Notre Dame Forum

[answer23]

I was at my dentist yesterday. I told her that I was accepted at ND and she almost fell out of her chair. She thought I was some sort of genius. I never thought that highly of ND. I told her I was waiting to hear back from Michigan waitlist. She looked at me like I was from another planet. Like why would I even consider going to Michigan if I already got into ND. I just don't get it. Why is ND's reputation that great amongst people outside of the law profession? Is there something I'm missing here?

[flem]

This only matters if your dentist will be doing your OCI as well

[answer23]

I'm just wondering if it would make a difference down the road after a couple of years. If I decide to do general counsel, solo or in house work. Dentist and Hospitals have lawyers too.

[envisciguy]

I think a lot of it has to do with the prestige of the undergrad and the location. In the south, everyone goes wide-eyed at Duke and Vandy, but not Michigan or UVA. Cornell gets people in the south impressed too because of the undergrad Ivy rep. I think people just assume that schools with great undergrad also have great law schools, which is true in a lot of cases, but not absolute. Notre Dame has a national name because of the undergrad and football, so I guess sports play a factor too.

And as far as making a difference down the road, probably not, but it might in some situations. I'm sure everyone here though would suggest Michigan over ND despite lay prestige.

[annet]

Is your dentist Catholic? I come from a very Catholic family and Notre Dame might as well be Harvard for my Grandparents' generation.

[flem]

See, the funny thing about lay prestige is that it doesn't matter unless you're trying to bang some coed at a bar.

You'd be fucking insane to pick ND over Michigan.

[Blindmelon]

See, the funny thing about lay prestige is that it doesn't matter unless you're trying to bang some coed at a bar.

You'd be fucking insane to pick ND over Michigan.

This.

[answer23]

Is your dentist Catholic? I come from a very Catholic family and Notre Dame might as well be Harvard for my Grandparents' generation.

I'm not sure if she was Catholic. She is Asian with an Irish last name though. The funny thing is that I've been going to this dentist for 3 years. After I told her about ND her whole demeanor changed. She started to explain in a very detailed and technical way on how and why I needed a root canal. Something she never did before. It seemed like she was a little intimidated. I'm just wondering assuming i struck out of oci if ND would be a better choice for Estates planning, Elder Law, social security etc or non law firm legal work since so many older people and proffesionals outside the insulated legal community think so highly of it.

[answer23]

See, the funny thing about lay prestige is that it doesn't matter unless you're trying to bang some coed at a bar.

You'd be fucking insane to pick ND over Michigan.

But why do we go to law school in the first place? Some of us go to be productive members of society, enhance our future earnings potential and to some extent market ourselves as potential mates for dating or marriage. Law School is to some extent an ego booster. Every lawyer has an ego. I'm not denying the fact that Michigan has a better reputation than ND within the insulated legal community. Most educated people don't know what law school is top 14 except for Harvard Yale and maybe Georgetown and Duke. If our goal is to make ourselves attractive to potential mates without having to explain about how Michigan is really better than ND is that really such a crazy idea given that ND is a decent school with 28% placement into firms with 101+ lawyers. If you have to explain or put a disclaimer out about your degree it would get frustrating after awhile. My suspicion is that the guy with the ND law degree who has biglaw job is probaly getting more action than the Michigan guy with a biglaw job.

[rad lulz]

See, the funny thing about lay prestige is that it doesn't matter unless you're trying to bang some coed at a bar.

You'd be fucking insane to pick ND over Michigan.

But why do we go to law school in the first place? Some of us go to be productive members of society, enhance our future earnings potential and to some extent market ourselves as potential mates for dating or marriage. Law School is to some extent an ego booster. Every lawyer has an ego. I'm not denying the fact that Michigan has a better reputation than ND within the insulated legal community. Most educated people don't know what law school is top 14 except for Harvard Yale and maybe Georgetown and Duke. If our goal is to make ourselves attractive to potential mates without having to explain about how Michigan is really better than ND is that really such a crazy idea given that ND is a decent school with 28% placement into firms with 101+ lawyers. If you have to explain or put a disclaimer out about your degree it would get frustrating after awhile. My suspicion is that the guy with the ND law degree who has biglaw job is probaly getting more action than the Michigan guy with a biglaw job.

Which is funny because more girls are impressed by the fact that I used to be an EMT.

HTH.

[Tiago Splitter]

My suspicion is that the guy with the ND law degree who has biglaw job is probaly getting more action than the Michigan guy with a biglaw job.

First of all, no one is getting action because of their Notre Dame law degree.

And a lot more people get those BigLaw jobs from Michigan than they do from Notre Dame. If you'd rather be underemployed from Notre Dame than in BigLaw from Michigan then yes, of course you should go to Notre Dame. Most people wouldn't take that tradeoff though.

[TLS_noobie]

See, the funny thing about lay prestige is that it doesn't matter unless you're trying to bang some coed at a bar.

