ND or Fordham Forum

[dingbat]

Ok.
Question: Does the NLJ250 data include those doc review attorneys or only "real" attorneys?

(on a separate note, how does this hypothesis mesh with the salary data? I don't recall last year, but C/O 2009 had 44% earning $145k+)

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 1&t=183053
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub ... Bd3c&gid=3

If you're at or above median, Fordham places better.
I'll concede (without looking at any data) that if you're below median, you're better off at ND

OP I would encourage you to look at unbiased data. 19.3% of Fordam's Grads are in JD preferred jobs vs 5.8% at Notre Dame. One thing you need to know about these JD preferred jobs is that a lot of BIGLAW hire JD Preferred grads from Fordham which may overinflated their real placement for the desired partner-track associate positions. (Warning LSAT Logic in next sentence) Just because Fordham places 35% in big law it does not mean all of them are associates. These positions could be for titles like "Special Assignment Legal Assistance" "Legal Analyst" "Special Litigation Support Associate" "associate specialist" these jobs are not desired and are often glorified paralegal positions. Some of them do the same task that a 22 year old paralegal does coming straight out of smith college. A while back the temp document review “lawyers” had a hard time with some 22 year old kid bossing them around. This was a huge blow to the ego of a 38 year old Brooklyn law grad to have a 22 year old kid with a BA in english being his supervisor and signing off on his timesheet. The solution was to hire JD's and have them supervise the temp JD reviewers so that the morale of the doc reviewers wouldn’t be so low. Since Brooklyn, St. john's, New York and Hofstra thought that Fordham is this great law school on the mountain top, the firms would hire Fordham grads to supervise the temp document reviewers. Hence the 19% placement of Fordham grads in JD preferred and the over 35 % into “BIGLAW”. You have to take into account other factors too.
78 % of Fordham Grads were employed at Full Time Jobs vs 90% at Notre Dame
84.4 % of ND grads had full time bar required jobs vs 68 % at Fordham
8.1 % of ND grads were Underemployed vs. 21.2 % at Fordham
The key facts that everyone wants to harp on is the large firm placement
29.7 % at ND vs 35.8 % at Fordham
The likelihood that Fordham’s large firm placement is overinflated is much higher than ND. First the JD preferred category should give you a clue. It’s a whopping 19.3 % at Fordham vs. 5.8 % at ND. How many of these JD preferred candidates are included in Fordham Large firm placement vs ND? Statistically it makes more sense for large firms in nyc to hire special assignment legal analyst assistants supervisors of document temporary reviewers from Fordham. Why would they fly some student half way around the country to do that? Second these position are not lawyer positions. They are case managers. They do the same thing that the Legal Assistants with a BA does. Some firms have been reluctant to called them Staff Attorneys because they might be confused with what a real staff attorney at a reputable agency like the red cross would do.
edited for source
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[flem]

tl;dr

Retake or don't go since these are horrible options at sticker or near sticker price.

[flem]

Ok.
Question: Dies the NLJ250 data include those doc review attorneys or only "real" attorneys?

Doc review work is temp work through an agency, and therefore would be included in the "business and industry" category IIRC

[dingbat]

Ok.
Question: Dies the NLJ250 data include those doc review attorneys or only "real" attorneys?

Doc review work is temp work through an agency, and therefore would be included in the "business and industry" category IIRC

So thè fact that NLJ250 has better numbers for Fordham than ND supports my position?
(note: I too think that either school at sticker is a bad idea. I only argue comparatively)

[answer23]

Ok.
Question: Dies the NLJ250 data include those doc review attorneys or only "real" attorneys?

Doc review work is temp work through an agency, and therefore would be included in the "business and industry" category IIRC

They also have permanent doc reviewers at some firms. They called them Legal Analyst and less often now staff attorneys.

[flem]

So thè fact that NLJ250 has better numbers for Fordham than ND supports my position?

I never thought that part was up for debate, but then again, I didn't read the thread.

