What is the difference between the T14s? Forum

[09042014]

We can all agree big law sucks unbelievable cock.

At least with regard to my point, it's not big law generally, but V10 firms specifically. Cravath is leveraged, in litigation, 3.5:1. Paul Weiss is 4:1. DPW is at almost 6:1. Proskauer DC is 1:1. You're less likely to get laid off at the former, but more likely to do real work earlier at the latter.

Real work is overated. I'm staffed on a case with just a partner and me. It's tough when everything is new.

[Dafaq]

One year during my time here we were T14. Other than we were included in more stat breakouts and the T14 label was a nice intangible, nothing changed. OCI stayed the same, it isn’t though BL just discovered Texas.

To the point of the topic. If you didn’t make it into HYS your best NYC shot was still CCNP. Statistics change a bit year-to-year, but big picture wise, they stay the same. As far as big law, it depends on how one describes BL, does it have to be high on the V list, does it have to have more than x hundreds of lawyers, or is it mainly the mid-six-figure paycheck. If it is the latter, then the answer to the topic question is likely... Insignificant.

[MrSebastian]

Does anyone know the actual OCI GPA cutoffs for some top firms? Seems like a good way to see the advantages of a top T14 vs a lower T14.

I found this for Georgetown but have nothing to compare it to:

Akin Gump-top 25%

Jones Day-top 15%(3.5 min)

Kirkland Ellis-top15%(3.3 min)

Latham-top 10% (3.48 min)

Shearman Sterling-top 10% (3.5)

Skadden -top 10%

[bowser]

Does anyone know the actual OCI GPA cutoffs for some top firms? Seems like a good way to see the advantages of a top T14 vs a lower T14.

I found this for Georgetown but have nothing to compare it to:

Akin Gump-top 25%

Jones Day-top 15%(3.5 min)

Kirkland Ellis-top15%(3.3 min)

Latham-top 10% (3.48 min)

Shearman Sterling-top 10% (3.5)

Skadden -top 10%

where did you get these from? Are they DC offices? for NY they seem rather high.

[jbagelboy]

Does anyone know the actual OCI GPA cutoffs for some top firms? Seems like a good way to see the advantages of a top T14 vs a lower T14.

I found this for Georgetown but have nothing to compare it to:

Akin Gump-top 25%

Jones Day-top 15%(3.5 min)

Kirkland Ellis-top15%(3.3 min)

Latham-top 10% (3.48 min)

Shearman Sterling-top 10% (3.5)

Skadden -top 10%

where did you get these from? Are they DC offices? for NY they seem rather high.

If this is NY then Gtown is worse off than I thought.

[beepboopbeep]

Does anyone know the actual OCI GPA cutoffs for some top firms? Seems like a good way to see the advantages of a top T14 vs a lower T14.

I found this for Georgetown but have nothing to compare it to:

Akin Gump-top 25%
Jones Day-top 15%(3.5 min)
Kirkland Ellis-top15%(3.3 min)
Latham-top 10% (3.48 min)
Shearman Sterling-top 10% (3.5)
Skadden -top 10%

We have minimum CB #s, but that's not exactly the same. I would not be surprised if the real cutoffs were higher in many cases. For those firms, converted from UofC grades:

Jones Day: slightly below median
K&E: well-below median (Chicago), median (NY), top 30% (DC)
Latham: median (Chicago, NY), well-below median (CA)
Shearman: well below median
Skadden: below median

Also worth noting that only four firms had a minimum CB higher than approximately top 30% (179): WLRK, Boies DC, Simpson DC, and Wilson Sonsoni Seattle.

Please don't quote as I don't know if we're supposed to share these. Also, those Georgetown numbers seem really high.

[wons]

FWIW, I don't think of any of those firms as tippy-top places to be a transactional associate. It's really Wachtell/Cravath/S&C/Cleary/DPW/STB.

[bjsesq]

Case in point: both Northwestern and Virginia place fewer people into NYC V10 firms than say NYU. But Vault ranking aside, is going to Simpson Thatcher better than going to Jenner or Winston (for NU), or Hogan or Akin Gump (for UVA)?

Sources say yes.

[beepboopbeep]

FWIW, I don't think of any of those firms as tippy-top places to be a transactional associate. It's really Wachtell/Cravath/S&C/Cleary/DPW/STB.

Minimum CBs for those:

WLRK: top 30% (I'd be shocked if this number in particular were the true minimum)
Cravath: slightly above median
Sullcrom isn't listed
Cleary: slightly above median
Davis Polk: well below median
Simpson Thacher: median (NY), top 20% (DC)

Again, please don't quote.

[09042014]

WLRK: top 30% (I'd be shocked if this number in particular were the true minimum)
Cravath: slightly above median
Sullcrom isn't listed
Cleary: slightly above median
Davis Polk: well below median
Simpson Thacher: median (NY), top 20% (DC)

Again, please don't quote.

