M vs V vs P for corporate law Forum

[SuichiKurama]

Based on xoxo posts, Penn has around half the number of biglaw offices going to its OCI compared to M and V...Penn has a smaller class, but not that much smaller. I go to one of M or V, and we have a lot of NYC offices going to OCI. The cut-off is probably going to be around the same for these schools (aka lower than CCN's). Also, Philly biglaw is dead, so I don't know why you consider that a "fall back." And I agree with the previous poster. People on LR with good grades at my school dream of going to DC, not v10s in NYC.

I also find it amusing how we are comparing data from the most selective, almost impossible to get firms. You guys won't have the grades to get Cravath or K&E, from any school, so don't worry.

Whenever I see someone who posts something like this it reminds me of just how lame a lot of people on this website are; and considering Kirkland and Ellis an "almost impossible to get firm from any school" is just ridiculous.

[oscarthegrouch]

Based on xoxo posts, Penn has around half the number of biglaw offices going to its OCI compared to M and V...Penn has a smaller class, but not that much smaller. I go to one of M or V, and we have a lot of NYC offices going to OCI. The cut-off is probably going to be around the same for these schools (aka lower than CCN's). Also, Philly biglaw is dead, so I don't know why you consider that a "fall back." And I agree with the previous poster. People on LR with good grades at my school dream of going to DC, not v10s in NYC.

I also find it amusing how we are comparing data from the most selective, almost impossible to get firms. You guys won't have the grades to get Cravath or K&E, from any school, so don't worry.

Whenever I see someone who posts something like this it reminds me of just how lame a lot of people on this website are; and considering Kirkland and Ellis an "almost impossible to get firm from any school" is just ridiculous.

Lame because I am not offering BS advice? Most people on TLS don't know anything about firms, hiring, or OCI. A lot of the people offering advice in this thread are 0ls.

Re: K&E --> Maybe not before ITE, but I have seen GPA data from multiple T-14s, and talked to various advisers. According to last year's info, K&E is only looking at the top 10%. This is partly because K&E cut its SA class size by over half (went from 160 to 70).

[quakeroats]

Sorry it took me so long to respond to this. I appreciate your criticism, much of which is well-founded, and I’m going to try to hit as many of the points you raised as I can.

Sigh. So I keep trying to quit TLS, and I keep failing miserably. Most of this is in response to Quaker's charts. I'm a data person, and I appreciate the effort. To the extent I am critical it is largely in the spirit of elucidation rather than altercation (I'm a fan of the phrase 'throwing off light, not heat). It's also largely a result of having access to more, broader, and more relevant data - the hiring trends and required credentials out of law OCI rather than just the end results of where associates work.

Feel free to post this data either in the forum or by PM and I’ll throw it into Excel. Every little bit helps. It’s difficult to argue against data one cannot see.

The biggest problem in your data is the function of the NYC legal market. It's actually the EASIEST to break into from the T14. By an enormous margin. Anybody with ~median grades at any T14 school would be a fool not to bid hard on NYC law firms.

At schools like, oh hell I don't know, let's say Columbia, a lot of students seem to want to work in NYC for some reason. Hell if I know why. As a result, the top of their class trickles into prestigious NYC firms - in huge numbers.

What you say is true, but in some sense irrelevant to my points, because I’m only looking at the NYC offices of V10 firms headquartered in NYC. This should exclude for much of the problem of the NYC market being so large as we’re only looking at what amounts to the V8.

At schools like Virginia, Michigan, and Berkeley the TOP of the class (broadly speaking here - top third maybe?) tend to be the ones who have the opportunity to elect to go to some extremely prestigious law firms that aren't in NYC. Even if many do take their ticket and punch it at the V5 (or V5 less Wachtell) you see much broader dispersion amongst those with options. As a result, you see the 'elite' student disproportionately choosing their 'elite' opportunities. Clerkships, corporate firms, firms in home markets, elite small law firms that can't be aggregated into this data (I'm looking at you, tiny DC appellate law firms and IP boutiques).

