Top Law Schools

So, I know when getting your first job that your school make matter a lot (plus grades).

But after you get that first job and if you need or want to work somewhere else, does your school name matter anymore?

Example:

George Washington JD -> 3 years at Cravath --> need new job

Is it more about your work experience and recommendations after you get that first job if you apply for another job? Or, does your school name matter still and follow you around for life (or for a x period of time)?

Also curious about this as well.

jtabustos wrote:So, I know when getting your first job that your school make matter a lot (plus grades).

But after you get that first job and if you need or want to work somewhere else, does your school name matter anymore?

Example:

George Washington JD -> 3 years at Cravath --> need new job

Is it more about your work experience and recommendations after you get that first job if you apply for another job? Or, does your school name matter still and follow you around for life (or for a x period of time)?

I would hazard a guess that CCN JD -> 3 years at Cravath --> need new job with the exact credentials as someone from GW would get a leg up because of the school name regardless of how long it has been since graduation.

.

Also talking with no direct experience, so take with a mound of salt. Even though I haven't worked in the legal field, though, I have 5+ years of professional experience and have been involved in hiring boards.

Relevant work experience always wins when people are hiring for a job, assuming you left your last job on good terms. We would readily choose a person with 3 years experience who went to a middle ranked university over a top tier grad with no work experience. That said, it's not like colleges stop mattering entirely. They just go way down in relative importance. As people have mentioned, it may play a tiebreaker role if you have two candidates with very similar work backgrounds.

as Regulus pointed to, I think its not really a question of lay prestige, but more of alumni network. the fact that you have an elite JD won't be impressive enough alone, and will make little difference the farther you go from that schools network, but due to the correlation between perceived status and well placed alumns, arguably it stays with you for a long time

jtabustos wrote:So, I know when getting your first job that your school make matter a lot (plus grades).

But after you get that first job and if you need or want to work somewhere else, does your school name matter anymore?

Example:

George Washington JD -> 3 years at Cravath --> need new job

Is it more about your work experience and recommendations after you get that first job if you apply for another job? Or, does your school name matter still and follow you around for life (or for a x period of time)?

I think you picked the wrong forum to post this. We 0Ls don't know what we're talking about.

Would a GW grad even snag a Cravath job though?

.

Regulus wrote:

TheThriller wrote:Would a GW grad even snag a Cravath job though?

http://www.cravath.com/lawyers/list.asp ... 21706c269d

1/75 Partners 1.3%

4/481 Associates .83%

Does not look promising.

This is a great question and one I would love to hear some opinions on. Anyone know where to get a better answer on this?

I can't say anything about how Big Law thinks but I can tell the OP that, until recently, class rank followed you basically forever in both government and Small Law. My own law school, the University of New Mexico, recently quit noting class rank on transcripts because of the questionable fairness of this situation. I imagine other schools are doing likewise.

To an employer interviewer, class rank has the great advantage that it can't be inflated like GPA and the usual honors can be. But I agree it shouldn't last forever.

The obvious answer is it depends how much you accomplished in your 1st job and is prob correlated somewhat directly w' that.

The consensus among most older lawyers I've spoken to about this* is that your alma mater matters less and less, that even after your first job people will care more about what you've done (firm quality and work quality) than where you went to school, and after your second job or 5-10 years into your career it's hardly relevant.

*Caveat: boomers.