Julio_El_Chavo wrote:The clerkship statistics are self-reported by the law schools directly instead of involving extrapolation techniques like the NLJ's methodology.
The NLJ doesn't use an extrapolation methodology. It simply sums up the statistics reported by law firms. While some NLJ firms don't report, most do. The USNWR Judge/Lawyer rankings, meanwhile, have a response rate in the 30% region. It's quite ironic that you criticize a metric that has an 80% reporting rate while holding up a metric that has a 30% reporting rate.
The 2% difference is really more like 4-5% using the numbers I referred to early;
You compared Article III clerkships at NU versus total clerkships at Virginia, including non-Article III placements. For C/O 2011, only 69% of total clerkships were Article III (
http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/career ... lclerk.htm).
I think it's more appropriate to compare the relative proportions of students getting Art III clerkships because everyone knows that people in the bottom 2/3 of the class generally don't have a shot at Art III clerkships (unless you're talking about HYS). From my previous post, I'd say UVA places, on average, 20-40% more students into Art III clerkships on a proportional basis.
The point is that the absolute difference is small and ultimately affects only half a dozen people in the class.
NU is full of older students, many of whom likely have families and are not looking to go into PI or other low-paying but rewarding jobs. I think NU students are more likely to just take the job that pays the most, which might explain some of their great placement statistics in biglaw.
That's also a good argument for why the difference in Article III numbers aren't significant. When the average NU student is pushing 30 at graduation, and 1/5 are business-oriented JD-MBA's and AJD's who worked for 5-6 years before law school, spending another year working for $60k is less appealing by enough of a margin to sway the decisions of half a dozen people.
In any case, I'm not debating the theoretical relative prestige of the two schools. I posted a response to the OP's question about job prospects at the "T10" based on my first-hand experience at NU. You came in with some bizarre comment trying to establish a distinction between "T10" and Duke/NU that doesn't exist in any of the real data you might refer to, but only in your made-up statistics using your made-up methodology. Nothing you've said controverts the credibility of my claims.
