Top schools hired by NLJ 250 firms in 2009!!! Forum

[chadwick218]

If the hiring was as bad as it seemed, any school would be lucky to post 45% in big law for the class of 2010 - T14 or not.

The point is that non-T14 schools will be hit disproportionately harder. We have already seen this.

[Aberzombie1892]

If the hiring was as bad as it seemed, any school would be lucky to post 45% in big law for the class of 2010 - T14 or not.

The point is that non-T14 schools will be hit disproportionately harder. We have already seen this.

Where?

[chadwick218]

I think the drop off will be severe after that - Georgetown likely to be one of the last schools in the 30%+ range.

Possibly, but in large part of their incredibly large class size.

[chadwick218]

If the hiring was as bad as it seemed, any school would be lucky to post 45% in big law for the class of 2010 - T14 or not.

The point is that non-T14 schools will be hit disproportionately harder. We have already seen this.

Where?

There were a number of schools b/w T20 and T30 this year that were just crushed during OCI ... as in hiring was down 50% compared to 25% or within the T14's. I am also speaking in large part to the Chicago market. The Tribune ran a couple articles back in October / Novembe w/r/t the legal market.

[RVP11]

Has anyone yet realized that one reason the T6 schools appear pretty low might be because of how deferrals were calculated? This is the class of 2009 we're talking about. A TON of those BigLaw people got deferred. T6 people probably had better luck finding something worthwhile to do for that year (PI or clerkship). Wouldn't that then take them, temporarily, off the calculation for "NLJ250 firms," while anyone who couldn't find anything for their deferral year remained in the calculation?

[RVP11]

If the hiring was as bad as it seemed, any school would be lucky to post 45% in big law for the class of 2010 - T14 or not.

The point is that non-T14 schools will be hit disproportionately harder. We have already seen this.

Where?

Talk to people attending WUSTL/BC/BU/GW/ND especially.

If T14s had BigLaw hiring cut by 30% to 40%, the cut at these level of schools was more like 60% to 70%.

[chadwick218]

Has anyone yet realized that one reason the T6 schools appear pretty low might be because of how deferrals were calculated? This is the class of 2009 we're talking about. A TON of those BigLaw people got deferred. T6 people probably had better luck finding something worthwhile to do for that year (PI or clerkship). Wouldn't that then take them, temporarily, off the calculation for "NLJ250 firms," while anyone who couldn't find anything for their deferral year remained in the calculation?

I was under the impression that they were included ... in a sense, "hired" in 2009, but deferred until 2010.

[270910]

Has anyone yet realized that one reason the T6 schools appear pretty low might be because of how deferrals were calculated? This is the class of 2009 we're talking about. A TON of those BigLaw people got deferred. T6 people probably had better luck finding something worthwhile to do for that year (PI or clerkship). Wouldn't that then take them, temporarily, off the calculation for "NLJ250 firms," while anyone who couldn't find anything for their deferral year remained in the calculation?

RC Fail.

Importantly, the 2009 percentages include deferred associates

[RVP11]

Has anyone yet realized that one reason the T6 schools appear pretty low might be because of how deferrals were calculated? This is the class of 2009 we're talking about. A TON of those BigLaw people got deferred. T6 people probably had better luck finding something worthwhile to do for that year (PI or clerkship). Wouldn't that then take them, temporarily, off the calculation for "NLJ250 firms," while anyone who couldn't find anything for their deferral year remained in the calculation?

I was under the impression that they were included ... in a sense, "hired" in 2009, but deferred until 2010.

edit: apparent RC fail on my part. Still a mystery as to what explains these numbers.

This is why a better number is how many 2L BigLaw SAs a school places. That number would be much more probative of actual placement power.

[DanInALionsDen]

Sorry, but I don't understand some things here... What's with Yale and Harvard's placement percentages? Where did the other 64.7% of Yale's class go? Are they all doing public interest and clerking? Something is off with there numbers I think.

[RVP11]

Sorry, but I don't understand some things here... What's with Yale and Harvard's placement percentages? Where did the other 64.7% of Yale's class go? Are they all doing public interest and clerking? Something is off with there numbers I think.

