Top Law Schools

Edited:

Percent employed in bar passage-required jobs minus school funded for Class of 2013. Obviously this isn't perfect and includes some of the PT bar-passage jobs, but here it is. Let me know if you see any mistakes and I can revise.

Columbia: (415-29)/437= 88.3%
Duke: (219-9)/241 = 87.13%
Chicago: (199-13)/215 = 86.51%
Penn: (237-13)/259 = 86.49%
NYU: (505-42)/537 = 86.22%
Harvard: (509-11)/578 = 86.16%
Stanford: (171-5)/194 = 85.57%
Cornell: (176-16)/193 = 82.9%
Michigan: (341-12)/399=82.45%
UVA: (349-58)/364=79.95%
Northwestern: (235-12)/284=78.52%
Yale: (161-9)/203 = 74.8%
Georgetown: (549-76)/645=73.33%

Based on the ABA info here:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=226198

NYU

91 - 12 = 79% employed

This thread is going to suck hard.

lecsa wrote:Anyone want to bother doing the math on the rest?

No

download the data and do it yourself. it will take all of about five minutes.

http://employmentsummary.abaquestionnaire.org/

Percent employed in bar passage-required jobs minus school funded for Class of 2013. Obviously this isn't perfect and includes some of the PT bar-passage jobs, but here it is. Let me know if you see any mistakes and I can revise.

Columbia: (415-29)/437= 88.3%
Duke: (219-9)/241 = 87.13%
Chicago: (199-13)/215 = 86.51%
Penn: (237-13)/259 = 86.49%
NYU: (505-42)/537 = 86.22%
Harvard: (509-11)/578 = 86.16%
Stanford: (171-5)/194 = 85.57%
Cornell: (176-16)/193 = 82.9%
Michigan: (341-12)/399=82.45%
UVA: (349-58)/364=79.95%
Northwestern: (235-12)/284=78.52%
Yale: (161-9)/203 = 74.8%
Georgetown: (549-76)/645=73.33%

Based on the ABA info here:
http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 1&t=226198

Is there any data on whether these school funded gigs translate into real jobs after a year?

furrrman wrote:Is there any data on whether these school funded gigs translate into real jobs after a year?

Kind of? Maybe? Not really?

We can get some people to come here and scream past each other while discussing the topic if you would like.

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How is your methodology a "real unemployment rate"? I know for a fact at UChicago at least that some "school-funded jobs" (PI fellowships), have led to full time, long-term employment. Plus your equating ALL JD Advantage jobs to unemployment. That makes zero sense.

Change the title otherwise this thread sucks

bearsfan23 wrote:How is your methodology a "real unemployment rate"? I know for a fact at UChicago at least that some "school-funded jobs" (PI fellowships), have led to full time, long-term employment. Plus your equating ALL JD Advantage jobs to unemployment. That makes zero sense.

Change the title otherwise this thread sucks

I know for a fact that happened at other T-14 schools, too. What's your point?

Name good JD Advantage jobs - glorified social workers? Right now I'm skeptical. Also I made it pretty clear what I'm considering above.

Anyway, I'll change the name of the thread, but does it really matter for your ego?

furrrman wrote:Is there any data on whether these school funded gigs translate into real jobs after a year?

There's no empirical data, but my guess is that this percentage drops pretty fast once you get away from the top schools. From HYSCCN and B (due to its PI focus), my guess is that a lot of these people are just interested in public interest, and it's very difficult even for these people to find a paying PI job straight out of law school, so they end up taking a 1-year fellowship funded by the school. These are people that could probably work for a defense firm if they were really motivated to, but just don't want to do that.

For schools ranked lower, it's likely more of a CYA to make their employment stats look artificially better. Not sure where UVA would rank on this metric, but you'd have a hard time convincing me that the majority of the herd of students GWU puts into these positions each year are on some sort of track to get a paying job. But I could be wrong. I've heard plenty of stories of people volunteering at DC agencies for two years waiting for budget freezes to be lifted. There's an entire labor force of unpaid labor trying to angle their way into an agency job or a staffer job of some sort. I have no idea exactly how many of these people are eventually successful.

