Choose Boston U or George Washington? Forum

[RPK34]

Dumbest comment ever by radlaw. International law is a type of law, with various subdivisions. There are many scholars in that field.

Hey cool semantics story bro.

http://www.annaivey.com/iveyfiles/2008/ ... e_the_hype

Best summary about why you should not go to law school hoping to specialize in "intl. law," whatever that is.

That article is about people who think International Law is about international companies, securities and whatnot, and are frustrated to find that it actually is about treaty law, law of armed conflict, law of the seas, etc. Get your facts straight.

LOL. It's way easier to get a job doing intl. transactions. There is actually demand for people to advise foreign companies on American law (and you don't need to specialize in international law do do it). A mere handful of people in the entire world do the bolded. Most of the American ones went to HYSCCN. Or they're academics, which isn't really doing law.

Incidentally, there's also work defending foreign criminal defendants in US Courts and doing international tax, if you're interested.

To give you an idea of this, I had a professor in college who had went to GW law, graduated on law review, did Article III clerkship, worked for DOJ honors program (where he had experience in treaty law, which he said basically amounted to him reading through treaty after treaty to find if there were any conflicts), got an MA in International Relations from arguably the best school for it in the US, and said the openings to do anything beyond basic public international law were extremely limited. Doing any significant human rights law, law of armed conflicts, maritime law, public international law, etc. was basically out of the question.

Int'l law is a joke.

[AreJay711]

JAG corps might do some cool international stuff occasionally but it is much more likely that it would be run of the mill.

It's fairly run-of-the-mill.

Yeah, every JAG website I've seen hypes it up pretty hard but, obviously, thats the point of a recruiting website.

[Grizz]

JAG corps might do some cool international stuff occasionally but it is much more likely that it would be run of the mill.

It's fairly run-of-the-mill.

Yeah, every JAG website I've seen hypes it up pretty hard but, obviously, thats the point of a recruiting website.

Yeah. One of my marines buddies said the jag people he knew did a lot of divorces and wills haha

[concurrent fork]

COST - Boston has a way lower COL than DC

No it doesn't.

[dakatz]

COST - Boston has a way lower COL than DC

No it doesn't.

It absolutely does. The reason is, BU is located right by the suburbs and outskirts of Boston. Housing prices taper off dramatically once you venture off into these suburbs, yet you are still very close to the school. GW is much more urban and the housing in the area right around the school is on average much more expensive. I have family who attended school in DC and said this is true a hundred times over when he came up here with me to Boston to look at apartments.

Now, if you are talking about living in downtown Boston (which no one does), then the price becomes comparable.

[Cupidity]

COST - Boston has a way lower COL than DC

No it doesn't.

It absolutely does. The reason is, BU is located right by the suburbs and outskirts of Boston. Housing prices taper off dramatically once you venture off into these suburbs, yet you are still very close to the school. GW is much more urban and the housing in the area right around the school is on average much more expensive. I have family who attended school in DC and said this is true a hundred times over when he came up here with me to Boston to look at apartments.

Now, if you are talking about living in downtown Boston (which no one does), then the price becomes comparable.

.
Seconded, I did thorough research making the GWU/BU decision last year. Rent is cheaper, and the Back Bay area is a little more college centered than downtown DC, which means more cheap restaurants and beer.

[fatduck]

COST - Boston has a way lower COL than DC

No it doesn't.

It absolutely does. The reason is, BU is located right by the suburbs and outskirts of Boston. Housing prices taper off dramatically once you venture off into these suburbs, yet you are still very close to the school. GW is much more urban and the housing in the area right around the school is on average much more expensive. I have family who attended school in DC and said this is true a hundred times over when he came up here with me to Boston to look at apartments.

Now, if you are talking about living in downtown Boston (which no one does), then the price becomes comparable.

well, to be nitpicky, the original claim was that "Boston" has a lower COL than "DC" which isn't necessarily true

it is definitely true that the back bay is cheaper to live in than foggy bottom

[Cupidity]

Back-Bay is Boston until you hit St. Mary's.

[concurrent fork]

Cheaper neighborhoods exist around DC as well. Try living in Cambridge or a nice part of Brookline.

[fatduck]

Cheaper neighborhoods exist around DC as well. Try living in Cambridge or a nice part of Brookline. Or just gaze at them from your ugly tower of doom.

careful, i was set on dc and phrases like that are starting to sell me on boston

[Cupidity]

tower of doom

I am going to make this catch on with everyone, seriously. Two years from now, everyone at BU will call it this.

[concurrent fork]

tower of doom

I am going to make this catch on with everyone, seriously. Two years from now, everyone at BU will call it this.

I tried to erase that after I realized it sounded kind of fun

[Informative]

BigLaw
Tough call on this one. It is probably a toss up. GW has to compete with GULC, along with all of the other T14 students who likely want to work in DC. BU only has to compete with BC and Harvard, both of which place either better or the same at the law firm level. http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog ... hool-.html You will notice though that BU places slightly better than GW.

Regionality
BU places well in Boston and New York, but it lacks the national name of similarly ranked schools, including GW. GW has been a top 25 school for a long time, while BU is relatively new to the T25 rankings. While it has done a great job in recent years, GW does have that old stable name attached to it.

That said, if you want to work in DC, go to GW. If you want to work in Boston, go to BU. If you want to work anywhere else, go to a law school in that region (yes, I'd probably say take Fordham over BU or GW for New York).

