Top Law Schools

Hey everybody,
I've been reading posts on this forum for what seems like forever and finally decided to register and join the party. First, let me say thanks to all of you people posting because your input really opened my eyes about the world of law, and more importantly, the admissions process. To be honest, I probably learned more about law schools from this forum than from the USNWR, LST, and NLJ combined (all of which I discovered from these forums in the first place). So...thanks!

Okay I understand that for some of you forum lifers this is going to make you laugh, but I had some basic questions about some of the terms you guys use as well as some advice about the schools I am contemplating.
- I understand "sticker" is full tuition, does "ED" Early Decision imply that a scholarship was given?
- Are specialty law rankings (such as IP Law Rankings) really a marketing ploy or do these rankings actually play a role?

Lastly, for fear of hearing 1000 "retake LSAT", " IN DROVES DROVES, DROVES", "NEITHER OR KNEE-THER" Im not going to ask for much advice about my law school decisions except this- What does everyone have against GW? It is one of my top choices because of scholly and location, but everyone at these forums seem to have something against it. "You have to compete with GT and top lawyers in DC, "Its wicked expensive to live in DC", etc etc. But on every website- LST, USNWR, its either top 20 or top 25 in every category- 81% of graduates working as full-time lawyers, 30% in NLJ250, amazing internship experiences. I understand that 75% of registered people on this forum only believe in attending a T14 school because its the best of the best, but is GW really that bad of a choice? Are these people actually intellectuals or just frustrated T3 and T4 lawyers that cant find work? Not trying to be rude, just curious why all the hate on GW. Someone please enlighten me with facts.

Once again thanks for all your help from the past and, now, in the future.

Specialty rankings are calculated using assessments from faculty members, not employers.

ED = usually no scholarship or a nominal amount, except for special cases such as GW NW and BU where they award full schollies to ED applicants

GW gets lots of hate because they offer lots of one-year, full-time legal jobs to students who can't find work elsewhere - 15% as of C/O 2011. These jobs fall into the category of "long term, full time" legal jobs, as defined by USNWR, that contributes to that 81% statistic. It's blatant numbers gaming, because they know that most of these students will be unemployed after that year ends, so this stopgap policy is intended solely to artificially boost their numbers.

GW isn't actually that bad of a school at the right price, especially for IP, but their lack of transparency is worrisome and needs to be pointed out.

Thanks for the info. I was under the impression that quite a few law schools did this type of sketchy numbers twisting. Is 15.4% just comparably way too high?

TheNextAmendment wrote:Thanks for the info. I was under the impression that quite a few law schools did this type of sketchy numbers twisting. Is 15.4% just comparably way too high?

Other schools do it too, but GW is egregious about it. Also, the reason that T14s are so well recommended is that they typically place 50% plus into big law + AIII clerkships. GW places 20 something percent in big law, and many of those are patent people. I would search for the GW OCI threads from the last few years. IIRC, they look very bad.

GW: Last year their former dean got caught in a Category 5 shitstorm for proposing to cut the salary of the school funded jobs from $15/hr to $10/hr on the theory that students weren't properly incentivized to look for real jobs. Yeah.

It's not only GW. DC generally is an oversaturated market that attracts a lot of wonky types from HYS and other top schools. Despite the big ass government down there the number of legal jobs isn't close to the number in New York, and there are simply too many law schools. Georgetown, Catholic and American all get shit on this forum, the thing with GW is that most people who can get in are on the cusp for T14 (where your chances of biglaw + AIII increase considerably) and most who get in with $$$ are in to T14s.