Top Law Schools

I'm curious about everyone's impressions and don't want to introduce any bias.

Anyone? Thanks!


Edit: I should clarify, I mean "individual law schools" e.g. Princeton Law "rapacious" etc etc. Also, please don't use rapacious, I don't know what it means.

Chicago = dat RIGOR
Berkeley = liberal hippies
Yale = Disneyland

/stereotypes

Note, these are not necessarily my personal views, just some of what I've picked up from the forums:

Yale: Aloof, academic, super-smart, prestigious, crazy backgrounds, nice campus, can get any job you want

SLS: Laid-back, smart, high GPAs, fabulous weather, can get just about any job you want

HLS: Smart, a little more competitive than Y and S, big class sizes, average campus, more splitter-friendly, can get just about any job you want, but still should be in top 80%

Columbia: Cold, corporate biglaw factory, not very fun, lots of gunners, smart students, prestige-focused, not very PI-friendly, gunners, best for corp. biglaw among CCN

Chicago: Very intelligent, rigorous classes, horrible weather, dangerous campus, best for clerkships among CCN

NYU: Like to party, PI-focused students, really expensive COL, more laid-back than Columbia, collaborative students, not as successful getting clerkships as Chicago or Columbia, liberal "going to change the world" types abound

MikeSpivey wrote:I'm curious about everyone's impressions and don't want to introduce any bias.

Anyone? Thanks!


Edit: I should clarify, I mean "individual law schools" e.g. Princeton Law "rapacious" etc etc. Also, please don't use rapacious, I don't know what it means.

This should be pretty easy, as there's only one or two law schools after all.

Also, according to some, there really are only 14 (or 3) anyway.

Hmm, my view is a combination of things I've heard on TLS, plus opinions from attorneys I work with:

YLS - ivory tower, highly intellectual, not very well-trained for corporate or actual practice
HLS - overrated, overly hyped, large size is a negative, best of the top three in prepping for actual practice
Chicago - great at prepping for corporate law and practice but...it's in Chicago
NYULS - lot's of great professors, really nice, lots of PI opportunities, not as great as job placement as CLS, HLS, etc., large size is a negative in opportunities to work closely with professors
Penn - very small, tight-knit classes, friendly, just right amount of ambitiousness/competitiveness

UVA: Bro-ish, fratty, etc. Good looking smart kids who like to party.

Penn: Similar to Columbia but smaller so a bit more friendly. Still mostly biglaw and still not many change the world types.

G'Town: Fuck. This is the only T14 I got into?

UT: Texans who would never leave Texas and non-texans who weren't smart enough to get into T14. Fratty. Broish.

Georgetown: Overcrowded, very PI/government focused
Duke: Douchey bro atmosphere
UVA: Relatively relaxed, friendly atmosphere. Still bro-y, but not as obnoxiously so

Disclaimer: These aren't necessarily MY opinions, just things I've gathered from people.

This is mostly my own (probably baseless) impressions combined with things I've heard from current students.

Georgetown - students are pretty pretentious/full of themselves.

UTexas - can get a little over-competitive, at least between students. Think refusing to share notes, passing along incorrect information, etc.

Berkeley - Preeeetty much what Nony said.

Michigan - very 'midwestern', in the attitude of the students/profs.

Decimus wrote:

MikeSpivey wrote:I'm curious about everyone's impressions and don't want to introduce any bias.

Anyone? Thanks!


Edit: I should clarify, I mean "individual law schools" e.g. Princeton Law "rapacious" etc etc. Also, please don't use rapacious, I don't know what it means.

This should be pretty easy, as there's only one or two law schools after all.

Also, according to some, there really are only 14 (or 3) anyway.

Sassasaurus...

Post removed.

alex.cm wrote:This is mostly my own (probably baseless) impressions combined with things I've heard from current students.

Georgetown - students are pretty pretentious/full of themselves.

UTexas - can get a little over-competitive, at least between students. Think refusing to share notes, passing along incorrect information, etc.

Berkeley - Preeeetty much what Nony said.

Michigan - very 'midwestern', in the attitude of the students/profs.

Of course I'm going to get in here on UTexas

Foreword: I am not a law student there.

From what I've gotten and heard from talking with students it is very collegial. Definitely frattish, has a lot of Texans who probably think Texas>TTTT14.

Michigan - I've not met anyone from Michigan who wasn't pretty chill yet slightly pretentious at the same time. Most of them it was their first choice and they're damned proud of it.

Attax wrote:

alex.cm wrote:This is mostly my own (probably baseless) impressions combined with things I've heard from current students.

Georgetown - students are pretty pretentious/full of themselves.

UTexas - can get a little over-competitive, at least between students. Think refusing to share notes, passing along incorrect information, etc.

Berkeley - Preeeetty much what Nony said.

Michigan - very 'midwestern', in the attitude of the students/profs.

Of course I'm going to get in here on UTexas

Foreword: I am not a law student there.

