Top Law Schools

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reversejinx wrote:I know this horse is dead and has been decomposing for months now, but I'm going to try to revive it for at least a few minutes.

I'm facing this seemingly impossible choice between NYU at sticker and Michigan with a small scholarship. I would, for the most part, prefer living in New York, but thoroughly enjoyed Ann Arbor when I visited for ASW, and I don't think I would love living in NYC as a broke grad student nearly as much. All told, the COA is ~210,000 at NYU and ~150,000 at Michigan. My career goals are clerkship to biglaw to USAO or in-house.

Given these goals, is NYU worth the extra $60,000? Put another way, if I royally fuck up and am at or below median at each of these schools, which one will still give me a chance to accomplish some if not all of my goals, because that school will be worth the extra $60,000.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and vote!

You’re pretty boned if you attend Michigan and don’t get biglaw or PI at $150k. You’re also boned if attend NYU and don’t get biglaw or PI at $210k. You might as well just go to NYU and increase your odds of not getting boned. It appears you want NYC after graduation, so NYU makes a lot of sense. It’s an extra $60k, but that amount is negligible if you do get biglaw, and your odds of getting NYC biglaw are much better out of NYU than Michigan.

XxSpyKEx wrote:

reversejinx wrote:I know this horse is dead and has been decomposing for months now, but I'm going to try to revive it for at least a few minutes.

I'm facing this seemingly impossible choice between NYU at sticker and Michigan with a small scholarship. I would, for the most part, prefer living in New York, but thoroughly enjoyed Ann Arbor when I visited for ASW, and I don't think I would love living in NYC as a broke grad student nearly as much. All told, the COA is ~210,000 at NYU and ~150,000 at Michigan. My career goals are clerkship to biglaw to USAO or in-house.

Given these goals, is NYU worth the extra $60,000? Put another way, if I royally fuck up and am at or below median at each of these schools, which one will still give me a chance to accomplish some if not all of my goals, because that school will be worth the extra $60,000.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and vote!

You’re pretty boned if you attend Michigan and don’t get biglaw or PI at $150k. You’re also boned if attend NYU and don’t get biglaw or PI at $210k. You might as well just go to NYU and increase your odds of not getting boned. It appears you want NYC after graduation, so NYU makes a lot of sense. It’s an extra $60k, but that amount is negligible if you do get biglaw, and your odds of getting NYC biglaw are much better out of NYU than Michigan.

agreed, though not to the "boned" part

JamMasterJ wrote:

XxSpyKEx wrote:

reversejinx wrote:I know this horse is dead and has been decomposing for months now, but I'm going to try to revive it for at least a few minutes.

I'm facing this seemingly impossible choice between NYU at sticker and Michigan with a small scholarship. I would, for the most part, prefer living in New York, but thoroughly enjoyed Ann Arbor when I visited for ASW, and I don't think I would love living in NYC as a broke grad student nearly as much. All told, the COA is ~210,000 at NYU and ~150,000 at Michigan. My career goals are clerkship to biglaw to USAO or in-house.

Given these goals, is NYU worth the extra $60,000? Put another way, if I royally fuck up and am at or below median at each of these schools, which one will still give me a chance to accomplish some if not all of my goals, because that school will be worth the extra $60,000.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and vote!

You’re pretty boned if you attend Michigan and don’t get biglaw or PI at $150k. You’re also boned if attend NYU and don’t get biglaw or PI at $210k. You might as well just go to NYU and increase your odds of not getting boned. It appears you want NYC after graduation, so NYU makes a lot of sense. It’s an extra $60k, but that amount is negligible if you do get biglaw, and your odds of getting NYC biglaw are much better out of NYU than Michigan.

agreed, though not to the "boned" part

This "60k difference doesn't matter if you get biglaw" argument is some of the worst advice thrown around on tls. If you get big law, from nyu it doesn't mean you are going to stay there more then the 2-5 years most people make it. That isn't much time to put a dent in that much debt. Also 60k is a considerable amount more after interest at gradplus rates. I am not saying which you should choose, I am just saying that 60k isn't some negligible amount. Over a ten year plan nyu would cost ~300k in total. "If you use 15% of your gross monthly income to repay the loan, you will need an annual salary of only $199,419.20, but you may experience some financial difficulty.This corresponds to a debt-to-income ratio of 1.1." That is compared to ~214k. "this corresponds to a debt-to-income ratio of 0.7. If you use 15% of your gross monthly income to repay the loan, you will need an annual salary of only $142,442.40, but you may experience some financial difficulty.This corresponds to a debt-to-income ratio of 1.1."