Do you have data to back this up? While I’ll certainly agree that those placing higher in the class have better opportunities for non-NYC positions, this almost certainly doesn’t apply to Michigan more than others because they send a plurality of their grads to New York. As for Virginia (vs. Duke), I ran a similar comparison using D.C. offices for roughly the V15 and Virginia still lost by about 33 percent.

1) The data looks at total associates at firms. As a result, there's an unaccountable "time spent at firm" bias. It wouldn't surprise me that Penn students, for example, are more dedicated to corporate law practice than Virginia students. As in, it might be plan A and long term plan for more penn students, which would inflate the #s currently working there.

This would be nice to know, but unfortunately there’s no data available to me to talk about this one way or the other. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a negligible factor as most associates at V10 firms leave within 5 or so years.

2) Firms are NOTORIOUSLY picky with respect to schools, but it's idiosyncratic. Georgetown feeds to Williams & Connolly. Put that in your T13 pipe and smoke it.

Home markets matter. Georgetown does better in D.C. than in Los Angeles because of this, but it’s still quite weak if we run the same comparison against Duke. By the same calculation Duke places about 400% more students at Williams & Connolly by number of students in an average class going to D.C. Puff Puff.

WLRK recruits at Penn but not at M or V. I doubt this is due to mustache twirling on their part.

Perhaps they skip them for a reason. These stats suggest we should probably consider that possibility.

3) School size. This, like most things in life, isn't as black and white as people make it out to be. Smaller schools do better at some elite firms - but they also tend to attract a combination of fewer employers and/or employers with lower expectations for # of students they will obtain. Bigger schools enjoy larger recruitment programs and cast students out more broadly, especially around median. The result is you can't just look at the number of students at elite firms, divide my class size, crack a beer, and call it a day. This shit is complex beyond the most broad generalizations.

I don’t think you’ve made your case here. My ranking shows schools with large classes doing very well (Harvard) and small classes doing poorly (Cornell, Northwestern) in New York. From what I’ve seen a larger class is a relative liability. Of course the recruitment progams are bigger at a larger school than a small one; they have many more recruits! Per capita, it all nets out. I haven’t seen data to suggest that bigger schools place more broadly, so I can’t speak to that.

4) Sample choice. The V8 are almost a good approximation of something, but only almost. And even before you leave Manhattan you're already being under inclusive - firms like Patterson Belknap, Boeis Schiller, Quinn Emanual, and a host of other firms with extremely prestigious NYC practices that are quite selective about who they hire are not included. My point isn't that you need to start over or that those are fatal flaws, just that the more instances where the conclusions attempted to be drawn from available data are based only on small and overt portions of total data, the more warped your outcomes are going to be.

I did exclude a lot of prestigious institutions in this calculation, but I got a fair sampling of the most elite in New York as I intended. If you (or anyone else) would like to look at the firms that Vault doesn’t accurately judge that would be great.

As a disclaimer, Duke is clearly an extraordinarily prestigious and well regarded law school. It places well at W, for example. But to narrow in on the real question, a student starting at MVP with a desire to practice corporate law will not see a significant enough difference after accounting for 1L grades and desired practice for the employment power differences between MVP to be relevant. Taking classes at Penn with Wharton kids, closer location, profs from Delaware, whatever - are all fine reasons to go there if you are interested in NYC corporate law. For those reasons, I voted for Penn in the poll myself. &C

Grades matter more than one’s choice of school within the T14, but that doesn’t matter in this calculation. If you can increase your chances of doing well before you even begin law school, why not?

The only truly valid data point here is simple: What firms interview at what school and what credentials are required to get those jobs. I actually HAVE seen those pieces of data - or what fragments of them can be tracked down reasonably - from a smattering of schools ranging from George Washington up through Columbia. My two biggest take-aways are that 1) firm hiring is quite idiosyncratic and 2) all T14 schools place very well at large law firms. You would be astounded at the frequency with which top students from any T14 get offers from lots of these firms - meaning that all you really see is preference, corrected slightly for the fact that it's certain based on the number of offers that the V5 will dip proportionally deeper in extending offers at Columbia than, say, Cornell.