[flem]

They also have permanent doc reviewers at some firms. They called them Legal Analyst and less often now staff attorneys.

I'm aware. But those aren't jobs you get right out of school and there's not enough of them to skew numbers, like there are with project attorneys at large firms.

[answer23]

Ok.
Question: Dies the NLJ250 data include those doc review attorneys or only "real" attorneys?

Doc review work is temp work through an agency, and therefore would be included in the "business and industry" category IIRC

So thè fact that NLJ250 has better numbers for Fordham than ND supports my position?
(note: I too think that either school at sticker is a bad idea. I only argue comparatively)

actually Fordham's NLJ250 is lower than LST large firm placement while ND's is about the same. Which would proof my theory that Fordham's large firm placement might be overinflated with permanent doc reviewers. NLJ250 might be for associates only but I'm not sure, it might include associate specialist which would favor Fordham as it did West Virginia this year.

[flem]

actually Fordham's NLJ250 is lower than LST large firm placement while ND's is about the same. Which would proof my theory that Fordham's large firm placement might be overinflated with permanent doc reviewers. NLJ250 might be for associates only but I'm not sure, it might include associate specialist which would favor Fordham as it did West Virginia this year.

you are srsly grasping at straws here.

[answer23]

They also have permanent doc reviewers at some firms. They called them Legal Analyst and less often now staff attorneys.

I'm aware. But those aren't jobs you get right out of school and there's not enough of them to skew numbers, like there are with project attorneys at large firms.

Not at oci. But if you kiss enough ass on a 6 month project you can get a position within 6 months. There is a huge turn over at some places. I've heard it happen. That would be well within the nine month out placement stats. I'm not sure about right out of school. But there were a couple of large firms that opened back office operations in West Virginia. West Virginia's NLJ250 placement shot up after that from nearly nothing to 10%. These are not partner track positions.

[answer23]

actually Fordham's NLJ250 is lower than LST large firm placement while ND's is about the same. Which would proof my theory that Fordham's large firm placement might be overinflated with permanent doc reviewers. NLJ250 might be for associates only but I'm not sure, it might include associate specialist which would favor Fordham as it did West Virginia this year.

you are srsly grasping at straws here.

no
http://www.redp.org/success.php?id=120

http://abovethelaw.com/2011/05/not-on-t ... hats-okay/

[JCFindley]

actually Fordham's NLJ250 is lower than LST large firm placement while ND's is about the same. Which would proof my theory that Fordham's large firm placement might be overinflated with permanent doc reviewers. NLJ250 might be for associates only but I'm not sure, it might include associate specialist which would favor Fordham as it did West Virginia this year.

you are srsly grasping at straws here.

And the Dude hits it out of the park on that quote......

[flem]

no
http://www.redp.org/success.php?id=120

Oh, I didn't know we were debating West Virginia College of Law here. Carry on then, bro.

Building on this, if your point was that discovery center work such as staff attorney stuff is including in NLJ250 placement stats, that's supportive. However, it's not skewing any schools data that are being discussed here. ND and Fordham have had roughly similar biglaw stats for a long time.

So if, out of all doc reviewers (which are not a ton out of these schools), a couple of them get offered staff attorney gigs by kissing ass (which, by the way, I have not seen happen in the firm that I work for - staff attorney hiring is separate), then that would count in NLJ250 stats. Which would skew the data like, less than 1%. And this would happen across the board, even for schools that have great NLJ250 placement like Penn or Northwestern.

This barely warrants consideration. If we're talking about TTT schools in rural areas where a discovery center popped up and they had a spike in NLJ250 placement, it would.

[answer23]

no
http://www.redp.org/success.php?id=120

Oh, I didn't know we were debating West Virginia College of Law here. Carry on then, bro.

Building on this, if your point was that discovery center work such as staff attorney stuff is including in NLJ250 placement stats, that's supportive. However, it's not skewing any schools data that are being discussed here. ND and Fordham have had roughly similar biglaw stats for a long time.