They say a good rule of thumb is not to take on more debt than your expected first year salary. (I just did rough estimates, do the math your self if you want better numbers)
http://www.finaid.org/calculators/loanpayments.phtml

You may get better odds at biglaw from nyu, but clerkship numbers favor mich (though prob inconclusively) and I doubt either will give you a discernible edge for USAO. Either way, good luck. Just food for thought.

reversejinx wrote:I know this horse is dead and has been decomposing for months now, but I'm going to try to revive it for at least a few minutes.

I'm facing this seemingly impossible choice between NYU at sticker and Michigan with a small scholarship. I would, for the most part, prefer living in New York, but thoroughly enjoyed Ann Arbor when I visited for ASW, and I don't think I would love living in NYC as a broke grad student nearly as much. All told, the COA is ~210,000 at NYU and ~150,000 at Michigan. My career goals are clerkship to biglaw to USAO or in-house.

Given these goals, is NYU worth the extra $60,000? Put another way, if I royally fuck up and am at or below median at each of these schools, which one will still give me a chance to accomplish some if not all of my goals, because that school will be worth the extra $60,000.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and vote!

If you're competitive for clerkships at either schools, you'll be more or less a shoe-in for NYC biglaw from either school. NYU will give you some cushion for NYC biglaw if you're well outside the clerkship contention range, but the whole "might as well take on NYU because it's already a lot of debt and you'll increase your biglaw chances" argument fails to consider the impact when you do actually land biglaw. The extra $700-800 you'll be losing every single month to service that debt really is quite substantial - think of what you can do with an extra $700-800 per month of discretionary spending money. Think of how much better living in NYC would be with that extra cash, rather than as a broke graduate student . . .

::whispers:: come to Miiiiiiccccchhhhiiiigggaaannn! . . .

No but seriously, you'll just need to decide which risk you feel more comfortable with. There's no particularly right answer here - NYU gives you a bigger cushion, and Michigan makes it more manageable if/when you do land biglaw.

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reversejinx wrote: Last question: is there any difference in prestige between these schools? I know Michigan was ranked really highly when USNWR first came out with rankings. And (older) judges I've talked to seem to place much greater weight on Michigan compared to NYU? Although NYU's place in the T6 is a significant factor as well. Is that reason enough to pick one over the other?

I don't think it should be a reason to take it into account. In my experience, older people hold Michigan in higher regard, younger people hold NYU in higher regard. I think according to USNWR, Michigan scored higher on academic ratings, while NYU scored higher on practitioner ratings. I wouldn't let it sway you. It would be tough to go wrong with either choice, and at the end of the day, pick the one you feel most comfortable with. Plenty of people at Michigan chose this school over NYU with even less money than you have on the table.

This was me a year ago. I ultimately chose NYU and am happy with my decision. While I think NYU has an edge in placement, you should also consider things like atmosphere and where you want to practice afterward. If you like football and prefer a more collegiate environment, Michigan is probably the place for you. If you want to be in the city, advantage NYU. Similarly, if you want to work in the Midwest or maybe even West Coast, go to U of M. If you want NYC biglaw or PI, come to NYU.

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I would probably go UM if you are okay with working outside of NYC, because outside the city UM probably will have as much if not more of an alumni network/prestige. The biggest reason I agreed with xxspykex was because of your seemingly clear pref for NYC. In NYC, the ability to be lower in the class and still get biglaw > less debt, but outside of New York, I think the opposite is true

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reversejinx wrote:Is that true? Michigan does better in biglaw outside of NYC than NYU? Like in CA?

I don't really have a preference for NYC. My preferences are more like:

Circuit clerkship > biglaw > government > NY > CA > District clerkship > PI

I doubt it. When I went through the attorney rosters of the big Cali firms, I looked at CLS, NYU and Penn. CLS and NYU had roughly equal representation, with Penn far behind. Michigan probably places better than Penn, but I doubt it does as well as CLS/NYU? Maybe it does - I'd just check their websites for Michigan grads and see how it looks.

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reversejinx wrote:

ahduth wrote: I doubt it. When I went through the attorney rosters of the big Cali firms, I looked at CLS, NYU and Penn. CLS and NYU had roughly equal representation, with Penn far behind. Michigan probably places better than Penn, but I doubt it does as well as CLS/NYU? Maybe it does - I'd just check their websites for Michigan grads and see how it looks.

I've done that, and it looks... confusing. For example, Gibson Dunn had 77 NYU grads, and 35 Michigan grads. MoFo had 62 NYU, 36 Mich. Latham had 119 NYU and 86 Mich. Even in Chicago, Sidley had 73 NYU and 57 Mich. Even after dividing by class size, the numbers still favor NYU, although in some instances only marginally.

