Top Law Schools

There's been a lot of discussion of the merits of school funded jobs and whether USNWR should include them in employment ratings. A lot of people have also assumed that Harvard and Yale's high SFJ rate is nothing to worry about because they are "good" fellowships, so I decided to google stalk the fellows from 2010 to see how things had gone for them. (I think Yale and Harvard are unique in providing the names of the recipients.)

There's a couple things to keep in mind when you look at these results. Some people may have been deferred from their big firm and others may have had a clerkship for a year out and nothing to do for the year in between. These people are impossible to pick out from the list, but they theoretically aren't getting much of a benefit from the fellowship. Also, there are different kinds of fellowships. Some of these have long histories and are clearly difficult to achieve while some are just given to whoever needs a job. I didn't break it out that way, and it's somewhat hard to tell.

I take two main things from this: 1) Those who think HYS will automatically get you a job doing what you want are wrong. A lot of these people look to have been looking for something to do when they missed biglaw. 2) On the other hand, it does seem like if you go to Harvard or Yale there's a near 100% chance that you'll find a job that pays you a middle class salary doing something that makes use of your intellect. HYS grads are hoping for more, I'm sure, but especially considering the quality of these schools LRAPs, it's hardly a sentence to a shitty life.

Yale 2010 fellowships:

http://www.law.yale.edu/documents/pdf/N ... 011NEW.pdf

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1. Same job he got the fellowship for.
2. Same job.
3. Getting a PhD at Harvard.
4. Clinical fellow at Cardozo.
5. COA clerk.
6. Adjunct professor at UNC.
7. ???
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8.Was at same Fed Gov job in Nov 2012.
9. YLS postdoc.
10. ??? but she's Chuck Schumer's daughter, so...
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11. Doing a variety of international human rights stuff+still getting a J.S.D at Yale.
12. At a mid-size to small Minneapolis firm.
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13. Debevoise
14. Special advisor to asst. Sec. of State
15. VAP at Maryland.
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16.??? though she was at the SF City Attorney's office and they don't seem to post any info on their attorneys.
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17. Cleary
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18. Assistant professor at Peking University.
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19. ?? But has had an article published in American's law review.
20. mckool smith SV
21. Fellow at NYU
22. Patton Boggs
23. Boyden Gray & Associates (the founder has a wikipedia page, but I don't know anything else about except they're young and in DC).
24. TFA Executive director (I have no idea how good a job this is).
25. USDC clerk.


Harvard 2010 fellowships:
http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/2010/05 ... ships.html

1. Still at the job she got the fellowship for, but presumably no longer school funded.
2. NYC Mayor's Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainable Development. (Also, an HKS person, so not necessarily a bad sign that it's non-legal.)
3. USDC clerkship->Seyfarth Shaw
4. Still at the same job, slightly unclear who's paying her.
5. COA clerkship->White and Case
6. Same job she got the fellowship for.
7. Ditto.
8. Faegre Baker Daniels.
9. COA clerkship.
10. COA staff attorney. (Not ideal for an Harvard kid but still a job.)
11. Working at what looks like a 2 person Denver firm.
12. At Burch & Craccolio, which is apparently a legit plaintiff's firm in Phoenix (Benchmark Litigation highly recommended).
13. Assistant professor at an Indian law school.
14. At Mintz, Levin in NYC.
15. At very small "internet law" firm in SF.
16. At Robinson Curley Clayton, a Chi lit boutique. No idea if they're legit.
17. At very small commercial lit firm in Cupertino, CA.
18. Fellowship job.
19. Adjunct professor at Babson College.
20. Fellowship job.
21. Apparently works for the UN in human rights law.
22. Founded this climate change start up: http://www.betterfutureproject.org/
23. Quinn.
24. Seems to be a visiting researcher at Harvard.
25. Can't tell, but I think he might be a solo civil rights attorney in Oakland.
26. State Policy Director at Massachusetts Immigrant & Refugee Advocacy Coalition.

Also, anyone better at Google stalking than me that wants to hunt down the stragglers is more than welcome.

Dude you are awesome. Thanks for taking the time to put this post together.

How many of these were temporary deferments from big law? 09 had a ton, but '10 had some too. I'd be more interested in what '11 grads are doing.

Desert Fox wrote:How many of these were temporary deferments from big law? 09 had a ton, but '10 had some too. I'd be more interested in what '11 grads are doing.

Yeah, I mentioned that possibility. '11 grads might still be being paid by the school, so it would be harder to draw conclusions on that front, though it would be useful as well. I certainly don't think anyone should look at this and think that fellowships were a backdoor to biglaw.