You'd be fucking insane to pick ND over Michigan.

But why do we go to law school in the first place? Some of us go to be productive members of society, enhance our future earnings potential and to some extent market ourselves as potential mates for dating or marriage. Law School is to some extent an ego booster. Every lawyer has an ego. I'm not denying the fact that Michigan has a better reputation than ND within the insulated legal community. Most educated people don't know what law school is top 14 except for Harvard Yale and maybe Georgetown and Duke. If our goal is to make ourselves attractive to potential mates without having to explain about how Michigan is really better than ND is that really such a crazy idea given that ND is a decent school with 28% placement into firms with 101+ lawyers. If you have to explain or put a disclaimer out about your degree it would get frustrating after awhile. My suspicion is that the guy with the ND law degree who has biglaw job is probaly getting more action than the Michigan guy with a biglaw job.

You could just not do the whole law school thing and spend the 150-200k on a fancy car...I hear that gets the "potential mates" all riled up...

[flem]

But why do we go to law school in the first place? Some of us go to be productive members of society, enhance our future earnings potential and to some extent market ourselves as potential mates for dating or marriage. Law School is to some extent an ego booster. Every lawyer has an ego. I'm not denying the fact that Michigan has a better reputation than ND within the insulated legal community. Most educated people don't know what law school is top 14 except for Harvard Yale and maybe Georgetown and Duke. If our goal is to make ourselves attractive to potential mates without having to explain about how Michigan is really better than ND is that really such a crazy idea given that ND is a decent school with 28% placement into firms with 101+ lawyers. If you have to explain or put a disclaimer out about your degree it would get frustrating after awhile. My suspicion is that the guy with the ND law degree who has biglaw job is probaly getting more action than the Michigan guy with a biglaw job.

Pretty sure women would be more impressed by a high paying law job, which you get from going to better schools than Notre Dame.

HTH as well

[answer23]

But why do we go to law school in the first place? Some of us go to be productive members of society, enhance our future earnings potential and to some extent market ourselves as potential mates for dating or marriage. Law School is to some extent an ego booster. Every lawyer has an ego. I'm not denying the fact that Michigan has a better reputation than ND within the insulated legal community. Most educated people don't know what law school is top 14 except for Harvard Yale and maybe Georgetown and Duke. If our goal is to make ourselves attractive to potential mates without having to explain about how Michigan is really better than ND is that really such a crazy idea given that ND is a decent school with 28% placement into firms with 101+ lawyers. If you have to explain or put a disclaimer out about your degree it would get frustrating after awhile. My suspicion is that the guy with the ND law degree who has biglaw job is probaly getting more action than the Michigan guy with a biglaw job.

Pretty sure women would be more impressed by a high paying law job, which you get from going to better schools than Notre Dame.

HTH as well

That was my point. The assumption from most educated people outside of law is that ND is a great option for big salary. And yet it is to some extent the perception. Forbes magazine did a shitty survey about law schools that will make you rich and ND came out #10. My point is that if you happen to be one of the 28% who land big law wouldn't women be more impress? We are kidding ourselves to think that part of picking a top law school has nothing to do with bragging rights.

[NDIrish2012]

My suspicion is that the guy with the ND law degree who has biglaw job is probaly getting more action than the Michigan guy with a biglaw job.

First of all, no one is getting action because of their Notre Dame law degree.

I don't know about ND Law, but saying I go to ND undergrad has opened some doors...

But really... you'd be insane to choose ND Law over something like Michigan for this reason.

[Nelson]

My point is that if you happen to be one of the 28% who land big law wouldn't women be more impress?

No. You're doing it wrong. This is up there with picking a law school based on how nice the library is.

Your initial anecdote is totally geography and social class dependent as well. Where I'm from, nobody would give two shits about your Notre Dame JD.

[Nova]

See, the funny thing about lay prestige is that it doesn't matter unless you're trying to bang some coed at a bar.

Which I will be

[NDIrish2012]

Is this the same Forbes article? ND isn't in the top 15 here http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsm ... he-most/2/

[answer23]

See, the funny thing about lay prestige is that it doesn't matter unless you're trying to bang some coed at a bar.

You'd be fucking insane to pick ND over Michigan.

But why do we go to law school in the first place? Some of us go to be productive members of society, enhance our future earnings potential and to some extent market ourselves as potential mates for dating or marriage. Law School is to some extent an ego booster. Every lawyer has an ego. I'm not denying the fact that Michigan has a better reputation than ND within the insulated legal community. Most educated people don't know what law school is top 14 except for Harvard Yale and maybe Georgetown and Duke. If our goal is to make ourselves attractive to potential mates without having to explain about how Michigan is really better than ND is that really such a crazy idea given that ND is a decent school with 28% placement into firms with 101+ lawyers. If you have to explain or put a disclaimer out about your degree it would get frustrating after awhile. My suspicion is that the guy with the ND law degree who has biglaw job is probaly getting more action than the Michigan guy with a biglaw job.