[bjsesq]

[09042014]

Absolute minimums mean nothing. NU had 2.78 for Cravath in 2012. Firms will occasionally give out CBs to really low grades.

It's wrong to think of firms as having a minimum cut off. So do, but it's not the right way to model firm recruiting. It's much more complicated.

[jbagelboy]

Absolute minimums mean nothing. NU had 2.78 for Cravath in 2012. Firms will occasionally give out CBs to really low grades.

It's wrong to think of firms as having a minimum cut off. So do, but it's not the right way to model firm recruiting. It's much more complicated.

Its useful to give a general regime for putting together a bid list. A few people strike out from top schools every year because they're snowflaky and they think they can hit all these firms grades be damned cause "firm recruiting is opaque anyway"

[wons]

Another way to look at it is by calculating all the associates at the big firms.

If you compare HLS (which loses the most folks to non-NYC biglaw), CLS, Penn and Cornell, summing up all the associates at WRLK/CSM/S&C/DPW/CGSM/STB, you get the following:

-----------SUM----2014 Enrollment----Sum/2014 Enrollment
HLS------ 336----- --2002---------------------0.17
CLS------ 345----- --1544---------------------0.22
Penn-----116----- ---928----------------------0.13
Cornell---85---------706----------------------0.12

That suggest that firms go a little less than twice as deep at CLS as they do at Penn/Cornell, which sounds about right. If you need to be top quarter at Cornell or Penn for these jobs, I think you need to be more like 40th percentile at CLS and above median at HLS.

[MrSebastian]

Another way to look at it is by calculating all the associates at the big firms.

If you compare HLS (which loses the most folks to non-NYC biglaw), CLS, Penn and Cornell, summing up all the associates at WRLK/CSM/S&C/DPW/CGSM/STB, you get the following:

-----------SUM----2014 Enrollment----Sum/2014 Enrollment
HLS------ 336----- --2002---------------------0.17
CLS------ 345----- --1544---------------------0.22
Penn-----116----- ---928----------------------0.13
Cornell---85---------706----------------------0.12

That suggest that firms go a little less than twice as deep at CLS as they do at Penn/Cornell, which sounds about right. If you need to be top quarter at Cornell or Penn for these jobs, I think you need to be more like 40th percentile at CLS and above median at HLS.

Where did you get these numbers? I want to check out a couple other schools.

[bowser]

Another way to look at it is by calculating all the associates at the big firms.

If you compare HLS (which loses the most folks to non-NYC biglaw), CLS, Penn and Cornell, summing up all the associates at WRLK/CSM/S&C/DPW/CGSM/STB, you get the following:

-----------SUM----2014 Enrollment----Sum/2014 Enrollment
HLS------ 336----- --2002---------------------0.17
CLS------ 345----- --1544---------------------0.22
Penn-----116----- ---928----------------------0.13
Cornell---85---------706----------------------0.12

That suggest that firms go a little less than twice as deep at CLS as they do at Penn/Cornell, which sounds about right. If you need to be top quarter at Cornell or Penn for these jobs, I think you need to be more like 40th percentile at CLS and above median at HLS.

Hmm, not bad, except a somewhat higher percentage of people at CLS target NYC mainly. I think twice as deep probably overstates the CLS advantage a bit. But maybe not by much: far as I can see the biggest advantage for going to CLS is the advantage at these places (plus a number of other very large firms, like Paul Weiss, Debevoise, Skadden, etc.)

[wons]

I developed them from going to the firm websites and searching the directories by law schools. It took about 10 minutes.

BiTD, when I applied to school, I developed a similar list to this, but geographically broader, and used it to make a law school ranking. It's nothing like the info out there now, but in the xoxoth/2005 days, it was revelatory.

Another way to look at it is by calculating all the associates at the big firms.

If you compare HLS (which loses the most folks to non-NYC biglaw), CLS, Penn and Cornell, summing up all the associates at WRLK/CSM/S&C/DPW/CGSM/STB, you get the following:

-----------SUM----2014 Enrollment----Sum/2014 Enrollment
HLS------ 336----- --2002---------------------0.17
CLS------ 345----- --1544---------------------0.22
Penn-----116----- ---928----------------------0.13
Cornell---85---------706----------------------0.12

That suggest that firms go a little less than twice as deep at CLS as they do at Penn/Cornell, which sounds about right. If you need to be top quarter at Cornell or Penn for these jobs, I think you need to be more like 40th percentile at CLS and above median at HLS.

Where did you get these numbers? I want to check out a couple other schools.

[rayiner]

Another way to look at it is by calculating all the associates at the big firms.