Does this mean that NYU actually places better than Michigan at all top firms, even outside of NYC? Or is there some self selection going on? How do I make sense of these numbers when NLJ250 has NYU and Michigan roughly around 43%?

I dunno, when you just look at MoFo associates, the difference is even more marked. There are 12 Michigan associates, and more NYU associates than I was inclined to count.

It's entirely possible that some of the Michigan NLJ250 placements are with more regional firms - people from Pittsburgh going back to Pittsburgh maybe? Whereas NYU's placements are more concentrated with bigger firms? I didn't know how to read it either, it's impossible to weed out self-selection. It may be that people from the West Coast are more inclined to go to NYU than Michigan, then they head back home there? But people would be inclined to take NYU over Michigan anyhow, because it's a T6. Which only brings you back to your original question lol.

You can conjecture extensively, but there are clearly NYU attorneys heading out to California, and lower tier non-California schools don't seem to be sending as many.

ahduth wrote:

reversejinx wrote:

ahduth wrote: I doubt it. When I went through the attorney rosters of the big Cali firms, I looked at CLS, NYU and Penn. CLS and NYU had roughly equal representation, with Penn far behind. Michigan probably places better than Penn, but I doubt it does as well as CLS/NYU? Maybe it does - I'd just check their websites for Michigan grads and see how it looks.

I've done that, and it looks... confusing. For example, Gibson Dunn had 77 NYU grads, and 35 Michigan grads. MoFo had 62 NYU, 36 Mich. Latham had 119 NYU and 86 Mich. Even in Chicago, Sidley had 73 NYU and 57 Mich. Even after dividing by class size, the numbers still favor NYU, although in some instances only marginally.

Does this mean that NYU actually places better than Michigan at all top firms, even outside of NYC? Or is there some self selection going on? How do I make sense of these numbers when NLJ250 has NYU and Michigan roughly around 43%?

I dunno, when you just look at MoFo associates, the difference is even more marked. There are 12 Michigan associates, and more NYU associates than I was inclined to count.

It's entirely possible that some of the Michigan NLJ250 placements are with more regional firms - people from Pittsburgh going back to Pittsburgh maybe? Whereas NYU's placements are more concentrated with bigger firms? I didn't know how to read it either, it's impossible to weed out self-selection. It may be that people from the West Coast are more inclined to go to NYU than Michigan, then they head back home there? But people would be inclined to take NYU over Michigan anyhow, because it's a T6. Which only brings you back to your original question lol.

You can conjecture extensively, but there are clearly NYU attorneys heading out to California, and lower tier non-California schools don't seem to be sending as many.

Where are you guys looking? I only see 4 associates from either school at the San Francisco office of MoFo, two each in Palo Alto, and Michigan has three to NYU's zero in LA. It seems to be the New York MoFo office that is overrun with NYU grads.

Almost every large firm has a relatively sizable New York office, so looking at absolute counts of associates is not very helpful.

bdubs wrote:

ahduth wrote:

reversejinx wrote:

ahduth wrote: I doubt it. When I went through the attorney rosters of the big Cali firms, I looked at CLS, NYU and Penn. CLS and NYU had roughly equal representation, with Penn far behind. Michigan probably places better than Penn, but I doubt it does as well as CLS/NYU? Maybe it does - I'd just check their websites for Michigan grads and see how it looks.

I've done that, and it looks... confusing. For example, Gibson Dunn had 77 NYU grads, and 35 Michigan grads. MoFo had 62 NYU, 36 Mich. Latham had 119 NYU and 86 Mich. Even in Chicago, Sidley had 73 NYU and 57 Mich. Even after dividing by class size, the numbers still favor NYU, although in some instances only marginally.

Does this mean that NYU actually places better than Michigan at all top firms, even outside of NYC? Or is there some self selection going on? How do I make sense of these numbers when NLJ250 has NYU and Michigan roughly around 43%?

I dunno, when you just look at MoFo associates, the difference is even more marked. There are 12 Michigan associates, and more NYU associates than I was inclined to count.

It's entirely possible that some of the Michigan NLJ250 placements are with more regional firms - people from Pittsburgh going back to Pittsburgh maybe? Whereas NYU's placements are more concentrated with bigger firms? I didn't know how to read it either, it's impossible to weed out self-selection. It may be that people from the West Coast are more inclined to go to NYU than Michigan, then they head back home there? But people would be inclined to take NYU over Michigan anyhow, because it's a T6. Which only brings you back to your original question lol.