You could just not do the whole law school thing and spend the 150-200k on a fancy car...I hear that gets the "potential mates" all riled up...

A fancy car does not have any earnings potential. I could understand if ND was a TTT with a great undergrad rep, but it's not. It's a legitimate t25 law school with a great overall rep with the educated populace. I'm not saying ND law is better than Michigan law. My point is that outside of the insulated legal worl that we live in. ND is a better university than Michigan. This would be like a hipothetical equivalent of someone who goes to the # 1 program in farming at Iowa vs someone who went to Havard's farming program but havard was only rank 22.
At the end of the day Havard will still be more impressive. Your farming degree from Iowa will be very impressive to other farmers in the insulated world of farming. Should you ever decide to get out of farming you can just say that you went to Harvard and that will take you further.

[answer23]

Is this the same Forbes article? ND isn't in the top 15 here http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsm ... he-most/2/

No this one.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenha ... ng-rich/3/

[TLS_noobie]

Okay, I will be serious this time. Realistically speaking, taking something like mid-career salary and using that as a metric ITE is probably not the greatest thing to do. If the ladies/guys are what you want then BigLaw is probably the credited response. From that, you probably want to choose a school with the best chance at that. According to recent stats ND has BigLaw numbers that make it seem very unlikely for 9/10 people going there. Michigan is a different story of course.

http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNL ... slreturn=1

But, as far as the lay prestige is concerned, that will probably only go so far. As long as you want to go into law, lay prestige has very little to do with anything. Venturing outside of law, lay prestige still doesn't have much to do with anything unless you go to HYS really...

[Tiago Splitter]

My point is that if you happen to be one of the 28% who land big law wouldn't women be more impress? We are kidding ourselves to think that part of picking a top law school has nothing to do with bragging rights.

Sure, but you don't know going in if you'll be part of that 28%. Notre Dame students are really struggling to get BigLaw gigs, so picking Notre Dame over Michigan since Notre Dame will get you laid more after you get BigLaw is retarded.

[answer23]

Okay, I will be serious this time. Realistically speaking, taking something like mid-career salary and using that as a metric ITE is probably not the greatest thing to do. If the ladies/guys are what you want then BigLaw is probably the credited response. From that, you probably want to choose a school with the best chance at that. According to recent stats ND has BigLaw numbers that make it seem very unlikely for 9/10 people going there. Michigan is a different story of course.

http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNL ... slreturn=1

But, as far as the lay prestige is concerned, that will probably only go so far. As long as you want to go into law, lay prestige has very little to do with anything. Venturing outside of law, lay prestige still doesn't have much to do with anything unless you go to HYS really...

Good point. To be fair 2011 was a bad year for most law schools. I did say that the Forbes rankings was shitty, but the perception is still out there. Perhaps ND lawyers make more money mid career because of networking, in house and other lucrative opporunities that are available to lawyers outside the traditional law firm culture. The ceo of bank of america is an ND alumni. Perhaps it might be an indication of the strenght of an ND degree outside the law culture. There is no way to find out. ND has historically place around 28% into big law with another 7% in art 3 and 7% in state courts. I'm not arguing that ND law is better than Michigan law. I'm just saying that sometimes we law students and lawyers live in a bubble. The top 14 law schools are not the top 14 universities in the U.S. some schools inside the t14 are just not that impressive outside the legal world.

[TLS_noobie]

I'm just saying that sometimes we law students and lawyers live in a bubble. The top 14 law schools are not the top 14 universities in the U.S. some schools inside the t14 are just not that impressive outside the legal world.

Yes, a bubble of relevance because the impeccable underwater basket weaving program that University of X has is completely irrelevant to me as a law student.

...and just because I am a fan boy I have to represent here since I feel like UMich is kind of being dragged through the mud with this lay prestige stuff: UMich has one of the best business schools, engineering schools, and law schools in the nation and is ranked as the 12th best reputation among all universities in the world by Time. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/w ... kings.html

UMich has plenty of lay prestige and it has one of the largest and strongest living alumni networks in the world.

[answer23]

If the ladies/guys are what you want then BigLaw is probably the credited response. From that, you probably want to choose a school with the best chance at that.

The funny thing is no one outside of law knows the difference between Sullivan & Cromwell vs Jacobi & Myers. My point is that unless you want to look like a complete douchbag explaining to people how you really went to a great law school even if it's a state school and that you work for "biglaw" it's not going to work for you. It's a losing battle. The unspoken is much more impressive than the spoken. It's a risk of going to a school with great lay reputation but not as good of placement vs a school with better placement but shitty recognition outside of law. If you say you went to ND and I work for a firm. Nothing else needs to be said. But if you say that you went to Michigan and work for a firm. They might assume that you are some shitty ambulance chaser that went to a state school.