Lecsa, I'm wondering what reason you have for being so hard on these school funded jobs, particularly UVA. According to this, (http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/news/2 ... NT0000AE76), 35 of the 40 UVA school funded spots from the class of 2010 landed permanent, full time legal work. Obviously 30k a year is a small starting salary, but most PI people aren't expecting to make bank anyways and are probably relaying on loan forgiveness.

It is perhaps not ideal, but in many cases seems to work, and is certainly better than unemployment. In any event, discounting it completely is absurd.

furrrman wrote:Lecsa, I'm wondering what reason you have for being so hard on these school funded jobs, particularly UVA. According to this, (http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/news/2 ... NT0000AE76), 35 of the 40 UVA school funded spots from the class of 2010 landed permanent, full time legal work. Obviously 30k a year is a small starting salary, but most PI people aren't expecting to make bank anyways and are probably relaying on loan forgiveness.

It is perhaps not ideal, but in many cases seems to work, and is certainly better than unemployment. In any event, discounting it completely is absurd.

The jobs don't actually get your foot in the door for PI jobs. You're confusing cause with correlation. You can easily volunteer at PI orgs for free (and yes you're not paid a measly 30k that year), but you have the same chance of landing the PI job as someone who gets 30k from their school. So this is first reason - there is no cause, just correlation. I also don't consider a short-term fellowship paid by a school as having a job. (Along the same lines, maybe we should remove short-term/part-time bar passage jobs too from the numbers, which I may do later.)

If we were to count these short-term fellowships, we should also count those who volunteered for free at PI orgs and then ended up with full-time offers (but we don't have these numbers, so to be fair I'm excluding both).

Since the fellowships don't really provide any employment benefit, it also leads to the conclusion that it's just a scheme for law schools to game the rankings and mask their worse employment prospects. This is substantiated by the fact that these fellowships didn't exist before the recession.

lecsa wrote:

furrrman wrote:Lecsa, I'm wondering what reason you have for being so hard on these school funded jobs, particularly UVA. According to this, (http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/news/2 ... NT0000AE76), 35 of the 40 UVA school funded spots from the class of 2010 landed permanent, full time legal work. Obviously 30k a year is a small starting salary, but most PI people aren't expecting to make bank anyways and are probably relaying on loan forgiveness.

It is perhaps not ideal, but in many cases seems to work, and is certainly better than unemployment. In any event, discounting it completely is absurd.

The jobs don't actually get your foot in the door for PI jobs. You're confusing cause with correlation. You can easily volunteer at PI orgs for free (and yes you're not paid a measly 30k that year), but you have the same chance of landing the PI job as someone who gets 30k from their school. So this is first reason - there is no cause, just correlation. (And getting pity paid by your school is not a job.)

Since the jobs don't really provide any employment benefit, it also leads to the conclusion that it's just a scheme for law schools to game the rankings. This is substantiated by the fact that these fellowships didn't exist before the recession.

Your saying something pretty strange here. Even if I grant you that one could volunteer for free and have the same chance at landing the job as a fellow (which I have no idea is true or not), its objectively better to be making 30k/yr then to be doing the same work for free.

Also, you say there is no employment benefit for these fellowships but readily admit that doing the work (either as a volunteer or a fellow) can give you a chance at landing a gig. This is inconsistent.

Lastly, you seem to be missing the point here pretty hard. Its kind of a given that getting a job right out of law school is better than doing a fellowship. However, given that the fellowships are paid, and do lead to real work, its absurd to discount them completely.

lecsa wrote:If we were to count these short-term fellowships, we should also count those who volunteered for free at PI orgs and then ended up with full-time offers (but we don't have these numbers, so to be fair I'm excluding both).

I don't see any reason why the two categories should be lumped together, as one is paid and the other is not. It might be useful to compare the two categories if we had all the data, but they aren't the same.

furrrman wrote:

lecsa wrote:

furrrman wrote:Lecsa, I'm wondering what reason you have for being so hard on these school funded jobs, particularly UVA. According to this, (http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/news/2 ... NT0000AE76), 35 of the 40 UVA school funded spots from the class of 2010 landed permanent, full time legal work. Obviously 30k a year is a small starting salary, but most PI people aren't expecting to make bank anyways and are probably relaying on loan forgiveness.