You can conjecture extensively, but there are clearly NYU attorneys heading out to California, and lower tier non-California schools don't seem to be sending as many.

Where are you guys looking? I only see 4 associates from either school at the San Francisco office of MoFo, two each in Palo Alto, and Michigan has three to NYU's zero in LA. It seems to be the New York MoFo office that is overrun with NYU grads.

Almost every large firm has a relatively sizable New York office, so looking at absolute counts of associates is not very helpful.

Yeah, you're right, I wasn't looking at offices. Based on that... equal numbers seem to be going out to California (there's a San Diego office too).
So I don't know what to tell you about that at all then. Is MoFo saving seats for NYU only in the New York office? Or is it saving seats for NYU firmwide, and NYU grads are selecting the New York office?

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To get back to your original question, NYU probably does have slightly more placement power, generally speaking. 60k is a huge chunk of change though. I'd probably go Michigan.

reversejinx wrote:

bdubs wrote: Where are you guys looking? I only see 4 associates from either school at the San Francisco office of MoFo, two each in Palo Alto, and Michigan has three to NYU's zero in LA. It seems to be the New York MoFo office that is overrun with NYU grads.

Almost every large firm has a relatively sizable New York office, so looking at absolute counts of associates is not very helpful.

Good call on the office-specific count. I was just looking at firm-wide numbers. Still you would think that LA or SF based firms would have more of a focusin their respective cities or areas. Perhaps that's just not true, and NY really does dominate biglaw, even for non-NYC based firms.

ahduth wrote:So I don't know what to tell you about that at all then. Is MoFo saving seats for NYU only in the New York office? Or is it saving seats for NYU firmwide, and NYU grads are selecting the New York office?

Yea I'm wondering this as well. It would really help interpret some of this data.

I get the impression that it is more the former, and offices within firms are reserving seats for specific schools. Since most firms send separate interviewers for their offices to campus it seems as though the hiring processes or evaluation metrics have some variance across office. However, this is cobbled together from other questions I have asked and isn't really something that I have asked directly to someone knowledgeable.

bdubs wrote:I get the impression that it is more the former, and offices within firms are reserving seats for specific schools. Since most firms send separate interviewers for their offices to campus it seems as though the hiring processes or evaluation metrics have some variance across office. However, this is cobbled together from other questions I have asked and isn't really something that I have asked directly to someone knowledgeable.

New York offices seem to allocate blocks of seats to the various schools, definitely. The question is whether or not the west coast offices have as formal an allocation procedure. I'm thinking they look at both NYU and Michigan resumes, and allocate seats to non-California schools based on the strength of the candidates they receive. Neither is going to be turned away outright - it's a question of whether they will tolerate a lower GPA from NYU than from Michigan, or if they end up being viewed as peers because there seats weren't formally allocated.

--LinkRemoved--

That will show you how many offices from CA interview on each campus. It was 88 for Michigan and 103 for NYU. How good of a proxy that is for placement power is anyone's guess. (Especially because Michigan does have a smaller class than NYU). Just something to look at though.

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reversejinx wrote:

lakerfanimal wrote:http://www.nalpdirectory.com/dledir_search_advanced.asp

That will show you how many offices from CA interview on each campus. It was 88 for Michigan and 103 for NYU. How good of a proxy that is for placement power is anyone's guess. (Especially because Michigan does have a smaller class than NYU). Just something to look at though.

Awesome link. Thanks for the info. Although I'm a little confused. During OCI or EIW, do you interview separately for each office of the same firm, if say you want to go to either the SF or LA offices of Gibson Dunn? And what if you just wanted to end up in the SoCal area? Would you interview for the OC, LA, and Century City offices each separately?

I haven't done EIW yet of course, but I'm pretty sure you only interview with the firm once, and state an office preference. For three offices located in such close proximity, it probably heavily depends on what type of law you're looking to do as well.

Gibson Dunn is another firm where Michigan and NYU seem to have done roughly the same out west, but NYU has a ton more seats in New York. The way their attorney counts work out is really odd - 90 or so for CLS and Harvard, 70 for NYU, 35 or so for MVPB and Stanford. All of which seems to make sense except Berkeley and Stanford, who you'd think would have higher numbers.

I should look through all these firms again on a per office basis. I still think NYU does fine on the West Coast though - this whole mantra of "NYU is only okay for NYC big law" is overblown.

ahduth wrote:

reversejinx wrote:

lakerfanimal wrote:http://www.nalpdirectory.com/dledir_search_advanced.asp

That will show you how many offices from CA interview on each campus. It was 88 for Michigan and 103 for NYU. How good of a proxy that is for placement power is anyone's guess. (Especially because Michigan does have a smaller class than NYU). Just something to look at though.

