Top Law Schools

SO I have yet to hear back from HYS, but I am fortunate enough to have been admitted to these wonderful schools.

That being said, they all offer great opportunities, urban settings, generous LRAPS, etc. Please share any personal experiences, unique opportunities, or other things worthy of consideration in choosing between these schools. Though I'd certainly appreciate any good information from my fellow 0L's, I'd really like some input from people with experience at these schools and in relation to public interest. I may also want to pursue multiple degrees, and academia is always in the back of my mind.

Thank you very much for your help .

The_Steppenwolf wrote:SO I have yet to hear back from HYS, but I am fortunate enough to have been admitted to these wonderful schools.

That being said, they all offer great opportunities, urban settings, generous LRAPS, etc. Please share any personal experiences, unique opportunities, or other things worthy of consideration in choosing between these schools. Though I'd certainly appreciate any good information from my fellow 0L's, I'd really like some input from people with experience at these schools and in relation to public interest. I may also want to pursue multiple degrees, and academia is always in the back of my mind.

Thank you very much for your help .

Chicago probably best for academia, NYU for PI, but I would base the decision off of visits and scholarship money, personally.

This thread is relevant to my interests

One of the reasons I chose to attend Chicago was the school's focus on interdisciplinary education. You can take up to 4 classes (I believe) with any graduate program or undergraduate language program and have it count toward your degree (even crazy-interesting med school or philosophy courses). You simply have to qualify why a particular class will broaden or improve your legal education. Many times professors will allow you to take these classes Pass-Fail, meaning all the pressure is off and you simply have to try your best at the class. You can also create your own joint degree program with other graduate programs. A lot of funding is available if you want to do a JD/PhD.

Chicago is great for academia. The faculty is one of the best anywhere, and the are super approachable in helping with academic research and mentoring. The school also has a program which allows former u Chicago students to return as young professors and eventually break into academia somewhere.

As for PI, the clinics are awesome. NYU seems to have a better PI brand. However, I would venture to say that because 80% of the class is going into clerkships and Biglaw, the other 20% (40 people) who are going into PI each year have the school's full resources and nationwide contacts focused on a relatively small group of students. This should help in getting awesome placement. If 150 of NYU's class is looking for PI, and only 40 of Chicago's are similarly looking, I would guess this would positively impact uCHICAGO grads' chances.

I don't intend to rain on your parade, but you want to do PI and are going to a T10. Am I missing something here?

PI

Gatriel wrote:I don't intend to rain on your parade, but you want to do PI and are going to a T10. Am I missing something here?

?

Berkeley has awesome weather, food, and is known to be really chill...fwiw lol

Work really hard in UG and do well. Study hard on LSAT, do well and have the potential to get into Harvard . . . . and you want to PI?

Maybe I have an erroneous mental image of PI, but typically I think of some slave public defender who makes $40k a year. Just doesn't seem like the lifestyle for an attorney who graduates from a T10 school.

Gatriel wrote:Work really hard in UG and do well. Study hard on LSAT, do well and have the potential to get into Harvard . . . . and you want to PI?

Maybe I have an erroneous mental image of PI, but typically I think of some slave public defender who makes $40k a year. Just doesn't seem like the lifestyle for an attorney who graduates from a T10 school.

Knock wrote:

Yes, I see what you mean.

Gatriel wrote:

Knock wrote:

Yes, I see what you mean.

There are lots of T10 students going into PI.

Gatriel wrote:

Knock wrote:

Yes, I see what you mean.

I have a friend who is in a v15 firm making 170k+. He says he plans on quitting in 2 years to do PI. It's not that uncommon.

Gatriel wrote:Work really hard in UG and do well. Study hard on LSAT, do well and have the potential to get into Harvard . . . . and you want to PI?

Maybe I have an erroneous mental image of PI, but typically I think of some slave public defender who makes $40k a year. Just doesn't seem like the lifestyle for an attorney who graduates from a T10 school.

Conversely someone doing PI could say - do well in undergrad kill the LSAT and have the potential to...

hope to pay back your debt working 70 hours a week on contracts, or going through thousands of files to help one giant company sue another giant company...thats what fits your image of the lifestyle of a T10 grad?

I'm not hating on biglaw - might be where I end up - just saying...it all depends what you want in life...

Knock wrote:

Gatriel wrote:Work really hard in UG and do well. Study hard on LSAT, do well and have the potential to get into Harvard . . . . and you want to PI?

Maybe I have an erroneous mental image of PI, but typically I think of some slave public defender who makes $40k a year. Just doesn't seem like the lifestyle for an attorney who graduates from a T10 school.

Yup.
List of interesting and cool PI lawyers (LinkRemoved)

This thread has potential and is relevant to my interests. I'm tagging because I want to see what people say.

jtemp320 wrote:

Gatriel wrote:Work really hard in UG and do well. Study hard on LSAT, do well and have the potential to get into Harvard . . . . and you want to PI?

Maybe I have an erroneous mental image of PI, but typically I think of some slave public defender who makes $40k a year. Just doesn't seem like the lifestyle for an attorney who graduates from a T10 school.

Conversely someone doing PI could say - do well in undergrad kill the LSAT and have the potential to...

hope to pay back your debt working 70 hours a week on contracts, or going through thousands of files to help one giant company sue another giant company...thats what fits your image of the lifestyle of a T10 grad?

