Top Law Schools

I'm looking for a choice that will give me the best chance of getting a good job in the Bay Area once I'm done and I right now have 5 places I've been accepted to, along with my current "rankings". BTW, I'm 3.75/170 from a Top 35 UG school and scholarships are nice but not a deciding factor.

#1 Stanford-will not get in here, but I had to give it a shot considering I've grown up in Palo Alto
#2 Berkeley-obvious fantastic choice, but have no clue (with Berkeley being a black box) if I will get in or not)
#3 Columbia-highly unlikely I will get in, but I'm currently thinking that I can go pretty much anywhere with a JD from here
#4 NYU-possible I will get in here, and has surprisingly solid ties in the Bay Area.
#5 UCLA-already accepted, like the school a lot but mostly geared towards So Cal firms
#6 Duke-already accepted, but how national are they really? Not many in major BA firms come from Duke, but this is possibly due to self-selection
#7 Virginia-not many BA firms have grads from here either
#8 Cornell-already accepted but too NY centric, and I don't know how I could adjust to living in weather that cold year-round

I also have been accepted at USC and Santa Clara and I will almost certainly get into UC Hastings. My main basis for this is looking at the schools that lawyers from the Bay Area offices for NLJ 250 firms went to and I came up with this tally from these schools:

Berkeley-246 (Class size: 292)
UC Hastings-214 (423)
Stanford-173 (171)
Santa Clara-152 (298)
UC Davis-71 (188)
UCLA-70 (336)
NYU-66 (450)
Columbia-50 (397)
Virginia-28 (368)
Duke-27 (228)
USC-25 (214)
Cornell-25 (205)

Obviously, the Hastings, Davis & Santa Clara people are there due to self selection (where else are they going to go?) and the NY schools have fewer because most of them take NY jobs. Should I take NYU over UCLA? Most important, should I take UCLA over Duke?

It depends on how much money you get from schools and what your goals are.

For example if you want biglaw then you should take NYU/Columbia with the caveat that if your grades don't end up so well you'll likely end up aiming for NYC biglaw (which you will need to pay off your debt). If on the other hand you want to work in the Bay Area above all else, then I'd probably take UCLA/USC with money with the caveat that if your grades don't end up so well you'll likely end up doing something not so prestigious like working for a small firm.

Stanford is unlikely, unless you're a URM or have great softs. But LSN says you got a shot at Berkeley and Columbia. Columbia WLed almost all people around your score, and who knows what happened to them. I agree that Berkeley is a black box, but you're competitive and that's all you can hope for...same for NYU.

I would say for you to go to any of #1-4 if you get in. If not, then I would go to UCLA or USC depending on who gives you the most money, if that is an important factor for you.

1. If you get into a national school, go to the highest ranked.
2. If you don't, go to the highest ranked CA school.

I currently attend Hastings, and I was fortunate enough to get a V-50 offer. I did do pretty well as a 1L, and I know people within top 10% here are covetable candidates for biglaw. With that said, if you fall outside of top 25%, the chances of getting OCI interviews--let alone an offer--are slim to none. This is the case for Davis too.

Stanford would be your best bet, and next would be Boalt. I do know people from Boalt who don't have jobs, either. The entire CA legal market is tough, so you just have to go into law school understanding that.

Of course I realize that; I just want to give myself the best chance is all. I have a friend from High School that's going to Hastings and says the same thing-which is why the atmosphere is notoriously competitive.

You aren't out at Stanford yet. Best place to go.

If not, Wait a cycle and ED Chicago. If you are native Californian here, it is really easy to get a job from Chicago because 1) we have a high number of alumni in CA, 2) a large enough percentage of our class is interested CA to justify over a hundred CA offices coming to OCI, and 3) the native Californians clean up, as they will get jobs in CA over everyone except for the law review kids (I know people well below median who got a ton of offers. This is even truer of those with ties to NorCal, who hit it out of the park because of the booming market in Silicon Valley right now.

NYU doesn't place well in CA. I know Columbia places, but you'd have to ask a current student how many firms come to OCI relative to the native Californians, and if those kids are placing into lit firms or corporate firms.

Berkeley is great for San Francisco BigLit. I don't think it places as well into corporate firms, but I could be wrong.

NYU does place in California.

See what I did there?

dixiecupdrinking wrote:NYU does place in California.

See what I did there?

Ill be more precise and agreeable: NYU, while placing very well in the country's biggest legal market, does not place so well in Bay Area corporate law, where most of the jobs are at, so as to be comparable to CC or Berkeley. I would guess that they do better with SF desireable public interest and BIG LIT, but there aren't a lot of these jobs.

TaipeiMort wrote:Berkeley is great for San Francisco BigLit. I don't think it places as well into corporate firms, but I could be wrong.

Please elaborate.

TaipeiMort wrote:

dixiecupdrinking wrote:NYU does place in California.

See what I did there?

Ill be more precise and agreeable: NYU, while placing very well in the country's biggest legal market, does not place so well in Bay Area corporate law, where most of the jobs are at, so as to be comparable to CC or Berkeley. I would guess that they do better with SF desireable public interest and BIG LIT, but there aren't a lot of these jobs.

I still think you're making things up. NYU and CLS* both placed around 10% of the class of 2010 on the west coast. Admittedly Chicago places about 20% on the west coast, which I would personally tend to attribute to being in a smaller market than NYU and CLS, but this is clearly conjecture.

* The CLS graph says 1% for west coast placement, but that is clearly inaccurate, and the other regions add up to 90%, so I assume they meant for it to say 10% instead of 1%.

I don't even really give a shit if people think it's "CCn" or whatever, but your Chicago trolling is so egregious that I find it difficult to take your unsupported regurgitation of "facts" about whether other schools are good or bad at things.

Berkeley is great for San Francisco BigLit. I don't think it places as well into corporate firms, but I could be wrong.

You are.

Shaggier1 wrote:

Berkeley is great for San Francisco BigLit. I don't think it places as well into corporate firms, but I could be wrong.

You are.

Does anyone do corp work in SF? Other than VC/angel stuff?

Tons of course, considering Google, Facebook, HP, Chevron, Pixar and a million other companies are based here

see below

Actually what you really need to do is aggregate the percentage of people from the Pacific region based on school stats, then use that as a basis to see how many % of those people end up working in the Pacific region.

For example: if Penn says in the last 3 years, 12% of admits comes from the west, and 10% end up practicing in big law in the west, then the placement rate is 10%/12% = 83%

If you want to count heads, use a per capita rate. So find out how many people are from the west, then use that as a base.

So for UVA, should be 28/(368 * west%), etc.