So if, out of all doc reviewers (which are not a ton out of these schools), a couple of them get offered staff attorney gigs by kissing ass (which, by the way, I have not seen happen in the firm that I work for - staff attorney hiring is separate), then that would count in NLJ250 stats. Which would skew the data like, less than 1%. And this would happen across the board, even for schools that have great NLJ250 placement like Penn or Northwestern.

This barely warrants consideration. If we're talking about TTT schools in rural areas where a discovery center popped up and they had a spike in NLJ250 placement, it would.

My point is that Law School Transparency has a higher percentage of Fordham students going into large firm than the data at nlj250 for class of 2010 that’s 29 vs 35. That’s a 6 percentage point difference while ND’s percentage from the two sources were nearly identically.6 percentage discrepancy is not negligible. There might be different reasons for this discrepancy, but it exist. My contention is that either one of those sources is incorrect or Fordam’s placement might be overstated in some way. There is no way to know for sure because neither school is particularly transparent about releasing more data. If Fordam’s data is so great then I would think it would be in their best interest to show that every student that are placed in a large firm are placed into a partner track associate position.

[flem]

My point is that Law School Transparency has a higher percentage of Fordham students going into large firm than the data at nlj250 for class of 2010 that’s 29 vs 35. That’s a 6 percentage point difference while ND’s percentage from the two sources were nearly identically.6 percentage discrepancy is not negligible. There might be different reasons for this discrepancy, but it exist. My contention is that either one of those sources is incorrect or Fordam’s placement might be overstated in some way. There is no way to know for sure because neither school is particularly transparent about releasing more data. If Fordam’s data is so great then I would think it would be in their best interest to show that every student that are placed in a large firm are placed into a partner track associate position.

Like Fordham's location in the middle of the most major legal market in the united states with a highly concentrated alumni network, while Notre Dame is in the middle of nowhere and doesn't feed into ANY specific market? That couldn't possibly explain it.

[answer23]

no
http://www.redp.org/success.php?id=120

Oh, I didn't know we were debating West Virginia College of Law here. Carry on then, bro.

Building on this, if your point was that discovery center work such as staff attorney stuff is including in NLJ250 placement stats, that's supportive. However, it's not skewing any schools data that are being discussed here. ND and Fordham have had roughly similar biglaw stats for a long time.

So if, out of all doc reviewers (which are not a ton out of these schools), a couple of them get offered staff attorney gigs by kissing ass (which, by the way, I have not seen happen in the firm that I work for - staff attorney hiring is separate), then that would count in NLJ250 stats. Which would skew the data like, less than 1%. And this would happen across the board, even for schools that have great NLJ250 placement like Penn or Northwestern.

This barely warrants consideration. If we're talking about TTT schools in rural areas where a discovery center popped up and they had a spike in NLJ250 placement, it would.

To the bolded:

To say that they are not a ton of doc review coming out of Fordham is a little ingenuine. First of all 21% of Fordham Grads are underemployed. Only 68.4 % are in full time bar required positions. 6.3 % were non-employed and another 3.9 were in professional positions. It’s not like Fordham grads have options.

[flem]

no
http://www.redp.org/success.php?id=120

Oh, I didn't know we were debating West Virginia College of Law here. Carry on then, bro.

Building on this, if your point was that discovery center work such as staff attorney stuff is including in NLJ250 placement stats, that's supportive. However, it's not skewing any schools data that are being discussed here. ND and Fordham have had roughly similar biglaw stats for a long time.

So if, out of all doc reviewers (which are not a ton out of these schools), a couple of them get offered staff attorney gigs by kissing ass (which, by the way, I have not seen happen in the firm that I work for - staff attorney hiring is separate), then that would count in NLJ250 stats. Which would skew the data like, less than 1%. And this would happen across the board, even for schools that have great NLJ250 placement like Penn or Northwestern.

This barely warrants consideration. If we're talking about TTT schools in rural areas where a discovery center popped up and they had a spike in NLJ250 placement, it would.