It is perhaps not ideal, but in many cases seems to work, and is certainly better than unemployment. In any event, discounting it completely is absurd.

The jobs don't actually get your foot in the door for PI jobs. You're confusing cause with correlation. You can easily volunteer at PI orgs for free (and yes you're not paid a measly 30k that year), but you have the same chance of landing the PI job as someone who gets 30k from their school. So this is first reason - there is no cause, just correlation. (And getting pity paid by your school is not a job.)

Since the jobs don't really provide any employment benefit, it also leads to the conclusion that it's just a scheme for law schools to game the rankings. This is substantiated by the fact that these fellowships didn't exist before the recession.

Your saying something pretty strange here. Even if I grant you that one could volunteer for free and have the same chance at landing the job as a fellow (which I have no idea is true or not), its objectively better to be making 30k/yr then to be doing the same work for free.

Also, you say there is no employment benefit for these fellowships but readily admit that doing the work (either as a volunteer or a fellow) can give you a chance at landing a gig. This is inconsistent.

Lastly, you seem to be missing the point here pretty hard. Its kind of a given that getting a job right out of law school is better than doing a fellowship. However, given that the fellowships are paid, and do lead to real work, its absurd to discount them completely.

Volunteer for free for a year --> Job
Volunteer for free a year (effectively what you're doing by the PI's perspective) + 30k "gift" by school --> Job.

The 30k is a useless variable in the above and does not open your door to PI jobs.

Just read the below again. I don't get what's hard to understand. I also think it'd be unfair to include fellowships as employment while excluding volunteer work that turns into jobs. But we don't have the numbers for the latter so I'm excluding both.

The fellowships don't actually get your foot in the door for PI jobs. You're confusing cause with correlation. You can easily volunteer at PI orgs for free (and yes you're not paid a measly 30k that year), but you have the same chance of landing the PI job as someone who gets 30k from their school. So this is first reason - there is no cause, just correlation. I also don't consider a short-term fellowship paid by a school as having a job. (Along the same lines, maybe we should remove short-term/part-time bar passage jobs too from the numbers, which I may do later.)

If we were to count these short-term fellowships, we should also count those who volunteered for free at PI orgs and then ended up with full-time offers (but we don't have these numbers, so to be fair I'm excluding both).

Since the fellowships don't really provide any employment benefit, it also leads to the conclusion that it's just a scheme for law schools to game the rankings and mask their worse employment prospects. This is substantiated by the fact that these fellowships didn't exist before the recession.

lecsa wrote:

furrrman wrote:

lecsa wrote:

furrrman wrote:Lecsa, I'm wondering what reason you have for being so hard on these school funded jobs, particularly UVA. According to this, (http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/news/2 ... NT0000AE76), 35 of the 40 UVA school funded spots from the class of 2010 landed permanent, full time legal work. Obviously 30k a year is a small starting salary, but most PI people aren't expecting to make bank anyways and are probably relaying on loan forgiveness.

It is perhaps not ideal, but in many cases seems to work, and is certainly better than unemployment. In any event, discounting it completely is absurd.

The jobs don't actually get your foot in the door for PI jobs. You're confusing cause with correlation. You can easily volunteer at PI orgs for free (and yes you're not paid a measly 30k that year), but you have the same chance of landing the PI job as someone who gets 30k from their school. So this is first reason - there is no cause, just correlation. (And getting pity paid by your school is not a job.)

Since the jobs don't really provide any employment benefit, it also leads to the conclusion that it's just a scheme for law schools to game the rankings. This is substantiated by the fact that these fellowships didn't exist before the recession.

Your saying something pretty strange here. Even if I grant you that one could volunteer for free and have the same chance at landing the job as a fellow (which I have no idea is true or not), its objectively better to be making 30k/yr then to be doing the same work for free.

Also, you say there is no employment benefit for these fellowships but readily admit that doing the work (either as a volunteer or a fellow) can give you a chance at landing a gig. This is inconsistent.