From what I've gotten and heard from talking with students it is very collegial. Definitely frattish, has a lot of Texans who probably think Texas>TTTT14.

Michigan - I've not met anyone from Michigan who wasn't pretty chill yet slightly pretentious at the same time. Most of them it was their first choice and they're damned proud of it.

Yeah I'm not even going to try and argue with this.

UT- Just do 6th street with your society, bro

Vandy- Kumbaya my Lord. Kumbaya.

Bama- Where reverse splitters go to get median pwned

Michigan - "look at our library!"

Cornell - Law's Andy Bernard

Harvard - "H" is for Holy Grail
Yale - Ivy, pretentious academics, a little up in the clouds
Stanford - (as a west coaster, Stanford is seen as) the Ivy of the West, better than anything except Harvard, IP focused, obsessively diverse, the sensible (as opposed to Berkeley) liberal flag bearing institution.

One of the interesting things I'm noticing here is that a lot of these comments seem to be assessments of students.

Am I missing something? Or can we introduce 'reputations' like how UVA, NU, GULC are splitter-friendly, and how west coast schools (notably Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA/USC) are "gpa whores"?

Or the idea the places like WUSTL and UMinn are splitter friendly AND generous, and schools like GULC and U hawaii are stingy. I mean, these are reputations mostly related to admissions, but it's still reputation, right?

Also, how far down the list are we going? I think that People's college of law, Cooley, and Thomas Jefferson School of Law have reputations for being the WORST of the worst. Like, the butt of jokes kind of bad.

sandwich wrote:One of the interesting things I'm noticing here is that a lot of these comments seem to be assessments of students.

Am I missing something? Or can we introduce 'reputations' like how UVA, NU, GULC are splitter-friendly, and how west coast schools (notably Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA/USC) are "gpa whores"?

Or the idea the places like WUSTL and UMinn are splitter friendly AND generous, and schools like GULC and U hawaii are stingy. I mean, these are reputations mostly related to admissions, but it's still reputation, right?

Also, how far down the list are we going? I think that People's college of law, Cooley, and Thomas Jefferson School of Law have reputations for being the WORST of the worst. Like, the butt of jokes kind of bad.

There are no rules.

MikeSpivey wrote:I'm curious about everyone's impressions and don't want to introduce any bias.

Anyone? Thanks!


Edit: I should clarify, I mean "individual law schools" e.g. Princeton Law "rapacious" etc etc. Also, please don't use rapacious, I don't know what it means.

To me, a school's reputation is correlates exactly to its placement power.

Another one, Northwestern LOVES work experience.

lawschool22 wrote:Another one, Northwestern LOVES work experience.

I'm not buying it

Attax wrote:

lawschool22 wrote:Another one, Northwestern LOVES work experience.

I'm not buying it

I'm not sold on this either. They might value it slightly more than other schools, but from what I've seen idk if it really makes a huge difference

jk148706 wrote:

Attax wrote:

lawschool22 wrote:Another one, Northwestern LOVES work experience.

I'm not buying it

I'm not sold on this either. They might value it slightly more than other schools, but from what I've seen idk if it really makes a huge difference

Idk, what about the "Conditional Acceptance" thing they do? Where if they like you, but want you to get work experience, they'll offer to accept you if you go work for a year and come back the following cycle?

lawschool22 wrote:

jk148706 wrote:

Attax wrote:

lawschool22 wrote:Another one, Northwestern LOVES work experience.

I'm not buying it

I'm not sold on this either. They might value it slightly more than other schools, but from what I've seen idk if it really makes a huge difference

Idk, what about the "Conditional Acceptance" thing they do? Where if they like you, but want you to get work experience, they'll offer to accept you if you go work for a year and come back the following cycle?

And isn't the percentage of K-JDs something like 10%?

lawschool22 wrote:

jk148706 wrote:

Attax wrote:

lawschool22 wrote:Another one, Northwestern LOVES work experience.

I'm not buying it

I'm not sold on this either. They might value it slightly more than other schools, but from what I've seen idk if it really makes a huge difference

Idk, what about the "Conditional Acceptance" thing they do? Where if they like you, but want you to get work experience, they'll offer to accept you if you go work for a year and come back the following cycle?

As an NU student, I'm pretty surprised when I hear somebody isn't at least a year separated from undergrad. Sure, it's not an absolute barrier to getting accepted, but there are statistics out there that show it's still a pretty big deal.

Rumblings I hear:

Duke/UVA - Fratty, as noted by others. Tho the admissions standards are high, so it's probably not to the level of "Lacrosse Team Party" fratty

GULC - Lots of rich kids. Given the cost and the COL, this seems plausible

Penn - Corporate law factory, for better or worse

Non-T14s:

UTexas - Bros for days. Does McConaughey make appearances?

Boulder - Ski School 2.0

ASU - Party school

Lews & Clark and Vermont - Environmentalists for days