To the bolded:

To say that they are not a ton of doc review coming out of Fordham is a little ingenuine. First of all 21% of Fordham Grads are underemployed. Only 68.4 % are in full time bar required positions. 6.3 % were non-employed and another 3.9 were in professional positions. It’s not like Fordham grads have options.

So if they're unemployed they're not doing doc review work, though.

According to this ND has 22% unemployed while Fordham has 24%. Those are both scary figures. Both these schools are basically peers with an edge to Fordham in NYC biglaw placement.

[answer23]

My point is that Law School Transparency has a higher percentage of Fordham students going into large firm than the data at nlj250 for class of 2010 that’s 29 vs 35. That’s a 6 percentage point difference while ND’s percentage from the two sources were nearly identically.6 percentage discrepancy is not negligible. There might be different reasons for this discrepancy, but it exist. My contention is that either one of those sources is incorrect or Fordam’s placement might be overstated in some way. There is no way to know for sure because neither school is particularly transparent about releasing more data. If Fordam’s data is so great then I would think it would be in their best interest to show that every student that are placed in a large firm are placed into a partner track associate position.

Like Fordham's location in the middle of the most major legal market in the united states with a highly concentrated alumni network, while Notre Dame is in the middle of nowhere and doesn't feed into ANY specific market? That couldn't possibly explain it.

sorry I wasn't clear. I was comparing Fordam's NLJ250 data to Fordham's Law School Transparancy large firm Data for the class of 2010. There is a 6 percentage point discrepancy between the two.

[flem]

sorry I wasn't clear. I was comparing Fordam's NLJ250 data to Fordham's Law School Transparancy large firm Data for the class of 2010. There is a 6 percentage point discrepancy between the two.

Oh that I'm not sure about. I think the spreadsheet is easier to navigate, personally.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub ... Bd3c&gid=7

The other thing with NLJ250 placement is not all NLJ250 firms are created equal. Some pay way below market and are shitlaw work like Morgan&Morgan, for what that's worth.

Edit: wait, no you weren't

That is not true at all. ND's Large firm placement is 29% and Fordham's 35%. I was just saying that a 6 percentage difference in large firm placement is not enough to pick Fordham over ND

[answer23]

no
http://www.redp.org/success.php?id=120

Oh, I didn't know we were debating West Virginia College of Law here. Carry on then, bro.

Building on this, if your point was that discovery center work such as staff attorney stuff is including in NLJ250 placement stats, that's supportive. However, it's not skewing any schools data that are being discussed here. ND and Fordham have had roughly similar biglaw stats for a long time.

So if, out of all doc reviewers (which are not a ton out of these schools), a couple of them get offered staff attorney gigs by kissing ass (which, by the way, I have not seen happen in the firm that I work for - staff attorney hiring is separate), then that would count in NLJ250 stats. Which would skew the data like, less than 1%. And this would happen across the board, even for schools that have great NLJ250 placement like Penn or Northwestern.

This barely warrants consideration. If we're talking about TTT schools in rural areas where a discovery center popped up and they had a spike in NLJ250 placement, it would.

To the bolded:

To say that they are not a ton of doc review coming out of Fordham is a little ingenuine. First of all 21% of Fordham Grads are underemployed. Only 68.4 % are in full time bar required positions. 6.3 % were non-employed and another 3.9 were in professional positions. It’s not like Fordham grads have options.

So if they're unemployed they're not doing doc review work, though.

According to this ND has 22% unemployed while Fordham has 24%. Those are both scary figures. Both these schools are basically peers with an edge to Fordham in NYC biglaw placement.

I was looking at law school transparency which states that 8% of ND students are underemployed vs 21% at Fordham. It also states that 84% of ND students were employed in full time bar required positions vs. 68 % of Fordham’s. I thought that the consensus from TLS and Paul Campos was that ABA data was too limited and that LST was more detailed. I’m not sure were you got those numbers from. Also I’m sure that Doc Review would fall under the underemployment category. Temp work is part time work.

