UPDATED: 2007-2009 Grads at NLJ250 firms+fed clerkships Forum

[Lawlcat]

UPDATED with 2007-2009 matching data charts (keeping 2007 art III data with 2007 nlj data, etc.) I had to use estimates (average of 2007 and 2009) for Yale and Texas in 2008. Thanks to ALIARROW for the 2009 clerkship data!

CLASS OF 2007

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CLASS OF 2008
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CLASS OF 2009
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Data and Sources
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Absurd Misuse of Line Graphs to Show Clerkships

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Absurd Misuse of Line Graphs to Show Total Outcomes
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ORIGINAL STUFF BELOW

I didn't see this anywhere else (although I saw partial versions here and there), and I figure it's something that should be out there.

Basically, I took the NLJ 250 numbers from the "Go-To Law Schools" publications (which seem to be based on discrete counts of grads at firms, divided by total number JDs awarded, and thus not susceptible to USNWR problems of under-reporting) and the article III federal clerkship numbers from USNWR. This is by no means proposed as a definitive analysis of the number of grads with good jobs. Instead:

(1) This is a conservative count that sets a sort of "floor". (Possible issue: some NLJ 250 jobs might really suck. Investigating salary, etc. data. Also: I assume they're only counting associates, not staff attorneys or paralegals.)

(2) NLJ 250 rankings put schools like Harvard somewhat far down the list, which might make people skeptical of them. The most common explanation is that Harvard kids are killing it on the clerkship front. This endeavors to roughly correct for this exclusion, and sharpen the fuzzy NLJ 250 image by one step.

What do I mean when I say we're just sharpening a fuzzy image by one step? Well, I really don't think anyone should be going, "Oh, fuck Berkeley, it has like 10% less than Penn!", because I don't think these measures are precise enough for that sort of distinction. Here ( http://www.law.com/pdf/nlj/20080414empl ... trends.pdf ) is a fantastic chart, unfortunately unavailable for later years, that shows what the class of 2005's employment situation looked like. It includes NLJ 250 firms, unemployed, unknown, PI, clerkship, academia, and so on. Mich, NYU, and Berkeley are each placing about 10% more into PI than comparable schools. There are also some "other firms", which might include boutiques that don't make it into the NLJ 250 because they're tiny. Using this snapshot to get an idea of how much of the field other "good" outcomes occupy, I think a 10% margin of error is appropriate.

There is no clerkship data available yet for 2009 or 2010, so I used the average of 2007 and 2008 data as a filler.

T14 2007-2010 (clerkship data 2007/8 average used to fill in 2009/10)
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/3a92e0943c.png
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Yale is missing because I didn't see its data on the Go-To list (I probably just needed to scroll down). More crucially: I think we all agree that Yalies are doing JUST FINE, and the excluded "good" outcomes (like academia or running a small country) probably are big enough shares of the Yale situation that it's actually quite inaccurate to report only NLJ 250 and Art. III numbers anyway.

I'm a little crunched for time at present, so I'm just posting the main chart up for now, but I'll try to get the complete data/more charts up soon.

My own comments:
This is inherently limited as a means of capturing the outcomes situation, but I think it does at least something to correct for what seems to be the main problem with extrapolating from the NLJ 250 data to "how good are my chances of a 'good outcome' at School X?" – the absence of clerkship data.
Basically, all the T-14schools seem to hover within a +/- 10% band.

It would be really interesting to compute this for maybe the T25 or T50 as well; I'll get on that when I get a sec. Glancing at some sample numbers, I feel like there's a significant drop-off after the T14 (although Vandy seems to be doing okay) ... clerkship numbers for those schools seem to stick around the 5% level and NLJ 250 numbers drop jarringly from about 40-50 to 20-30 in 2010.

EDIT:

Here's a snapshot of my raw data. Okay, time to go read for class!

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EDIT 2:

Sorry, I've been pretty busy. But I quickly ran through and added numbers for more schools, using only 2010 NLJ 250 data (and only 2008 art iii data for those schools). When I averaged the T14 2007/2008 art iii numbers, they were almost identical (mean of about 11), so I don't think there's too much of a bias. Still quite rough, though.

Important caveat: I hunted through http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandr ... ngs/page+6 for a while, but for a few schools I couldn't find the art iii data. (They're the ones with 0 on the data snapshot and no orange cap on the graph.) Let me know if you see the numbers, and I'll fix them. I THINK they're all 1% or less, but it's possible I missed them on the first pages.