Why is that the only valid data point? Much of what you’ve said comes down to, “I’ve seen the data; trust me.” Color me skeptical, but I’d like to see some data first. From what I’ve seen (the V8 placement/D.C./Chicago vs. Duke through the V100 I ran, A3 clerkships, Leiter, etc.) I’m pretty well convinced that if one wants to work in New York (and to some extent D.C.) you’d go to Duke or Penn over everyone but HYSCC, and you wouldn’t even consider Michigan. Elite clerkships tell a similar tale. I’m happy to look at any data you have, but I'm unpersuaded so far.

[SuichiKurama]

Do you have data to back this up? While I’ll certainly agree that those placing higher in the class have better opportunities for non-NYC positions, this almost certainly doesn’t apply to Michigan more than others because they send a plurality of their grads to New York. As for Virginia (vs. Duke), I ran a similar comparison using D.C. offices for roughly the V15 and Virginia still lost by about 33 percent.

You're making one of the most common mistakes that a lot of TLS/US News/Vault obsessed posters makes with respect to placement---Vault rankings are not a great proxy of prestige/eliteness/desirability outside of NYC. That's because the Vault rankings are focused on transactional firms (although I will say the 2011 rankings are showing a definite tilt away from that) headquartered in NYC. Using the V15 to evaluate elite placement in cities other than NYC is not a good way of measuring selectivity.

If you had ran placement checks for elite firms in DC you would definitely not have used the V15 as a proxy--you would have left out a good deal of firms that are seen as more elite than the V15.

Williams and Connolly (which is admittedly included in the V15)
Covington DC (see above parentheses)
Arnold Porter DC
Wilmer Hale DC
Kellog Huber
Kirkland DC
hogan lovells DC
Robbins Russell
Mayer Brown
Jenner Block DC
Gibson Dunn DC


Too many firms are left out when you use the V15 for top DC firm placement. If you run an analysis with the likes of these firms you will quickly find that Duke's 33 percent "advantage" over UVA in DC evaporates.


Cali
Munger Tolles
Irell and Manella
Quinn Emmanuel
Kirkland
Gibson Dunn
Morrison Foerster
Keker van Nest

As far as Michigan sending a plurality of it's grads to NYC, yes that is the single location where they send the most students (though Chicago is a not too distant 2nd) if you look at the total picture Michigan sends a larger portion of their grads to California, Chicago, DC, and Atlanta combined than they do to NYC. Michigan's strength in all of those markets is noticeably stronger (especially Chicago and California, maybe not DC) than Duke's is.

[Reedie]

If you run an analysis with the likes of these firms you will quickly find that Duke's 33 percent "advantage" over UVA in DC evaporates.

If you've taken the time to run these numbers could you please post them?

[Reedie]

If you run an analysis with the likes of these firms you will quickly find that Duke's 33 percent "advantage" over UVA in DC evaporates.

If you've taken the time to run these numbers could you please post them?

Edit:

And if you haven't run these numbers, how on earth are you so certain of what they would be?

[SuichiKurama]

If you run an analysis with the likes of these firms you will quickly find that Duke's 33 percent "advantage" over UVA in DC evaporates.

If you've taken the time to run these numbers could you please post them?

Edit:

And if you haven't run these numbers, how on earth are you so certain of what they would be?

Arnold Porter DC
Wilmer Hale DC
Kellog Huber
Kirkland DC
hogan lovells DC
Robbins Russell
Mayer Brown
Jenner Block DC

Look at these firms in DC and you'll see what I'm talking about;they come out roughly equal.

[270910]

If you run an analysis with the likes of these firms you will quickly find that Duke's 33 percent "advantage" over UVA in DC evaporates.

If you've taken the time to run these numbers could you please post them?

Edit:

And if you haven't run these numbers, how on earth are you so certain of what they would be?

Arnold Porter DC
Wilmer Hale DC
Kellog Huber
Kirkland DC
Hogan Lovells DC
Robbins Russell
Mayer Brown
Jenner Block DC

Look at these firms in DC and you'll see what I'm talking about;they come out roughly equal.