If you compare HLS (which loses the most folks to non-NYC biglaw), CLS, Penn and Cornell, summing up all the associates at WRLK/CSM/S&C/DPW/CGSM/STB, you get the following:

-----------SUM----2014 Enrollment----Sum/2014 Enrollment
HLS------ 336----- --2002---------------------0.17
CLS------ 345----- --1544---------------------0.22
Penn-----116----- ---928----------------------0.13
Cornell---85---------706----------------------0.12

That suggest that firms go a little less than twice as deep at CLS as they do at Penn/Cornell, which sounds about right. If you need to be top quarter at Cornell or Penn for these jobs, I think you need to be more like 40th percentile at CLS and above median at HLS.

Where did you get these numbers? I want to check out a couple other schools.

68% of CLS C/O 2013 was employed in NYC versus 41% of Penn's. Top quarter versus top 40% sounds more like CLS versus DNC for DPW/Clearly/STB.

[MrSebastian]

I developed them from going to the firm websites and searching the directories by law schools. It took about 10 minutes.

BiTD, when I applied to school, I developed a similar list to this, but geographically broader, and used it to make a law school ranking. It's nothing like the info out there now, but in the xoxoth/2005 days, it was revelatory.

Gotcha . I wish there was a list for V10 and V100 placement by school, the NLJ250 just doesn't narrow it down enough (I'm specifically interested in Duke and UVA BTW).

[09042014]

I developed them from going to the firm websites and searching the directories by law schools. It took about 10 minutes.

BiTD, when I applied to school, I developed a similar list to this, but geographically broader, and used it to make a law school ranking. It's nothing like the info out there now, but in the xoxoth/2005 days, it was revelatory.

Gotcha . I wish there was a list for V10 and V100 placement by school, the NLJ250 just doesn't narrow it down enough (I'm specifically interested in Duke and UVA BTW).

NLJ250 and V100 isn't a huge difference in terms of job quality.

But there is no reason to worry about Duke and UVA. They are peer schools. Placement differences are probably just do to where the students attempt to get jobs. Self selection is the driver between the difference in peer schools.

[wons]

Again, you're making the same mistake everyone else on this board makes, assuming that global biglaw employment numbers (or NYC only, which is effectively the same thing) generally track the employment differences at the top firms. The problem is, they don't, as evidenced by the data below. The difference is biggest at the top firms and then smears out as you go to generic V50, V100.

Another way to look at it is by calculating all the associates at the big firms.

If you compare HLS (which loses the most folks to non-NYC biglaw), CLS, Penn and Cornell, summing up all the associates at WRLK/CSM/S&C/DPW/CGSM/STB, you get the following:

-----------SUM----2014 Enrollment----Sum/2014 Enrollment
HLS------ 336----- --2002---------------------0.17
CLS------ 345----- --1544---------------------0.22
Penn-----116----- ---928----------------------0.13
Cornell---85---------706----------------------0.12

That suggest that firms go a little less than twice as deep at CLS as they do at Penn/Cornell, which sounds about right. If you need to be top quarter at Cornell or Penn for these jobs, I think you need to be more like 40th percentile at CLS and above median at HLS.

Where did you get these numbers? I want to check out a couple other schools.

68% of CLS C/O 2013 was employed in NYC versus 41% of Penn's. Top quarter versus top 40% sounds more like CLS versus DNC for DPW/Clearly/STB.

[wons]

This was my father's point, which spurred me to make the list in the first place. Getting a job at Greenberg Traurig != a job at Cravath.

I developed them from going to the firm websites and searching the directories by law schools. It took about 10 minutes.

BiTD, when I applied to school, I developed a similar list to this, but geographically broader, and used it to make a law school ranking. It's nothing like the info out there now, but in the xoxoth/2005 days, it was revelatory.

Gotcha . I wish there was a list for V10 and V100 placement by school, the NLJ250 just doesn't narrow it down enough (I'm specifically interested in Duke and UVA BTW).

[MistakenGenius]

Post removed.

[MrSebastian]

I wouldn't put V in its own class over BMDNC.

Y
HS
CC
NP
V
BMDNC
G

I just can't see a reason to put NYU as tied with CC on pure employment numbers. If we're looking at just employment, Penn edges NYU out slightly, so I'd say they're tied. That said, other than Georgetown and HYS, the schools are so close that if you get a lot more money at Cornell than Penn, Cornell will usually be the better option.

[MrSebastian]

#TBT to the twisted, alternate universe that was 1970:

"In 1970, the top five law schools were Harvard, Yale, and Michigan, with Columbia, Stanford, and Chicago fighting it out for the remaining two spots. Penn was just on the cusp of the "top five," Virginia was clearly top ten, and then some mix of Duke, Northwestern, Texas, and Berkeley fought it out for the remaining top ten spots. Cornell was surely top 15, NYU might have been top 15, Vanderbilt was surely top 20, and Georgetown might have been top 20. UCLA was a brand new law school, just a half-dozen years old."