Sources:
Art. III: http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandr ... ngs/page+6
NLJ 250: http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNL ... 2483173162

Expanded school range, 2010 only (clerkship data filled in from 2008)
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Data:
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EDIT 3:

Can you change the y axis to run from 0 to 100%? Otherwise the numbers look inflated at first glance.

Your request has been ... granted. ( http://www.topatoco.com/images/three-five.gif )

T14 2007-2010 (clerkship data 2007/8 average used to fill in 2009/10)
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/3a92e0943c.png

Expanded school range, 2010 only (clerkship data filled in from 2008)
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/7edd4baeb0.png

N.B.: I have it via PM that W&M had about 5% article III in 2010.

Here's a chart for the class of 2005 (which sadly does not seem to be available for later class years) purporting to provide a more complete picture of employment outcomes (including PI, academia, etc.):
http://www.law.com/pdf/nlj/20080414empl ... trends.pdf


EDIT 4:

I've switched the main graphs to 100%-based.

Here are the originals:

(old) T14
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/72a18555ea.png

Expanded range
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[duckmoney]

Image is too small to read and the link doesn't work right. Could you make it about 10x bigger?

[Lawlcat]

Image is too small to read and the link doesn't work right. Could you make it about 10x bigger?

My bad! I tried inserting it as a thumbnail. Does it work okay now?

[rman1201]

Isn't 2009 Clerkship data available via US News? (With 2010 Data coming out in < 1 week?)

Nvm, it is only class of 08 data.

[duckmoney]

Yes, much better, and very useful information, thank you!!

[JusticeHarlan]

Isn't 2009 Clerkship data available via US News? (With 2010 Data coming out in < 1 week?)

Yup.

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... =1&t=75513

Err, I guess the data in that link is for the 2009 rankings, not class of 2009. So it's probably class of 2007. My bad.

[duckmoney]

Isn't 2009 Clerkship data available via US News? (With 2010 Data coming out in < 1 week?)

No, 2008 data is the most recently available from US news. It lags a year. 2009 data will be out next week.

Most recent data, dated 2010:

http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandr ... s-rankings

[cornellbeez]

Hmm, cool thread.

[Law Sauce]

Do you think that you could add Vandy to your graph? I am just interested in how that would look.

[Borhas]

good work

[Moxie]

Awesome job!! Nice contribution to the TLS community.

Sidenote - anyone know of a listing of schools by % going into PI? I assume NYU's % is a lot higher than Columbia or Chicago. Basically I'm curious how much of their low Biglaw placement is due to self-selection out of it.

[cornellbeez]

Awesome job!! Nice contribution to the TLS community.

Sidenote - anyone know of a listing of schools by % going into PI? I assume NYU's % is a lot higher than Columbia or Chicago. Basically I'm curious how much of their low Biglaw placement is due to self-selection out of it.

I think NYU places around as much into PI as Boalt and Michigan --- around 10%-12%...I wouldn't put too much stock into the most recent biglaw placement info we have. It's for the Class of 2010, which did OCI in 2008. Class of 2010 was hit by a wave of no offers. Certain markets (like Chicago) were hit worse than other markets, and it doesn't really demonstrate a school's biglaw placement power at firms. Maybe NYU kids chose the wrong firms to work at for the summer of 2009.

The real ITE biglaw placement info will come next year for the Class of 2011, and I think NYU will have a better showing.

[theturkeyisfat]

this might be a dumb question, but when people do a clerkship then get a biglaw job, they aren't double counted in these stats, right?

[Lawlcat]

Updated with some more schools. Even rougher than the first set, but hopefully it gives some sort of idea of what might be going on. I'll try to clean all this up once we have new clerkship data.

this might be a dumb question, but when people do a clerkship then get a biglaw job, they aren't double counted in these stats, right?

I don't think so.

I also get the impression that these don't have the usual reporting problems: the NLJ 250 numbers are given in the form of # at NLJ 250 in one column and # JDs awarded in the next, followed by a percentage. If what they're really doing is taking the schools' reported percentages and multiplying them by class sizes to get # at NLJ 250, they're being awfully misleading.

[Sentry]

Updated with some more schools. Even rougher than the first set, but hopefully it gives some sort of idea of what might be going on. I'll try to clean all this up once we have new clerkship data.

this might be a dumb question, but when people do a clerkship then get a biglaw job, they aren't double counted in these stats, right?