If you don't care where you end up, you should probably visit the schools and see where you like. Note that DC and Boston are similarly expensive cities. The schools are similarly priced and ranked. You should probably just see where you would rather spend three years.

IP
If you want IP law, go to GW. It is largely considered one of the better IP programs in the country.

[BunkMoreland]

Dumbest comment ever by radlaw. International law is a type of law, with various subdivisions. There are many scholars in that field.

Hey cool semantics story bro.

http://www.annaivey.com/iveyfiles/2008/ ... e_the_hype

Best summary about why you should not go to law school hoping to specialize in "intl. law," whatever that is.

That article is about people who think International Law is about international companies, securities and whatnot, and are frustrated to find that it actually is about treaty law, law of armed conflict, law of the seas, etc. Get your facts straight.

LOL. It's way easier to get a job doing intl. transactions. There is actually demand for people to advise foreign companies on American law (and you don't need to specialize in international law do do it). A mere handful of people in the entire world do the bolded. Most of the American ones went to HYSCCN. Or they're academics, which isn't really doing law.

Incidentally, there's also work defending foreign criminal defendants in US Courts and doing international tax, if you're interested.

+1
this is credited. my biglaw firm does int'l transactions of just this type. Rad law > dumb 0L

[PomasThynchon]

They are both regional schools. Do you want to work in Boston or DC?

TITCR

I don't necessarily disagree. I think if you for sure want to work in DC, it's GW hands-down, and if you want to work in Boston, BU hands-down. But if you went to BU/GW, and had changed your mind to wanting to work in DC/Boston, I don't think you'd be screwed.

[PomasThynchon]

COST - Boston has a way lower COL than DC

No it doesn't.

It absolutely does. The reason is, BU is located right by the suburbs and outskirts of Boston. Housing prices taper off dramatically once you venture off into these suburbs, yet you are still very close to the school. GW is much more urban and the housing in the area right around the school is on average much more expensive. I have family who attended school in DC and said this is true a hundred times over when he came up here with me to Boston to look at apartments.

Now, if you are talking about living in downtown Boston (which no one does), then the price becomes comparable.

You don't have to live in Foggy Bottom or a surrounding neighborhood to go to GW. There are plenty of reasonably priced areas just outside the city that are very accessible via the Metro. Granted, BU seems to have cheaper options in the surrounding area, while GW would require a bit of a commute, but for me at least it's a wash.

[PomasThynchon]

Is it worth it to study IP at GW or BU? I'm interested in it, but I don't have a science/engineering background, so should I not waste my time

[bk1]

Is it worth it to study IP at GW or BU? I'm interested in it, but I don't have a science/engineering background, so should I not waste my time

You shouldn't bother with IP.

[PomasThynchon]

BigLaw
Tough call on this one. It is probably a toss up. GW has to compete with GULC, along with all of the other T14 students who likely want to work in DC. BU only has to compete with BC and Harvard, both of which place either better or the same at the law firm level. http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog ... hool-.html You will notice though that BU places slightly better than GW.

Regionality
BU places well in Boston and New York, but it lacks the national name of similarly ranked schools, including GW. GW has been a top 25 school for a long time, while BU is relatively new to the T25 rankings. While it has done a great job in recent years, GW does have that old stable name attached to it.

That said, if you want to work in DC, go to GW. If you want to work in Boston, go to BU. If you want to work anywhere else, go to a law school in that region (yes, I'd probably say take Fordham over BU or GW for New York).

If you don't care where you end up, you should probably visit the schools and see where you like. Note that DC and Boston are similarly expensive cities. The schools are similarly priced and ranked. You should probably just see where you would rather spend three years.

IP
If you want IP law, go to GW. It is largely considered one of the better IP programs in the country.

At this point I really think it's a wash. Even if you're set on IP they're similarly ranked there, if that means anything. The National Law Journals "Go-to schools" ranking has both schools ranked very similarly. If you just want BigLaw *somewhere*, anywhere, don't really care where, they both send approximately the same % of grads to the NLJ250, and at both you'd have to have about the same class rank. I think the question becomes instead--who's offering you money, or which is cheaper, which city do you like better, or most importantly, are you set on working in DC or Boston?

[PomasThynchon]

Is it worth it to study IP at GW or BU? I'm interested in it, but I don't have a science/engineering background, so should I not waste my time

You shouldn't bother with IP.

Candid response is appreciated. GW is really trying to sell me on this program, but I've been skeptical. An attorney friend of my family is in patent law without a science background, but then again he graduated law school 30 years ago.

[Informative]

You'll want a hard science degree to get into IP law at a big firm.

[PomasThynchon]

You'll want a hard science degree to get into IP law at a big firm.

That's what I thought. These damn schools are really good at selling their specialty programs. I know they're all basically meaningless, but damn can they market well.

[Informative]

You graduate with a JD from X law school, nothing really more (at least in the eyes of employers). However, your connections from a program like GW will help you at the firms in the DC area. GW has a pretty great alum network in DC/MD/VA.

[dakatz]

tower of doom

I am going to make this catch on with everyone, seriously. Two years from now, everyone at BU will call it this.

My preferred title is the towering inferno

[jwrash]

You'll want a hard science degree to get into IP law at a big firm.

any chance at getting IP biglaw with bio/genetics degree?