s)he could just find whoever specializes in appeals in, like, Anchorage, and just work for that dude.

There are no state appellate litigators. There are litigators at local firms whose cases occasionally require appellate work. Their clients don't shell out to engage a whole new firm to do the appeal.

A small amount will. I bet if we looked through this guy's cases, we'd find people in Michigan who hired him specifically to handle their appeals.

By the way, this guy is claiming to represent 6% of all recent SCOTUS cases (I'm sure Olson, Clement, and Boies have the rest). I don't care where you went to school, good luck getting a piece of their market share. This guy went to Minnesota, maybe OP should put in an app there.

If you really want to do some appeal stuff, I would just go to an affordable T-14 and hang out at my local intermediate court and find some of the pro se crack pot types who are looking for an appellate lawyer to pro bono on the side.

Edit: Also, I think the fact that there are a small number of "elite appellate litigators" and that people with important cases keep coming back to those people again and again speaks to the fact that appellate litigation is a thing and people value it. It's a tricky thing presenting a case to an appellate court. You have to help them sort out their anxieties about encroaching on the legislature, fucking with old precedent, fucking with future cases, deal with whatever personal biases they bring, and not screwing over the parties at bar. It really does take talent to present the issues in a way the court feels comfortable ruling for your client. So yeah, there are people who will pay specialized lawyers for this ability specifically.

[stt1]

Detroitred, a few comments in response to your situation. I skimmed through a few of the previous pages, but did not read all extensively, so forgive me if I am duplicating things previously said. Also, since I am trying to pass along a lot of info, please excuse any typing mistakes and so on.

Most of the following for 1) and 2) is paraphrased from conversations I've had with a close friend who previously did biglaw litigation.

1) Appellate litigation in DC is one thing, but a more attainable goal is to work with a partner doing (at least partly) appellate litigation in another city. You won't do all appeals, and ones you do might sometimes be state court, and you'll often be working on federal district course cases, or any trial litigation that presents some pretty complex issues, or intersects with federal law, will sometimes see this sort of partner and her associates get involved in helping out, depending on firm culture.

2) Saying law school grades are completely unpredictable is probably going too far. LSAT and gpa have a small but significant correlation with grades in the couple of studies that have been done, not enough to be confident of being at the top of the class, but enough that if you are way overscoring (or way underscoring) relative to your classmates, you should have a little bit of added confidence (or worry) about getting median. Also you might do an honest evaluation of your own writing ability, and particularly whether you are good at writing very quick, very analytical pieces on relatively well defined subjects (so, very different than a typical English paper). Most important is the speed factor, if you are good at, for example in a government or philosophy paper, putting together a mostly ok analysis with most every point and counterpoint considered within a couple of hours of work, there is some reason to be slightly more confident, but if you are scared to death of trying to write any paper without extensive outlining and you can't seem to break yourself of perfectionism in writing no matter how hard you try, there is some reason to be less confident. As a third element, if you are pretty good at math, you can be somewhat more confident of higher grades in business law courses like tax, antitrust, bankruptcy, and even contracts to a certain degree. According to my friend, watching a top law school 1L contracts class try to grasp the rules on contract damages is a painful experience, as otherwise brilliant students somehow get confused by simple rules simply because numbers have been attached, and while the upperdivision courses are somewhat self-selected in student body, the effect remains. My friend seems to think someone who fits all these positive factors could be pretty confident (80%) that, provided they don't underwork compared to their classmates and make smart course choices, they would be looking at at least median grades, but any expectation of greater over performance isn't warranted. He seemed to think since schools like Duke have solid biglaw placement for median performance, this sort of analysis has a role in deciding whether to give up the greater cushion of class rank afforded by Harvard in order to take a scholarship to Duke, but it probably is too uncertain to have role in most other situations (ie, in deciding whether to attend a low ranked school where only the top 10% get good jobs, or in going to Harvard because of the very special employment prospects only really attainable to the top 10% there, it would be useless to do this sort of analysis). In your situation, this kind of analysis might lead you to be confident that you could at least get a firm job out of Duke, but probably doesn't help with something like DC appelate lit.

3) For what it is worth, in your situation I think I would go to Duke on the full scholarship, because a) you have high confidence of a firm job b) Duke has great clerkship rates, not too far behind harvard, though some of that is probably self selection in terms of willingness to take clerkships in flyover states; c) mordecai scholars, while only 4-8 people a year, have actually had a great per capita rate of supreme court clerkships when measured over the last 5 or 6 years, I think it's been almost 1 per year on average recently, which I think is better than Yale. So while this is still an extreme longshot (and our sample size is small), it probably reflects that Duke profs do a pretty good job of identifying and nurturing some of their better students into the nesesecary top clerkships, which is a more useful general trend that will affect you. I don't think Columbia is competitive, because it is not especially suited to your goals and it is still about 2/3rd as expensive as Harvard, might as well take Harvard at that point. If you get into Yale, or get a rubenstein, those would be better options, but for now, Duke seems great.