Also 2010 was a year when a lot of no offers happened. So a bunch of these people probably had good grades, but got fucked by their summer class.

Yes, good point. The optimistic takeaway from this is that even if you get no-offer pwned, you'll get a job and have your loans paid off in ten years. It's not that you can get LPs and get a district clerkship.

A lot these are actually dream jobs that are incredibly difficult to get (academia, human rights work with the UN, COA clerk, advisor to secretary of state, prestigious PI). Those are probably the most difficult jobs to get for anyone. Much harder than getting V10 big law.

I really don't get the mentality that these people were certainly hoping for more. For most people getting these kind of jobs 2-3 years out of school is next to impossible. Not doing big law doesn't mean you failed. A substantial number of people never wanted it in the first place. It appears a few of these people did eventually go to firms, but they are in the minority.

I'm curious what the background is for the TFA exec director. ED jobs are extremely difficult to get esp w/ limited (less than 5 yrs) Non-profit management experience

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worldtraveler wrote:A lot these are actually dream jobs that are incredibly difficult to get (academia, human rights work with the UN, COA clerk, advisor to secretary of state, prestigious PI). Those are probably the most difficult jobs to get for anyone. Much harder than getting V10 big law.

I really don't get the mentality that these people were certainly hoping for more. For most people getting these kind of jobs 2-3 years out of school is next to impossible. Not doing big law doesn't mean you failed. A substantial number of people never wanted it in the first place. It appears a few of these people did eventually go to firms, but they are in the minority.

Some of them definitely are great jobs (international human rights at UN), but some of them probably are not the kind of things these people were imagining doing (tiny firms). For a whole bunch of them, it's impossible to know how happy the person is--it could be what they always dreamed of doing, or a last resort. I'd also bet that some of the COA clerks already had those jobs lined up before they got these fellowships (it's not uncommon to get hired a year out). Similarly, while many of the fellowships are just there to make sure everyone has a job, some of them are genuinely prestigious and hard to get.

ETA: My tone may be a bit overly negative looking at it again. I'd guess the outcomes for those still in PI (which at least include all those who were PI focused) are on average as good or better than the more successful PI people do at even CCN. And these are presumably a group with below average outcomes for HY. I have no way to confirm that though. That said, this group almost definitely included people who'd been deferred and no offered.

Lagunitan wrote:

dr123 wrote:I'm curious what the background is for the TFA exec director. ED jobs are extremely difficult to get esp w/ limited (less than 5 yrs) Non-profit management experience

My ED had been a lawyer for a few years. He'd been a CM and gone to a T14, but had no non-profit management experience. I think the background required and difficulty of getting the job varies a ton by region - being ED in NYC/LA/etc. probably requires a much stronger non-profit management background than ED of the smaller and/or rural regions. Awesome job either way, though.

hmm, might just depend on the individual/organization. fwiw, i've worked for a number of nonprofits including large urban organizations and rural grassroots orgs and the E.D. has always been a mid-to-late career professional.

dr123 wrote:

Lagunitan wrote:

dr123 wrote:I'm curious what the background is for the TFA exec director. ED jobs are extremely difficult to get esp w/ limited (less than 5 yrs) Non-profit management experience

My ED had been a lawyer for a few years. He'd been a CM and gone to a T14, but had no non-profit management experience. I think the background required and difficulty of getting the job varies a ton by region - being ED in NYC/LA/etc. probably requires a much stronger non-profit management background than ED of the smaller and/or rural regions. Awesome job either way, though.

hmm, might just depend on the individual/organization. fwiw, i've worked for a number of nonprofits including large urban organizations and rural grassroots orgs and the E.D. has always been a mid-to-late career professional.

One of the new trends I've seen in non-profit hiring is snagging younger people with a lot of hands-on grassroots experience, especially people who've launched their own locally successful non-profits. Some of the old hiring models are getting shoved to the wayside as young hungry guns are starting to do better jobs - recent hirings at NARAL and Homeboy Industries for example.

John_rizzy_rawls wrote:

dr123 wrote:

Lagunitan wrote:

dr123 wrote:I'm curious what the background is for the TFA exec director. ED jobs are extremely difficult to get esp w/ limited (less than 5 yrs) Non-profit management experience

My ED had been a lawyer for a few years. He'd been a CM and gone to a T14, but had no non-profit management experience. I think the background required and difficulty of getting the job varies a ton by region - being ED in NYC/LA/etc. probably requires a much stronger non-profit management background than ED of the smaller and/or rural regions. Awesome job either way, though.

hmm, might just depend on the individual/organization. fwiw, i've worked for a number of nonprofits including large urban organizations and rural grassroots orgs and the E.D. has always been a mid-to-late career professional.