I don't think so.

I also get the impression that these don't have the usual reporting problems: the NLJ 250 numbers are given in the form of # at NLJ 250 in one column and # JDs awarded in the next, followed by a percentage. If what they're really doing is taking the schools' reported percentages and multiplying them by class sizes to get # at NLJ 250, they're being awfully misleading.

They're not. The NLJ numbers are gathered from the nlj 250 firms not from the schools.

[Lawlcat]

Updated with some more schools. Even rougher than the first set, but hopefully it gives some sort of idea of what might be going on. I'll try to clean all this up once we have new clerkship data.

this might be a dumb question, but when people do a clerkship then get a biglaw job, they aren't double counted in these stats, right?

I don't think so.

I also get the impression that these don't have the usual reporting problems: the NLJ 250 numbers are given in the form of # at NLJ 250 in one column and # JDs awarded in the next, followed by a percentage. If what they're really doing is taking the schools' reported percentages and multiplying them by class sizes to get # at NLJ 250, they're being awfully misleading.

They're not. The NLJ numbers are gathered from the nlj 250 firms not from the schools.

Good to have that confirmed. (Like I said, it'd be pretty shocking if they were.)

[thecilent]

NYU better be placing a significant amount more of people in PI -_-

[Lawlcat]

NYU better be placing a significant amount more of people in PI -_-

I've cautioned a few times above that this really is a very rough picture, and it wasn't just modesty or self-exculpation.

A few specific reasons why the data isn't perfect:
* NLJ 250 may well cover a lot of firms that would not be considered "good outcomes". (and some schools may be systemically placing more or less in the "good" firms)
* Article III clerkships may include a bunch of "minor" courts. (ditto above)
* Government and PI are not included. (Nor is academia/cupcakery.)
* It's not even 2009/2010 ITE clerkship data. For all we know, NYU shot up to Stanfordian heights of Article III placement.

And the graphs:
* Don't jump in with an a priori assumption that some schools are kicking other schools around, such that you start seeing significant differences where they don't exist. The T14s are all within a 20% band, with differences of 10% much more common. Given the bluntness of the data, I really don't think we should be crediting relatively fine distinctions.

The 2010 Total average is about 60%. NYU got about 50%. Even if we're talking about defending a fervent belief in "CCN" (should we? I'm skeptical), the data being as limited as it is I'm not persuaded this graph is inconsistent with that belief. Myself, I'm so far persuaded that Yale is magical, as are (probably) H and S. Beyond that, it's just the T14, with minor variances therein that do not seem especially stable over time and do not appear to correlate clearly with USNWR rankings. (Maybe I'm just Mich-trolling.)

Looking at the new graph: although I'm hesitant to speak based purely on 2010 data, I could see support for T13 + GULC/UCLA/UT/VNDY/USC, perhaps with the Boston schools mixed in there. What ... GLTVS? This is silly.

[Borhas]

edit nvm

[Borhas]

Awesome job!! Nice contribution to the TLS community.

Sidenote - anyone know of a listing of schools by % going into PI? I assume NYU's % is a lot higher than Columbia or Chicago. Basically I'm curious how much of their low Biglaw placement is due to self-selection out of it.

This link had it for class of 2005
http://www.law.com/pdf/nlj/20080414empl ... trends.pdf

I wish it existed for class of 2009

[bass08]

Where's SMU?

[FiveSermon]

Cornell absolutely killed that year. They must have had some really smart students. Maybe all rich kids with good connections.

[JusticeHarlan]

Important caveat: I hunted through http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandr ... ngs/page+6 for a while, but for a few schools I couldn't find the art iii data. (They're the ones with 0 on the data snapshot and no orange cap on the graph.) Let me know if you see the numbers, and I'll fix them. I THINK they're all 1% or less, but it's possible I missed them on the first pages.

W&M is on the second page at 4%
Davis is on the third page at 3%
Wisconsin is on the sixth page at 1%

I also could not find Illinois, which seems odd, but w/e.

[vicuna]

NYU better be placing a significant amount more of people in PI -_-

They are. I think the difference is roughly 14% at NYU versus 5% for Columbia and 1% for Chicago. It is a similar phenomenon at Berkeley.

The problem with a graph like this, while useful, is that it is easy to conflate public interest graduates with unemployed or underemployed graduates.

[texan_snowman]

Can you change the y axis to run from 0 to 100%? Otherwise the numbers look inflated at first glance.