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[answer23]

sorry I wasn't clear. I was comparing Fordam's NLJ250 data to Fordham's Law School Transparancy large firm Data for the class of 2010. There is a 6 percentage point discrepancy between the two.

Oh that I'm not sure about. I think the spreadsheet is easier to navigate, personally.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub ... Bd3c&gid=7

The other thing with NLJ250 placement is not all NLJ250 firms are created equal. Some pay way below market and are shitlaw work like Morgan&Morgan, for what that's worth.

Edit: wait, no you weren't

That is not true at all. ND's Large firm placement is 29% and Fordham's 35%. I was just saying that a 6 percentage difference in large firm placement is not enough to pick Fordham over ND

Ok I will type as slow as I can so maybe you can understand. I was making two different points at two different times. There is a 6 percentage point placement difference between ND and Fordham into large firms. But also on a separate and completly different point there is also a 6 percentage point difference between Fordham's NLJ250 data and Fordham LST data. The 6 percentage difference of those separate issues are completely coincidental

[flem]

I was looking at law school transparency which states that 8% of ND students are underemployed vs 21% at Fordham. It also states that 84% of ND students were employed in full time bar required positions vs. 68 % of Fordham’s. I thought that the consensus from TLS and Paul Campos was that ABA data was too limited and that LST was more detailed. I’m not sure were you got those numbers from. Also I’m sure that Doc Review would fall under the underemployment category. Temp work is part time work.

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I don't know - the dude who mined all the data from the ABA placement stuff (and did basically the same stuff LST did) has 134 grads out of 172 with long term employment. The difference might be school funded positions. I'm not sure.

Edit: also Fordham had 491 (!) graduates as opposed to ND's 172

RE: the data blip/6% difference - not all large firms are NLJ250 firms, so that's probably the difference.

[answer23]

I was looking at law school transparency which states that 8% of ND students are underemployed vs 21% at Fordham. It also states that 84% of ND students were employed in full time bar required positions vs. 68 % of Fordham’s. I thought that the consensus from TLS and Paul Campos was that ABA data was too limited and that LST was more detailed. I’m not sure were you got those numbers from. Also I’m sure that Doc Review would fall under the underemployment category. Temp work is part time work.

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I don't know - the dude who mined all the data from the ABA placement stuff (and did basically the same stuff LST did) has 134 grads out of 172 with long term employment. The difference might be school funded positions. I'm not sure.

Edit: also Fordham had 491 (!) graduates as opposed to ND's 172

RE: the data blip/6% difference - not all large firms are NLJ250 firms, so that's probably the difference.

Both schools has about the same percentage of school funded jobs. I’m sure there might be a good reason why LST does not include school funded jobs as unemployed. I would like to know how short term is short term. If the students are still working in a short term gig 9 months out there needs to be more additional subsequent data to show how many have secured a position after the school funded job has ended. Otherwise counting them as unemployed might make sense unless there is more data that shows that they found employment after the school funded job has ended. But at the same time it might be unfair to count every student who is in a school funded program as unemployed. There might be some who secure a job during or after the school funded position has ended. Given that Fordham places 19% of their students into JD preferred jobs vs 5% at ND as well as the underemployment score of Fordham at 21% vs 8 % at ND. When you count the school funded position as unemployed. ND is feasible, but Fordham is atrocious. I would still feel a little more comfortable at ND but not at sticker for either. Going to Fordham at sticker in hopes of getting nyc biglaw is not a great idea.

[dingbat]

It looks like I missed a chunk of the debate, but I can tell who wontfleming
Note: I'm always open to being proven wrong. I'm open to debate.
And I stand by what I said:
If someone is gunning for biglaw Fordham is a better option than Notre Dame, but if unemployment is the bigger consideration, Notre Dame wins

[igel]

thanks guys for all the advices, I think its going to be Fordham for me!
I guess after all, the only thing that matters is how well you do in school once you get in, good luck everyone!