One of the new trends I've seen in non-profit hiring is snagging younger people with a lot of hands-on grassroots experience, especially people who've launched their own locally successful non-profits. Some of the old hiring models are getting shoved to the wayside as young hungry guns are starting to do better jobs - recent hirings at NARAL and Homeboy Industries for example.

And that's where the "start your own nonprofit" fellowships come in handy.

Kids with their twipper and the bloobtube and youbook...

I also would like to see the 2011 and 2012 outcomes although I know it is probably too early with regard to the latter. Most of these seem pretty good although the ones you compiled in the other thread included a substantial minority that I doubt were what the graduates really wanted (COA staff attorney, Seyfarth Shaw associate, etc.) Also, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I assume that the number of students taking these fellowships increased in 2010-12 as compared to 2006-2008, which I think is telling. If these fellowships were desirable, you would've seen more people doing them in the boom years (excepting the longstanding prestigious ones, for which there has probably always been demand).

Anyway I think the reason this came up is because people weren't sure whether HYS people on fellowships had better outcomes than non-HYS grads on fellowships. To me, without knowing more about what these people wanted, this data suggests that they may have somewhat better outcomes but nothing is guaranteed. The good thing about HYS is their LRAP programs, not the strength of their post-SF-job placement. [edit to remove CLS stat that couldn't be confirmed]

Anyway thank you for that work. Is it possible to do at other schools or not because they don't name the fellowships (they really should all name the fellowships so it looks like something special)?

somewhatwayward wrote:Also, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I assume that the number of students taking these fellowships increased in 2010-12 as compared to 2006-2008, which I think is telling. If these fellowships were desirable, you would've seen more people doing them in the boom years (excepting the longstanding prestigious ones, for which there has probably always been demand).

It's not telling in and of itself. There are a lot of people here who would never even consider doing BigLaw. With the collapse of PI/gov't hiring, many people use these fellowships to get a start at an organization that would have hired them directly five years ago. Given that a number of people come here with strong non-BigLaw goals, one would expect the proportion of people on these fellowships to increase due to the changes in PI hiring alone.

The Harvard class of 2010, is probably the worst possible one to look at. That's the year I graduated from Michigan. The market crashed right in the middle of our call-back season, and firms largely stopped giving offers. So you picked an offer from the ones you had already gotten from callbacks before the crash. Everyone was saying how the Harvard students were particularly bad off because their OCI was later than everyone elses, so their callbacks were also scheduled later -- for after the crash happened.

My understanding is that that was the big impetus for Harvard moving their OCI earlier.

Ti Malice wrote:

somewhatwayward wrote:Also, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I assume that the number of students taking these fellowships increased in 2010-12 as compared to 2006-2008, which I think is telling. If these fellowships were desirable, you would've seen more people doing them in the boom years (excepting the longstanding prestigious ones, for which there has probably always been demand).

It's not telling in and of itself. There are a lot of people here who would never even consider doing BigLaw. With the collapse of PI/gov't hiring, many people use these fellowships to get a start at an organization that would have hired them directly five years ago. Given that a number of people come here with strong non-BigLaw goals, one would expect the proportion of people on these fellowships to increase due to the changes in PI hiring alone.

You could say the same thing about all the other schools, though...perhaps to a lesser degree at schools that aren't known for PI. Then again Harvard is not really known for PI either.

I expect that HYS school-funded fellows as a group end up in better jobs overall post-fellowship than the the other T14 fellows because a bigger portion of their fellowships were around pre-recession and are actually prestigious. But I'm not convinced from this that the HYS fellowships that just came out of the woodwork post-recession result in post-fellowship placement appreciably better than other T14 fellowships.

Ti Malice wrote:

somewhatwayward wrote:Also, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I assume that the number of students taking these fellowships increased in 2010-12 as compared to 2006-2008, which I think is telling. If these fellowships were desirable, you would've seen more people doing them in the boom years (excepting the longstanding prestigious ones, for which there has probably always been demand).

It's not telling in and of itself. There are a lot of people here who would never even consider doing BigLaw. With the collapse of PI/gov't hiring, many people use these fellowships to get a start at an organization that would have hired them directly five years ago. Given that a number of people come here with strong non-BigLaw goals, one would expect the proportion of people on these fellowships to increase due to the changes in PI hiring alone.

You two are only disagreeing if "boom years" only refers to Biglaw hiring. PI hiring has definitely collapsed worse than Biglaw, so it can both be the product of the recession AND not necessarily be indicative of people not being able to get firm jobs. It's pretty clear that some people were missing the Biglaw boat in these, but they may have been no offers and/or deferred, which would be a lot less relevant to prospective students today.

