Penn vs Chicago Forum

[hcrimson2014]

Canada is generally not the best option for Americans graduating from US law schools since the wage level is much lower with less advancement/lateral opportunities and the barrier to entering the country's bar is extremely high even for Canadian citizens who attended school elsewhere.

For you goal of practicing in Asia, Penn is an Ivy league school and the prestige it commands in the market is unparalleled. UChi also enjoys good visibility in Asia but you will not elicit the same jaw dropping reaction as you would telling people that you have gone to an Ivy in Asia (I assume by Asia you mean China/Japan/SK/HK/SG since that is where most of the actions happen, I am not really familiar with India/Dubai so maybe people there are more hold UChi with higher regard). Also, the Asian legal market and to a smaller extent the European market are not as familiar with American law schools as you would think. For example, it is only in recent years that Human Resources in China (for domestic and a lot of foreign firms alike) have gained an understanding of the concept of T14. Previously, it was easier for an USC/UCLA grad to be hired in China compared to people from Gtown/NU because Chinese people think that UCLA/USC are better schools. (Also, Asian universities generally display less variation in the rankings of the overall universities and of their departments, the University of Tokyo is the best university in Japan and ALL of its departments are considered the BEST in the country, the same is true for Tsinghua/Peking in China and Seoul National University in SK, so the idea that Yale has a better law school than Harvard is not something that people there can swallow easily. For all intents and purposes, SLS is viewed to be better than YLS in Asia because Asians tend to view Stanford as a better university overall.) Moreover, even if the hiring partner from say the Chinese office of a Magic circle firm or a V10 knows that Yale is ranked higher that Harvard for law and UChi is ranked higher than Penn, the fact that most people in the industry and almost all the clients would think to the contrary would incentivize the partner to hire from Penn instead of Chicago so that he might win more face value (very very important in East Asian culture) with clients and his colleagues by telling people that he has a Penn grad working for him instead of a Chicago grad.