Example: A&P is one of the best firms in DC, no question about it. Very prestigious, top flight. Covington and W&C are probably more selective, but it's got a stellar reputation and hires from the top of the top law schools.

A&P DC:
UVA Law grads: 17
Duke Law grads: 6

Speaking of Covington, it's probably the most prestigious large law firm in the city. Smaller firms with narrower specialties (like W&C) obviously are up there too and there's no direct comparison, but Covington is basically the shit. Whitest of the white shoe, best of the best.

Covington DC:
UVA Law grads: 24
Duke Law grads: 9

etc.

[thechee]

In fairness to Duke, they graduate 220 or so a year, while UVA puts out over 400. That makes the differences seem somewhat less massive.

[270910]

In fairness to Duke, they graduate 220 or so a year, while UVA puts out over 400. That makes the differences seem somewhat less massive.

And?

[Reedie]

Example: A&P is one of the best firms in DC, no question about it. Very prestigious, top flight. Covington and W&C are probably more selective, but it's got a stellar reputation and hires from the top of the top law schools.

A&P DC:
UVA Law grads: 17
Duke Law grads: 6

Speaking of Covington, it's probably the most prestigious large law firm in the city. Smaller firms with narrower specialties (like W&C) obviously are up there too and there's no direct comparison, but Covington is basically the shit. Whitest of the white shoe, best of the best.

Covington DC:
UVA Law grads: 24
Duke Law grads: 9

etc.

UVA sent an average of 84 students/year to DC from 2007-2009 while Duke sent and average of 38. UVA sends about 2.7 times more grads to DC a year. When adjusting for that, UV outplaces Duke at A&P slightly, and Duke outplaces UVA at Covington slightly. So, these two firms are more or less a wash, which wouldn't seem to me to be enough to make up for the other stats. Both differences are probably more than overwhelmed by the small sample size

Look, I really don't know HOW it would come out. My guess would be that UVA should outplace Duke very slightly in DC, but who knows. What I find rather annoying is the attitude that quakeroats' stats just MUST be wrong if you expand them because you say so. If you want to expand the search, then do so; compile the numbers and post it.

[Reedie]

Mayer Brown
.

UVA 10
Duke 11

Look, I randomly picked one firm and Duke did vastly better (when adjusted for smaller number of grads going to DC). Yipeee!

[270910]

UVA sent an average of 84 students/year to DC from 2007-2009 while Duke sent and average of 38. UVA sends about 2.7 times more grads to DC a year. When adjusting for that

Why are you adjusting for that? Don't adjust for that. Adjusting for that is retarded.

I, you, me, everyone understands that there are more humans in UVA's law school than Duke's. But you can't just start dividing everything by Handy School Equality Factors. There ARE NOT ANY LAW FIRMS IN DC WHICH ARE NOT EXTRAORDINARILY SELECTIVE. There are none. As a result, the fact that UVA is sending 2.7 times the number of grads to DC means you should wrap a lei around UVA and take it to a cookout on the beach, not discount its power. This is not simply a result of student preference. Many, many people from both schools want big firms in DC and fail to get big firms in DC.

[270910]

Mayer Brown
.

UVA 10
Duke 11

Look, I randomly picked one firm and Duke did vastly better (when adjusted for smaller number of grads going to DC). Yipeee!

Congratulations, you picked a small DC branch office of a Chicago law firm! It has 3 people from Duke law and 2 people from UVA law in DC. It's a Chicago firm.

Notice how I picked two of the very largest and most desirable Washington DC firms? You see what I did there?

[thechee]

UVA sent an average of 84 students/year to DC from 2007-2009 while Duke sent and average of 38. UVA sends about 2.7 times more grads to DC a year. When adjusting for that

Why are you adjusting for that? Don't adjust for that. Adjusting for that is retarded.

I, you, me, everyone understands that there are more humans in UVA's law school than Duke's. But you can't just start dividing everything by Handy School Equality Factors. There ARE NOT ANY LAW FIRMS IN DC WHICH ARE NOT EXTRAORDINARILY SELECTIVE. There are none. As a result, the fact that UVA is sending 2.7 times the number of grads to DC means you should wrap a lei around UVA and take it to a cookout on the beach, not discount its power. This is not simply a result of student preference. Many, many people from both schools want big firms in DC and fail to get big firms in DC.