Elston Gunn wrote:

Ti Malice wrote:

somewhatwayward wrote:Also, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I assume that the number of students taking these fellowships increased in 2010-12 as compared to 2006-2008, which I think is telling. If these fellowships were desirable, you would've seen more people doing them in the boom years (excepting the longstanding prestigious ones, for which there has probably always been demand).

It's not telling in and of itself. There are a lot of people here who would never even consider doing BigLaw. With the collapse of PI/gov't hiring, many people use these fellowships to get a start at an organization that would have hired them directly five years ago. Given that a number of people come here with strong non-BigLaw goals, one would expect the proportion of people on these fellowships to increase due to the changes in PI hiring alone.

You two are only disagreeing if "boom years" only refers to Biglaw hiring. PI hiring has definitely collapsed worse than Biglaw, so it can both be the product of the recession AND not necessarily be indicative of people not being able to get firm jobs. It's pretty clear that some people were missing the Biglaw boat in these, but they may have been no offers and/or deferred, which would be a lot less relevant to prospective students today.

Yeah, I'm not intending to address the specific outcomes you've posted above. I'm just addressing the original comment by saying that, during a period when PI/gov't hiring has almost entirely collapsed (as opposed to BigLaw hiring, which has only suffered some stout body blows), the increase in the percentage of graduates taking these fellowships in and of itself tells you nothing conclusive about the nature of the fellowships or people's reasons for accepting them. I'm certainly not claiming that all outcomes reflect the recipients' preferences, either. But even if BigLaw hiring had remained completely stable -- or had even improved -- while PI/gov't hiring largely fell apart, one would expect to see the percentage of people on these fellowships increase, given the significant number of people here who would never consider BigLaw.

Most of these jobs look great to me. Even the ones that are low-paying look interesting. These opportunities would only look bad to you if you had this weird idea in your mind that HYS=riches and glory, and that's a particularly dumb conception to have in this economy. It doesn't seem that unreasonable to me that many of these people opted into these particular jobs. I know I would forgo biglaw if I knew I could get almost any of these jobs.

hq2x wrote:Most of these jobs look great to me. Even the ones that are low-paying look interesting. These opportunities would only look bad to you if you had this weird idea in your mind that HYS=riches and glory, and that's a particularly dumb conception to have in this economy. It doesn't seem that unreasonable to me that many of these people opted into these particular jobs. I know I would forgo biglaw if I knew I could get almost any of these jobs.

Without knowing anything about the firm, you would rather work at a 2 person firm in Denver than Biglaw?* I think your point is generally true, but you're overstating it.

*I should say that I know a Yale grad working at a two person firm in New Haven who seems to love it, so it's certainly possible that person was one of the good outcomes. It's just hard to know it is.

Those are almost all great jobs. Most of the PI jobs are substantially harder to get than, say, a V50 placement. My big takeaway from this is that HYS fellowships are a baller option.

Elston Gunn wrote:

hq2x wrote:Most of these jobs look great to me. Even the ones that are low-paying look interesting. These opportunities would only look bad to you if you had this weird idea in your mind that HYS=riches and glory, and that's a particularly dumb conception to have in this economy. It doesn't seem that unreasonable to me that many of these people opted into these particular jobs. I know I would forgo biglaw if I knew I could get almost any of these jobs.

Without knowing anything about the firm, you would rather work at a 2 person firm in Denver than Biglaw?* I think your point is generally true, but you're overstating it.

*I should say that I know a Yale grad working at a two person firm in New Haven who seems to love it, so it's certainly possible that person was one of the good outcomes. It's just hard to know it is.

Frankly, if I was coming from Yale I wouldn't give a fuck, their repayment program is phenomenal. I imagine most people on this website are highly financially motivated, but I also think that the prospect of making ~50k a year isn't so bad with effectively no loans and only opportunity cost for 3 years of law school. It's less than what you would make if you worked right out of undergrad, but if you like legal work I think it's a reasonable trade-off. I dunno about the HLS grads b/c their repayment program isn't tax deductible for private-sector low income jobs, but it's not a nightmare scenario.

The thing that surprised me so much about this data, and the reason I was motivated to post in the first place, was how even what I assume to be a sample of the lowest performers in HY (sprinkled with high achievers) are doing things that I would definitely see myself doing and being happy. I think the real question, which is much harder to obtain (of course I'm grateful for this valuable piece of information you've contributed), is what happens to these people over the long term. If I can stay in that 2 person firm for ten years then my loans are forgiven. I consider that a positive outcome for Yale, and possibly a neutral outcome for Harvard.

Does anyone know what kind of salary these jobs would pay?