My new theory, that hopefully won't be contradicted by the original article that I apparently failed to read:

Employers actually hired on personality and fit...up to a point.

[JusticeHarlan]

Sorry, but I don't understand some things here... What's with Yale and Harvard's placement percentages? Where did the other 64.7% of Yale's class go? Are they all doing public interest and clerking? Something is off with there numbers I think.

Yes, of lot of them went clerking:
http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 1&t=108528

[270910]

Sorry, but I don't understand some things here... What's with Yale and Harvard's placement percentages? Where did the other 64.7% of Yale's class go? Are they all doing public interest and clerking? Something is off with there numbers I think.

My new theory, that hopefully won't be contradicted by the original article that I apparently failed to read:

Employers actually hired on personality and fit...up to a point.

I think during the boom times, employers basically just said 'fuck all, we have room, we'll talk all the T6 students who want to come to NYC'. Then that bubble (but not the foundation) of the NYC legal market collapsed and everything approached normal.

C/O 2005 data looks an awful lot like C/0 2009 data. C/02005 would have done OCI in '03, when the economy was just picking up again after dot coms & 9/11.

[Aberzombie1892]

If the hiring was as bad as it seemed, any school would be lucky to post 45% in big law for the class of 2010 - T14 or not.

The point is that non-T14 schools will be hit disproportionately harder. We have already seen this.

Where?

There were a number of schools b/w T20 and T30 this year that were just crushed during OCI ... as in hiring was down 50% compared to 25% or within the T14's. I am also speaking in large part to the Chicago market. The Tribune ran a couple articles back in October / Novembe w/r/t the legal market.

Oh okay. I know what you mean though.

I remember seeing an article that said the UIUC only had like 60 employers last year (and that obviously doesn't mean that each employer actually hired someone) - heck the dean even said employers were going to U of Chicago, U of Michigan, and Northwestern (you know something is wrong when a dean of a law school recognizes other law schools in that form).

Moral of the story?

I know it's been said before, but really if someone can't swing a T14 (not including Texas obviously), don't go to school in a major market.

Although this data is useless without knowing:

1) what percentage at each school was deferred
2) what percentage at each school were deferred and never officially hired
3) I would say what percentage clerked, but that was covered by ShowNprove

[kittenmittons]

IB Kronk

[showNprove]

Has anyone yet realized that one reason the T6 schools appear pretty low might be because of how deferrals were calculated? This is the class of 2009 we're talking about. A TON of those BigLaw people got deferred. T6 people probably had better luck finding something worthwhile to do for that year (PI or clerkship). Wouldn't that then take them, temporarily, off the calculation for "NLJ250 firms," while anyone who couldn't find anything for their deferral year remained in the calculation?

The data is gathered directly from the law firms themselves, not from the schools or the recent graduates. Thus, the data represents whether the firms considered the people they deferred to be "new hires" or not. It wouldn't make sense for firms to count some people they deferred as "hired" but not the others who have temporary work (since they were assumed to be coming to the firm later anyway). I think the only way temporary work would make a difference is if (1) the firms counted deferrees as new hires, and (2) the graduates who found temporary work told the firm they had no plans to start on the deferral date. I would say that firms either counted all of their deferrals as "hires" or none of them.

[270910]

Considering how much these numbers fell, it seems like most firms did not consider the people they deferred as "hires."

See above quote from the article for a refutation of this point.

More likely is just that when firms needed to cut back, they stopped taking everyone with a pulse from NYU/Columbia. My guess is they basically started only looking for near-or-above median students at any top schools, when before they'd happily pull (by mathematical definition) from the bottom of the class at CLS/NYU.

[RVP11]

We need some CCN trolls in here to explain these numbers, and somehow explain to us how these schools are objectively better than MVPB. I haven't done a good enough job in their place.

[showNprove]

Considering how much these numbers fell, it seems like most firms did not consider the people they deferred as "hires."

See above quote from the article for a refutation of this point.

More likely is just that when firms needed to cut back, they stopped taking everyone with a pulse from NYU/Columbia. My guess is they basically started only looking for near-or-above median students at any top schools, when before they'd happily pull (by mathematical definition) from the bottom of the class at CLS/NYU.