I don't see why it's retarded to adjust for class size/number of ppl wanting that market. Assuming that top firms care how deep down in your class rank you are, that UVA has nearly twice as many people in the top half of its class as Duke can only help its placement numbers.

[270910]

UVA sent an average of 84 students/year to DC from 2007-2009 while Duke sent and average of 38. UVA sends about 2.7 times more grads to DC a year. When adjusting for that

Why are you adjusting for that? Don't adjust for that. Adjusting for that is retarded.

I, you, me, everyone understands that there are more humans in UVA's law school than Duke's. But you can't just start dividing everything by Handy School Equality Factors. There ARE NOT ANY LAW FIRMS IN DC WHICH ARE NOT EXTRAORDINARILY SELECTIVE. There are none. As a result, the fact that UVA is sending 2.7 times the number of grads to DC means you should wrap a lei around UVA and take it to a cookout on the beach, not discount its power. This is not simply a result of student preference. Many, many people from both schools want big firms in DC and fail to get big firms in DC.

I don't see why it's retarded to adjust for class size/number of ppl wanting that market. Assuming that top firms care how deep down in your class rank you are, that UVA has nearly twice as many people in the top half of its class as Duke can only help its placement numbers.

I don't disagree with your reasoning, I disagree with carrying your reasoning so far as to simple division by class size and vehemently disagree with carrying your reasoning so far as dividing by total number of grads sent to the DC market for the reasons described in my quoted post above.

[Reedie]

UVA sent an average of 84 students/year to DC from 2007-2009 while Duke sent and average of 38. UVA sends about 2.7 times more grads to DC a year. When adjusting for that

Why are you adjusting for that? Don't adjust for that. Adjusting for that is retarded.

I, you, me, everyone understands that there are more humans in UVA's law school than Duke's. But you can't just start dividing everything by Handy School Equality Factors. There ARE NOT ANY LAW FIRMS IN DC WHICH ARE NOT EXTRAORDINARILY SELECTIVE. There are none. As a result, the fact that UVA is sending 2.7 times the number of grads to DC means you should wrap a lei around UVA and take it to a cookout on the beach, not discount its power. This is not simply a result of student preference. Many, many people from both schools want big firms in DC and fail to get big firms in DC.

The point of adjusting for that is to adjust both for

1) The different class sizes

AND

2) Self-selection into particular markets

Because of its location (not to mention its admissions edge for Virginia residents) one would expect more UVA grads than Duke grads to aim for DC. The different class sizes exacerbate this problem. So, the simple way to adjust for this is to take the number of people who wind up in a particular market as a crude approximation of the number of people who want that market. Then, the idea is, let's see how many people who wind up there wind up with highly desirable jobs there.

Is this method perfect? Of course not! It's a nice idea given the information we have readily available to us, but it obviously would be improved if we could actually get some info on how graduates from the different schools would rate their geographic preferences (which we don't have). But it is not "retarded" and your presumption that all of us are just sooo stupid and in need of your miraculous wisdom based on information you aren't even bothering to share is getting tiresome. Please be respectful and drop the preaching to the idiots mantra.

[Reedie]

Mayer Brown
.

UVA 10
Duke 11

Look, I randomly picked one firm and Duke did vastly better (when adjusted for smaller number of grads going to DC). Yipeee!

Congratulations, you picked a small DC branch office of a Chicago law firm! It has 3 people from Duke law and 2 people from UVA law in DC. It's a Chicago firm.

Notice how I picked two of the very largest and most desirable Washington DC firms? You see what I did there?

Yes, clearly it being a Chicago firm makes the jobs it provides for graduates irrelevant. Thanks for your help.

[270910]

Mayer Brown
.

UVA 10
Duke 11

Look, I randomly picked one firm and Duke did vastly better (when adjusted for smaller number of grads going to DC). Yipeee!

Congratulations, you picked a small DC branch office of a Chicago law firm! It has 3 people from Duke law and 2 people from UVA law in DC. It's a Chicago firm.

