USC or Georgetown for SF biglaw Forum

[lawapps0502]

GULC is very national and will have connections at all of the NorCal firms. USC will have just as many, but it doesn't carry the cache or prestige that GULC has. I'd take the prestige over a school better known for football than academics.

I disagree. USC has a really strong reputation in California and the west coast in general. In addition, there will be more on-campus recruiting by firms with SF offices. And a person is more likely to get a job from an in person interview rather than a random resume drop.

[NayBoer]

GULC is very national and will have connections at all of the NorCal firms. USC will have just as many, but it doesn't carry the cache or prestige that GULC has. I'd take the prestige over a school better known for football than academics.

I disagree. USC has a really strong reputation in California and the west coast in general. In addition, there will be more on-campus recruiting by firms with SF offices. And a person is more likely to get a job from an in person interview rather than a random resume drop.

I ran this through NALP to get the number of law firm offices doing OCI from...

SF:
19 at GULC
16 at USC

Palo Alto:
14 GULC
7 USC

Other Northern CA (Menlo Park, San Jose, Mountain View, Sacramento, Silicon Valley, Redwood City):
8 GULC
6 USC

[Mattalones]

Straightforward. Which places better in the bay area?

http://californiabar.globl.org/report.p ... 0&g=2&pp=5

surprisingly, GULC it is

...Wow. That is an amazing website.

Yeah, how did you find that? Is there one for New York?

[NayBoer]

A former TLSer created and operates californiabar.globl.org.

It's only possible because CalBar makes the data openly available online. Not sure any other states do that.
http://members.calbar.ca.gov/search/member.aspx

[General Tso]

Straightforward. Which places better in the bay area?

http://californiabar.globl.org/report.p ... 0&g=2&pp=5

surprisingly, GULC it is

...Wow. That is an amazing website.

Yeah, how did you find that? Is there one for New York?

i doubt it...this guy on TLS built that site ("csc2law" was his s/n). somehow he extracts the data from the calbar website. you can send him a message and ask him nicely to build one for NY though Although does it really matter? I mean Syracuse and Buffalo are going to dominate the upstate market, and you know NYC is going to be Columbia + NYU + Fordham + T14 heavy.

[Mattalones]

i doubt it...this guy on TLS built that site ("csc2law" was his s/n). somehow he extracts the data from the calbar website. you can send him a message and ask him nicely to build one for NY though Although does it really matter? I mean Syracuse and Buffalo are going to dominate the upstate market, and you know NYC is going to be Columbia + NYU + Fordham + T14 heavy.

True. I just wanted to compare BU to Fordham in NYC. Any other places to get that?

[gobears09]

GULC is very national and will have connections at all of the NorCal firms. USC will have just as many, but it doesn't carry the cache or prestige that GULC has. I'd take the prestige over a school better known for football than academics.

I disagree. USC has a really strong reputation in California and the west coast in general. In addition, there will be more on-campus recruiting by firms with SF offices. And a person is more likely to get a job from an in person interview rather than a random resume drop.

I ran this through NALP to get the number of law firm offices doing OCI from...

SF:
19 at GULC
16 at USC

Palo Alto:
14 GULC
7 USC

Other Northern CA (Menlo Park, San Jose, Mountain View, Sacramento, Silicon Valley, Redwood City):
8 GULC
6 USC

Id like to change my vote from USC to Georgetown.

[lawapps0502]

GULC is very national and will have connections at all of the NorCal firms. USC will have just as many, but it doesn't carry the cache or prestige that GULC has. I'd take the prestige over a school better known for football than academics.

I disagree. USC has a really strong reputation in California and the west coast in general. In addition, there will be more on-campus recruiting by firms with SF offices. And a person is more likely to get a job from an in person interview rather than a random resume drop.

I ran this through NALP to get the number of law firm offices doing OCI from...

SF:
19 at GULC
16 at USC

Palo Alto:
14 GULC
7 USC

Other Northern CA (Menlo Park, San Jose, Mountain View, Sacramento, Silicon Valley, Redwood City):
8 GULC
6 USC

Law firms that have offices in CA go to both schools. But you need to see if they are recruiting for their CA office or for other offices. For example, hypothetically, Simpson Thacher may recruit at GULC, but they may only be recruiting for placement in their D.C. and New York offices.

[NayBoer]

GULC is very national and will have connections at all of the NorCal firms. USC will have just as many, but it doesn't carry the cache or prestige that GULC has. I'd take the prestige over a school better known for football than academics.

I disagree. USC has a really strong reputation in California and the west coast in general. In addition, there will be more on-campus recruiting by firms with SF offices. And a person is more likely to get a job from an in person interview rather than a random resume drop.

I ran this through NALP to get the number of law firm offices doing OCI from...

SF:
19 at GULC
16 at USC

Palo Alto:
14 GULC
7 USC

Other Northern CA (Menlo Park, San Jose, Mountain View, Sacramento, Silicon Valley, Redwood City):
8 GULC
6 USC

Law firms that have offices in CA go to both schools. But you need to see if they are recruiting for their CA office or for other offices. For example, hypothetically, Simpson Thacher may recruit at GULC, but they may only be recruiting for placement in their D.C. and New York offices.

It lets you narrow the search by office location, which is how I was able to tailor is to SF, Palo Alto, and NorCal. Go here:
--LinkRemoved--
Type - Law Firm
City - San Francisco
Campus Recruiting - Georgetown or University of Southern California
run Search

So if I run it with New York as the city, I get:
83 - GULC
20 - USC

And if I narrow the state to DC, I get:
76 - GULC
11 - USC

Then if you run the city as Los Angeles, it's:
26 - GULC
57 - USC

None of which actually tells you how deep into the class the recruiters go. Which is the most important thing from a student's perspective.

[lawapps0502]

Straightforward. Which places better in the bay area?

the deposit deadline has passed for both schools, which school did you decide on?

[Mroberts3]

do USC grads just love SoCal love so much that they dont even bother considering other areas? i am a little surprised that USC is not represented well in SF

Well 2 things. 1) Hastings and USC used to be peer schools (15+ years ago) so many older lawyers who wanted SF wouldn't have chosen USC. 2) LA's legal market is MUCH bigger than SF. LA is either the 2nd or 3rd largest market in terms of NLJ250 firms, whereas SF is #8 on the list.

Plus, USC is noted for the strength of its alumni network, and if most of them are in LA, there's not that much reason to leave.

Also note that Loyola LA has more SF lawyers than USC, but nobody would say Loyola has better rep in SF, would they? There is too much going on to make a definitive judgment here. Think of it like traffic or something: individuals acting even on a predictable basis can create a system with an outcome that is unpredictable.

[rv11]

That website is fun to look at (who knew that GW was one of the top-30 schools in Sacramento?) but shouldn't be relied upon detrimentally: If I just used that data, I'd be led to believe that attending unaccredited Lincoln Law School is a likelier path to a job in Sacramento than attending Stanford.

And Hastings is more likely to land a job in NYC than Columbia or Stanford...