I'm not hating on biglaw - might be where I end up - just saying...it all depends what you want in life...

Exactly. PI is why I got interested in going to law school in the first place. Fortunately, I worked hard in undergrad and am a pretty good test-taker, so I have the opportunity to go to a T6 or T14 school. Why should I make myself miserable abandoning my actual passions to work in big law firm helping rich corporations become richer? I'm a hard worker and I want to put my hard work to use helping folks that are generally unable to advocate for themselves. I don't think there's any shame at all in that. How about you decide on your appropriate lifestyle and I decide on mine?

Do they really all have great LRAPs? I'm a 2L, so my info may be out of date, but Chicago's used to to be very weak.

And your chances at academia are slim at any of these school. Maybe 2% at Chicago versus 1% at the others. It'll depend much more on your publications and support from faculty than it will which of these schools is on your vita.

spondee wrote:Do they really all have great LRAPs? I'm a 2L, so my info may be out of date, but Chicago's used to to be very weak.

And your chances at academia are slim at any of these school. Maybe 2% at Chicago versus 1% at the others. It'll depend much more on your publications and support from faculty than it will which of these schools is on your vita.

I think you are understating this by quite a lot.

In what way?

whirledpeas86 wrote:Exactly. PI is why I got interested in going to law school in the first place. Fortunately, I worked hard in undergrad and am a pretty good test-taker, so I have the opportunity to go to a T6 or T14 school. Why should I make myself miserable abandoning my actual passions to work in big law firm helping rich corporations become richer? I'm a hard worker and I want to put my hard work to use helping folks that are generally unable to advocate for themselves. I don't think there's any shame at all in that. How about you decide on your appropriate lifestyle and I decide on mine?

+1

whirledpeas86 wrote: Exactly. PI is why I got interested in going to law school in the first place. Fortunately, I worked hard in undergrad and am a pretty good test-taker, so I have the opportunity to go to a T6 or T14 school. Why should I make myself miserable abandoning my actual passions to work in big law firm helping rich corporations become richer? I'm a hard worker and I want to put my hard work to use helping folks that are generally unable to advocate for themselves. I don't think there's any shame at all in that. How about you decide on your appropriate lifestyle and I decide on mine?

+2

Gatriel wrote:Work really hard in UG and do well. Study hard on LSAT, do well and have the potential to get into Harvard . . . . and you want to PI?

Maybe I have an erroneous mental image of PI, but typically I think of some slave public defender who makes $40k a year. Just doesn't seem like the lifestyle for an attorney who graduates from a T10 school.

terrible

sheD wrote:

whirledpeas86 wrote: Exactly. PI is why I got interested in going to law school in the first place. Fortunately, I worked hard in undergrad and am a pretty good test-taker, so I have the opportunity to go to a T6 or T14 school. Why should I make myself miserable abandoning my actual passions to work in big law firm helping rich corporations become richer? I'm a hard worker and I want to put my hard work to use helping folks that are generally unable to advocate for themselves. I don't think there's any shame at all in that. How about you decide on your appropriate lifestyle and I decide on mine?

+2

+3.

Also, FWIW, I'm going to NYU at sticker for PI. Hoping that its resources and "brand" are all that they are cracked up to be.

Can't say much right now (I'm in a review session, at 6:30 at night -- really not indicative of a normal evening here), but I love it at NYU and highly recommend it for PI. The PI network is fantastic, and while I don't really understand the nitty-gritty of the LRAP, it's reputed to be among the best. I can answer specific questions if anybody has them.

NYU 1L. Will try not to troll too hard.

NYU has the PI rep for a good reason. It's difficult to imagine comparable schools having the level of institutional support for those pursuing (some might even call it institutional pressure to pursue) PI. The school has a separate career office for public interest, which is unique as I understand it. We host the largest PI job fair in the country every year and NYU students have to be given a certain percentage of interviews. There are almost nonstop talks from really prominent people working in just about every area of PI law. I could go on. None of this should be a deal-breaker for CLS, because anything PI-related you can do at NYU you probably can do there too, but my sense is it may be easier to get on the right track at NYU, and the environment is more encouraging. I think that is undeniably reflected in the statistics – 6% of 2008 CLS grads went into PI/government; 24% of 2009 NYU grads did. Whether this is self-selection or a product of the school's emphasis (or as some will say, NYU's inability to place people in biglaw), it is a huge difference.

That said, NYU's LRAP is no longer best-in-class, no matter what they may claim (though it's still quite good). It's comparable to CLS's now, and can be worse in some scenarios depending on a things like your salary, whether you leave the program before ten years, your assets, whether you're married, etc. It's also unnecessarily complicated. I believe they are revamping the LRAP program before the end of this academic year though, so this may be moot soon.

When I was looking at Chicago last year, they seemed basically to pay lip service to PI careers. The LRAP was a joke -- they would give you $10,000 a year in seven out of your first ten years or something like that, good luck living on a $40,000 salary. Maybe this has changed. Berkeley struck me almost as NYU West in a lot of ways, with a similar institutional focus on PI jobs, but I don't know that much about it. (I'm also okay with being Cal East.)