You're right about including the deferrees in the numbers. Removed it from my post.

[Kretzy]

We need some CCN trolls in here to explain these numbers, and somehow explain to us how these schools are objectively better than MVPB. I haven't done a good enough job in their place.

I think the argument made in the other thread was a good one: for those at CCN who do have jobs, they are probably working in subjectively "better" firms than those similarly situated at lower-ranked schools. Many, in fact, probably don't have jobs because they were no-offered from said "better" firms, and would be employed had they been given better guidance on how to correctly bid on firms given the new state of the economy.

[keg411]

Can someone post a screen shot or at least write out part of the list? The website isn't working for me .

[Kohinoor]

We need some CCN trolls in here to explain these numbers, and somehow explain to us how these schools are objectively better than MVPB. I haven't done a good enough job in their place.

I think the argument made in the other thread was a good one: for those at CCN who do have jobs, they are probably working in subjectively "better" firms than those similarly situated at lower-ranked schools. Many, in fact, probably don't have jobs because they were no-offered from said "better" firms, and would be employed had they been given better guidance on how to correctly bid on firms given the new state of the economy.

This. The 160k you get from a CCN feeder firm tastes better than the 160k than more students got from a UVA feeder firm. That and what Kretzy describes as CCN students being dumbs?

[rayiner]

I'm pretty sure this data accounts for all of the offer revocations and indefinite deferrals (how else could schools like NYU and Penn fall so much?). I know the Class of 2010 got hit with a lot of no-offers, but I felt like the Class of 2009 was the primary target for decreasing the workforce as quickly as possible. I could be wrong, but can anyone point to data that says firms were looking to shed more people for 2010 than they were 2009?

Yes. This data doesn't include the OCI carnage in 2009, but does include the no-offer shit-show for 2008 summers. That also explains why the schools end up in a different order than expected. A lot of the tippy-top firms that CLS/NYU/etc grades went to no-offered just as many people, or more as other firms. Non-NYC schools probably held up better because firms outside NYC had to shed less people (eg: Chicago got hit hard, but shed half as many NLJ250 associates per capita as NYC).

[Kretzy]

We need some CCN trolls in here to explain these numbers, and somehow explain to us how these schools are objectively better than MVPB. I haven't done a good enough job in their place.

I think the argument made in the other thread was a good one: for those at CCN who do have jobs, they are probably working in subjectively "better" firms than those similarly situated at lower-ranked schools. Many, in fact, probably don't have jobs because they were no-offered from said "better" firms, and would be employed had they been given better guidance on how to correctly bid on firms given the new state of the economy.

This. The 160k you get from a CCN feeder firm tastes better than the 160k than more students got from a UVA feeder firm. That and what Kretzy describes as CCN students being dumbs?

I mean, I like bastardizing other people's arguments as much as the next guy, but that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying it's wholly possible that students coming from CCN thought they could get more highly-ranked firms, then didn't get offered full-time employment at said highly-ranked firms.

I wanna do JAG Corps and am the opposite of a prestige whore when it comes to employment. I just think this is a possible explanation.

[keg411]

I'm pretty sure this data accounts for all of the offer revocations and indefinite deferrals (how else could schools like NYU and Penn fall so much?). I know the Class of 2010 got hit with a lot of no-offers, but I felt like the Class of 2009 was the primary target for decreasing the workforce as quickly as possible. I could be wrong, but can anyone point to data that says firms were looking to shed more people for 2010 than they were 2009?

Yes. This data doesn't include the OCI carnage in 2009, but does include the no-offer shit-show for 2008 summers. That also explains why the schools end up in a different order than expected. A lot of the tippy-top firms that CLS/NYU/etc grades went to no-offered just as many people, or more as other firms. Non-NYC schools probably held up better because firms outside NYC had to shed less people (eg: Chicago got hit hard, but shed half as many NLJ250 associates per capita as NYC).

This. Penn's numbers are probably so bad because the Philly market got wiped out and I think like 80-85% of people who summer'd at Philly firms got no-offered that year.