4) also, I think I saw someone earlier saying "carnal sin" when they probably meant "cardinal sin". Wasn't paying too much attention to the context, but probably worth keeping those two straight. Very different implications and all.

[xael]

Detroitred, a few comments in response to your situation. I skimmed through a few of the previous pages, but did not read all extensively, so forgive me if I am duplicating things previously said. Also, since I am trying to pass along a lot of info, please excuse any typing mistakes and so on.

Most of the following for 1) and 2) is paraphrased from conversations I've had with a close friend who previously did biglaw litigation.

1) Appellate litigation in DC is one thing, but a more attainable goal is to work with a partner doing (at least partly) appellate litigation in another city. You won't do all appeals, and ones you do might sometimes be state court, and you'll often be working on federal district course cases, or any trial litigation that presents some pretty complex issues, or intersects with federal law, will sometimes see this sort of partner and her associates get involved in helping out, depending on firm culture.

2) Saying law school grades are completely unpredictable is probably going too far. LSAT and gpa have a small but significant correlation with grades in the couple of studies that have been done, not enough to be confident of being at the top of the class, but enough that if you are way overscoring (or way underscoring) relative to your classmates, you should have a little bit of added confidence (or worry) about getting median. Also you might do an honest evaluation of your own writing ability, and particularly whether you are good at writing very quick, very analytical pieces on relatively well defined subjects (so, very different than a typical English paper). Most important is the speed factor, if you are good at, for example in a government or philosophy paper, putting together a mostly ok analysis with most every point and counterpoint considered within a couple of hours of work, there is some reason to be slightly more confident, but if you are scared to death of trying to write any paper without extensive outlining and you can't seem to break yourself of perfectionism in writing no matter how hard you try, there is some reason to be less confident. As a third element, if you are pretty good at math, you can be somewhat more confident of higher grades in business law courses like tax, antitrust, bankruptcy, and even contracts to a certain degree. According to my friend, watching a top law school 1L contracts class try to grasp the rules on contract damages is a painful experience, as otherwise brilliant students somehow get confused by simple rules simply because numbers have been attached, and while the upperdivision courses are somewhat self-selected in student body, the effect remains. My friend seems to think someone who fits all these positive factors could be pretty confident (80%) that, provided they don't underwork compared to their classmates and make smart course choices, they would be looking at at least median grades, but any expectation of greater over performance isn't warranted. He seemed to think since schools like Duke have solid biglaw placement for median performance, this sort of analysis has a role in deciding whether to give up the greater cushion of class rank afforded by Harvard in order to take a scholarship to Duke, but it probably is too uncertain to have role in most other situations (ie, in deciding whether to attend a low ranked school where only the top 10% get good jobs, or in going to Harvard because of the very special employment prospects only really attainable to the top 10% there, it would be useless to do this sort of analysis). In your situation, this kind of analysis might lead you to be confident that you could at least get a firm job out of Duke, but probably doesn't help with something like DC appelate lit.

3) For what it is worth, in your situation I think I would go to Duke on the full scholarship, because a) you have high confidence of a firm job b) Duke has great clerkship rates, not too far behind harvard, though some of that is probably self selection in terms of willingness to take clerkships in flyover states; c) mordecai scholars, while only 4-8 people a year, have actually had a great per capita rate of supreme court clerkships when measured over the last 5 or 6 years, I think it's been almost 1 per year on average recently, which I think is better than Yale. So while this is still an extreme longshot (and our sample size is small), it probably reflects that Duke profs do a pretty good job of identifying and nurturing some of their better students into the nesesecary top clerkships, which is a more useful general trend that will affect you. I don't think Columbia is competitive, because it is not especially suited to your goals and it is still about 2/3rd as expensive as Harvard, might as well take Harvard at that point. If you get into Yale, or get a rubenstein, those would be better options, but for now, Duke seems great.

4) also, I think I saw someone earlier saying "carnal sin" when they probably meant "cardinal sin". Wasn't paying too much attention to the context, but probably worth keeping those two straight. Very different implications and all.

Aren't you a 0L?

[stt1]

Yah, again, paraphrasing my friend for the most part.

For 3) though, I conducted a lot of research into Duke myself, because I faced a very similar situation to detroitred, before some additional results came back.