Awesome link. Thanks for the info. Although I'm a little confused. During OCI or EIW, do you interview separately for each office of the same firm, if say you want to go to either the SF or LA offices of Gibson Dunn? And what if you just wanted to end up in the SoCal area? Would you interview for the OC, LA, and Century City offices each separately?

I haven't done EIW yet of course, but I'm pretty sure you only interview with the firm once, and state an office preference. For three offices located in such close proximity, it probably heavily depends on what type of law you're looking to do as well.

Gibson Dunn is another firm where Michigan and NYU seem to have done roughly the same out west, but NYU has a ton more seats in New York. The way their attorney counts work out is really odd - 90 or so for CLS and Harvard, 70 for NYU, 35 or so for MVPB and Stanford. All of which seems to make sense except Berkeley and Stanford, who you'd think would have higher numbers.

I should look through all these firms again on a per office basis. I still think NYU does fine on the West Coast though - this whole mantra of "NYU is only okay for NYC big law" is overblown.

I could be wrong, but an associate at a big firm in OC told me that it's by office. He told me this because I was saying how awesome his office seemed and that it'd be cool to potentially work there at some point. He said we stopped interviewing at xyz schools (because of the economy), so you would have to likely interview with the firm's main office, state that you want to work at this particular office, and have a great interview so that they can vouch for you to the particular non-interviewing office.

Short version- it seems like it's by office, and if that office isn't interviewing at your school, then you can still get a job through OCI with the non-interviewing office, but it's less straight-forward.

Hope that helps.

lakerfanimal wrote:

ahduth wrote:

reversejinx wrote:

lakerfanimal wrote:http://www.nalpdirectory.com/dledir_search_advanced.asp

That will show you how many offices from CA interview on each campus. It was 88 for Michigan and 103 for NYU. How good of a proxy that is for placement power is anyone's guess. (Especially because Michigan does have a smaller class than NYU). Just something to look at though.

Awesome link. Thanks for the info. Although I'm a little confused. During OCI or EIW, do you interview separately for each office of the same firm, if say you want to go to either the SF or LA offices of Gibson Dunn? And what if you just wanted to end up in the SoCal area? Would you interview for the OC, LA, and Century City offices each separately?

I haven't done EIW yet of course, but I'm pretty sure you only interview with the firm once, and state an office preference. For three offices located in such close proximity, it probably heavily depends on what type of law you're looking to do as well.

Gibson Dunn is another firm where Michigan and NYU seem to have done roughly the same out west, but NYU has a ton more seats in New York. The way their attorney counts work out is really odd - 90 or so for CLS and Harvard, 70 for NYU, 35 or so for MVPB and Stanford. All of which seems to make sense except Berkeley and Stanford, who you'd think would have higher numbers.

I should look through all these firms again on a per office basis. I still think NYU does fine on the West Coast though - this whole mantra of "NYU is only okay for NYC big law" is overblown.

I could be wrong, but an associate at a big firm in OC told me that it's by office. He told me this because I was saying how awesome his office seemed and that it'd be cool to potentially work there at some point. He said we stopped interviewing at xyz schools (because of the economy), so you would have to likely interview with the firm's main office, state that you want to work at this particular office, and have a great interview so that they can vouch for you to the particular non-interviewing office.

Short version- it seems like it's by office, and if that office isn't interviewing at your school, then you can still get a job through OCI with the non-interviewing office, but it's less straight-forward.

Hope that helps.

You're both right. It varies by firm - some send like 7 interviewers to interview for the firm and list about 8 different offices, and you tell them which office you want while interviewing, and some firms send individual representatives from each office and you bid on the offices independently.

Just as an aside, interviewing with the first subset can be tricky, as sometimes the firms list offices that don't really have a need unless they get like a super-allstar interested candidate, and it can be a wasted bid for competitive (but not top-notch) candidates. Additionally, many times the individuals interviewing you won't have much pull at all if they're not actually from the office. For example, say 7 associates come to interview students, and only 1 is from the Dallas office. If you want Dallas but you're with a Chicago interviewer, your chances aren't as great. They typically have more candidates they like than they can bring back, and when Dallas goes home and knows the people making those actual decisions, it can be hard for Chicago to have as much influence. That's not to say that you're completely boned if you get the wrong one, but it is something to consider when it comes time to bidding. I hope that makes sense, but let me know if it doesn't.