Notice how I picked two of the very largest and most desirable Washington DC firms? You see what I did there?

Yes, clearly it being a Chicago firm makes the jobs it provides for graduates irrelevant. Thanks for your help.

The longer I spend on TLS, the more the emoticons it provides fail to convey my emotions. -.-

[Reedie]

The longer I spend on TLS, the more the emoticons it provides fail to convey my emotions. -.-

It must be so tiring to be the only enlightened person eh?

[SuichiKurama]

Reedie look back at those top firms in DC (Covington, Arnold Porter, Williams Connolly), I don't see how you are coming up with a 33 percent advantage for Duke when you are searching through their profiles.

[Reedie]

Reedie look back at those top firms in DC (Covington, Arnold Porter, Williams Connolly), I don't see how you are coming up with a 33 percent advantage for Duke when you are searching through their profiles.

I'm not. Quakeroats' is. And I believe that advantage is INCLUDING the different number of grads going to DC, so just eyeballing it isn't going to be enough.

As I've already said, my guess is that quakeroats' figures are mislead and Virginia out places Duke in DC. The difference is that I'm willing to admit that's just a guess when I'm not bringing actual evidence to the table.

Ok, here is the data for just those three firms:

A&P UVA 17 Duke 6
Covington UVA 24 Duke 9
Williams and Connolly UVA 27 Duke 20

Tota UVA 68 Duke 35

Multiply 35 by 2.7 using quakeroats' (interesting but imperfect) method for accounting for class size and self-selection you get 94.5. So that 94.5 vs 64. Actually a bigger difference than oats found.

(blah blah, small sample size, etc, etc.)

[markymark]

As someone who has the data from Michigan and Penn Career services, there is actually a very very noticeable difference between Penn and Michigan with regards to NYC biglaw. Despite having a lower median, one seems to need higher grades at Michigan than at Penn to get the same firms in NYC.

Anecdotally, this also seems to be true with UVA (after having some PMs with a bigtime UVA poster on this site).

I wouldn't have guessed it prior to law school, but if you want NYC biglaw, there does seem to be a noticeable difference between P and MV.

[SuichiKurama]

As someone who has the data from Michigan and Penn Career services, there is actually a very very noticeable difference between Penn and Michigan with regards to NYC biglaw. Despite having a lower median, one seems to need higher grades at Michigan than at Penn to get the same firms in NYC.

Anecdotally, this also seems to be true with UVA (after having some PMs with a bigtime UVA poster on this site).

I wouldn't have guessed it prior to law school, but if you want NYC biglaw, there does seem to be a noticeable difference between P and MV.

I've seen Michigan and UVA's too, and like I said if Penn has a "very very noticeable" difference in how far NYC firms are going into Penn's class I stand by the comment that it needs to be changed to CCP. If what you say is true then that means that NYC firms are treating Penn like it's Columbia or something if the difference is "very very noticeable"--- because their treating Michigan and UVA grads pretty well. Further someone just said that Penn doesn't release this so that makes me more suspicious.

[markymark]

As someone who has the data from Michigan and Penn Career services, there is actually a very very noticeable difference between Penn and Michigan with regards to NYC biglaw. Despite having a lower median, one seems to need higher grades at Michigan than at Penn to get the same firms in NYC.

Anecdotally, this also seems to be true with UVA (after having some PMs with a bigtime UVA poster on this site).

I wouldn't have guessed it prior to law school, but if you want NYC biglaw, there does seem to be a noticeable difference between P and MV.

I've seen Michigan and UVA's too, and like I said if Penn has a "very very noticeable" difference in how far NYC firms are going into Penn's class I stand by the comment that it needs to be changed to CCP. If what you say is true then that means that NYC firms are treating Penn like it's Columbia or something if the difference is "very very noticeable"--- because their treating Michigan and UVA grads pretty well. Further someone just said that Penn doesn't release this so that makes me more suspicious.

uhh Penn has a huge pdf file with grade bands. They definitely release this info to rising 2Ls.

You clearly have no idea what you are talking about.