Lastly, you seem to be missing the point here pretty hard. Its kind of a given that getting a job right out of law school is better than doing a fellowship. However, given that the fellowships are paid, and do lead to real work, its absurd to discount them completely.

Volunteer for free for a year --> Job
Volunteer for free a year (effectively what you're doing by the PI's perspective) + 30k "gift" by school --> Job.

The 30k is a useless variable in the above and does not open your door to PI jobs.

Was this in dispute? If one works a 150k/yr biglaw job then transfers to a new position, they don't get their new position because of their salary but because of their experience. The money made is technically always a useless variable, its about the relevant experience. Same goes for our discussion. The point is doing the same job for free or getting 30k/yr.

lecsa wrote: The jobs don't actually get your foot in the door for PI jobs. You're confusing cause with correlation. You can easily volunteer at PI orgs for free (and yes you're not paid a measly 30k that year), but you have the same chance of landing the PI job as someone who gets 30k from their school. So this is first reason - there is no cause, just correlation. I also don't consider a short-term fellowship paid by a school as having a job. (Along the same lines, maybe we should remove short-term/part-time bar passage jobs too from the numbers, which I may do later.)

If we were to count these short-term fellowships, we should also count those who volunteered for free at PI orgs and then ended up with full-time offers (but we don't have these numbers, so to be fair I'm excluding both).

Since the fellowships don't really provide any employment benefit, it also leads to the conclusion that it's just a scheme for law schools to game the rankings and mask their worse employment prospects. This is substantiated by the fact that these fellowships didn't exist before the recession.

It seems like your upset because schools use these fellowships to game their rankings. Honestly, so what? If you're getting paid you're getting paid, who cares if the school's intentions aren't entirely wholesome?

As I have said said, fellowships are perhaps not the most desirable outcome, but I don't think its fair to discount them completely, or to lump them in with unpaid volunteer work.

Question: if the 30k/yr came from the PI org and not the school would you still have a problem?

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lecsa wrote: Schools shouldn't be allowed to manipulate their employment statistics using fellowships, which is exactly what they are doing. These are also temporary fellowships (not real, permanent jobs). I'll consider removing the short-term bar passage required jobs from the numbers too and then you can stop complaining (although there are legitimate short term jobs like Skadden fellowships).

Also, why do you care so much? Don't you want 0Ls to have all of the information available?

It may be a bit misleading to include fellowships in a schools overall employment metric, but this is largely because we don't have a complete understanding of their outcomes. However, it would be equally misleading, probably more so, to exclude them completely. I think the proper way to display them is with an asterisk, as LST does.

And yes, as a 0L I desire complete and accurate information for myself and anyone else making the law school decision. Statistics like a school's overall employment are valuable, however it would be foolish for anyone to take them at face value and not investigate any deeper (e.g. comparing placement in firms 2-100 to 101+). Ditto for PI placement and these fellowships.

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I see your point, and I don't think schools should use these things to game statistics, but I don't think it's as easy as saying "the person could get the same job by volunteering." That's true so far as it goes, but the point is that the fellowship allows someone who'd otherwise have to barista at Starbucks to volunteer somewhere that might hire them. It helps people who can't afford to just volunteer for free until they get hired. And I know a number of people from my school who got their jobs this way.

I agree that they aren't the same as actual jobs, though. I'd rather see schools offer them than not, but I think they need to be clearly counted as "other" in employment stats. (I'd also love to see schools start collecting/publishing stats about the long-term outcomes, but that seems pretty unlikely to happen.)

Funny you take out school funded jobs but consider solo practice and 2-10 attorney shops legit.

lecsa wrote: Since the fellowships don't really provide any employment benefit, it also leads to the conclusion that it's just a scheme for law schools to game the rankings and mask their worse employment prospects.

Don't assume that everyone who gets a school-funded job would be unemployed otherwise. Someone interested in PI may jump at the opportunity to work in a PI firm making $30,000 through the school; that doesn't mean that in the absence of that opportunity he would be volunteering or out of work.

On the other hand, until there's more transparency regarding these positions and their outcomes, lumping them in with the FT/LT numbers doesn't make sense either.

Solution is to subtract the number of school funded jobs from both the FT/LT figure and the total number of graduates.

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