Top Law Schools

Disclaimer: if you don't have any reasoning or thoughts, don't just post a school, GTFO and save your time. I really and truly appreciate those who are sharing actual thoughts and provoking questions that will help with the decision. Posting anything under a few words is really just a waste of your time and slightly annoying to wade through.

Thank you again to those offering serious help and consideration and PMs.


-The schools you are considering
Yale
Univ. of Chicago
(Harvard, sort of)

-The total Cost of Attendance (COA) of each
Yale: $240,000
Chicago: whatever I spend on food/dates/entertainment and flights to/from places
Harvard: $255,000

-How you will be financing your COA, i.e. loans, family, or savings
Yale: $150,000ish debt, the rest from college funds/parents
Chicago: Rubenstein scholarship lolz
Harvard: $165,000ish debt, the rest from college funds/parents

-Where you are from and where you want to work, and other places where you have significant ties (if any)
From the great state of Texas
Family ties in Chicago area
Don't care where I work

-Your general career goals
Two true paths:
1. Clerk, work in biglaw a few years for experience, enter academia (either for PhD then professor at a business school, or straight to professor at business school - teaching business undergrads biz law courses
2. Work for a firm on sports league clients or become an agent, after a few years go back for MBA, move into front office of a sports team
(I'll let my experiences in law school help guide this choice based on what I like)

This section has caused some confusion, so let me be clear: In academia I would want to be a professor at a BUSINESS school, not a law school. Does anyone have experience with this hiring? Some of the professors I speak to say I'll have to get a PhD which I can do from either school so Yale's not much of a boost. Others say I may not need the PhD so there is a boost.


-Your LSAT/GPA numbers
179
3.97

-How many times you have taken the LSAT
Once. Retake?

Instinctive wrote:[
1. Clerk, work in biglaw a few years for experience, enter academia (either for PhD then professor at a business school, or straight to professor at business school - teaching business undergrads biz law courses
2. Work for a firm on sports league clients or become an agent, after a few years go back for MBA, move into front office of a sports team
(I'll let my experiences in law school help guide this choice based on what I like)

YLS

...

....hell, I'd take the Ruby and run...

Y O L O
A
L
E

Edit: This wasn't meant to be that serious of a reply, but it does make sense if your #1 goal is academia.

manu6926 wrote:Yale.
You only have one life.

This is exactly the reason I would go with the free ride to a T5 school.

OP, you should ask how many people answering are 0Ls.

(guy who turned down a Ruby for Yale)

$$$$$$ wrote:

manu6926 wrote:Yale.
You only have one life.

This is exactly the reason I would go with the free ride to a T5 school.

Agreed.

Not that Chi is necessarily the right call here considering OP's goals, but when I hear YOLO my first thought is "Yeah, and it would suck to spend it paying off massive loans."

Hamilton Rubenstein College of Law is the best law school in the country.

(Also, credit to what the person above said regarding 0Ls. Perspective changes once you're in the ball game, one way or another. I probably would've answered Yale before experiencing what bigdebt truly felt like and how it can limit you.)

OP, its very important that you sort out the 0L input from that of graduates. I would put a lot more stock into the latter if there seems to be a consensus among there. I would discount any input along the lines of "YOLO" , "dude, its Yale" or any similar garbage.

How absolutely deadset are you on academia and becoming a professor? Is that your true goal such that you would be willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for it right here and now? (and no, "I would like to keep doors open" isn't a reason that adults in the real world spend hundreds of thosands of dollars) Unless you are absolutely certain on this, then I would pick Chicago in a heartbeat. As a grad, I can see very clearly that the differences between schools and the differences in outcomes that I may have perceived or thought up as an applicant/student aren't actually as large as we made them out to be. In reality, a school like Chicago isn't so monumentally different from any of HYS. And its most certainly not 150-165K different.

In the end, you will end up with a killer job, a degree from a killer school, have tons of doors open to you, and with insane career flexibility due to your lack of debt.

While having a significantly better shot at clerking is cool and all, figure out if it's actually worth the money to you. There are certainly circumstances where Yale (even at sticker) is an objectively better choice than a full ride at CCN, but I don't get the feeling this is one of those times.

I'm an 0L, so you can stop reading if you want. But my uninformed opinion would be to really look into what kind of impact that kind of debt is going to have on you in the future. That's a lot of money and while Yale is phenomenal and all, and the opportunities are incredible, you will still have that debt to pay back and it will definitely be burdensome. Not to mention if you ever find yourself unsatisfied with your career choices the debt will be a significant hindrance.

Chicago with a full ride is also a phenomenal opportunity and

kaiser wrote:In the end, you will end up with a killer job, a degree from a killer school, have tons of doors open to you, and with insane career flexibility due to your lack of debt.

For the same reason most people choose not to get tattoos (because they may change their mind later on) you should be wary of taking on such an obscene amount of debt. You don't know what other opportunities may present themselves to you in the future or which of your goals may change. That much debt, even from YLS, will severely restrict your freedom in the future.

Ruby.

...

manu6926 wrote:

cotiger wrote:

$$$$$$ wrote:

manu6926 wrote:Yale.
You only have one life.

This is exactly the reason I would go with the free ride to a T5 school.

Agreed.

Not that Chi is necessarily the right call here considering OP's goals, but when I hear YOLO my first thought is "Yeah, and it would suck to spend it paying off massive loans."

But isn't Yale a much better option for anyone aiming to pursue clerking and especially, academia? I've looked at the faculty directory of the top 6 schools and most of the profs went to Yale and if not, Harvard. I guess OP could just go with option 2 if option 1 fails.

Yep. No doubt it is better. But having a tiny percent chance instead of a super tiny percent chance at getting into academia is not worth 200k. And how can you be sure you want to spend your life teaching and studying law when you've never even been a law student? You can't. And if you change your mind, you'll be damn glad not to have 200k over your head.

What percentage of Yale admits do you guys think get either Hamilton or Ruby or even Levy? Seems like by TLS logic, Yale shouldn't even exist.

manu6926 wrote:

cotiger wrote:

$$$$$$ wrote:

manu6926 wrote:Yale.
You only have one life.

This is exactly the reason I would go with the free ride to a T5 school.

Agreed.

Not that Chi is necessarily the right call here considering OP's goals, but when I hear YOLO my first thought is "Yeah, and it would suck to spend it paying off massive loans."

But isn't Yale a much better option for anyone aiming to pursue clerking and especially, academia? I've looked at the faculty directory of the top 6 schools and most of the profs went to Yale and if not, Harvard. I guess OP could just go with option 2 if option 1 fails.

That's why I said Chi is not necessarily the right call. If OP truly wants academia as his passion and goal in life, then Yale might be worth the extra $200k to him. But if OP just thinks that academia is something that sounds interesting and that he might be interested in pursuing it, then it's almost certainly not.

I was more referring to the frequent references to YOLO wrt YHS (and especially Yale) in the general sense. If you have a very specific goal where only YHS will do, then yeah, go ahead and take on the debt. Follow your dreams. But if you aren't deadset on one particular thing (or more specifically, one particular thing that is YHS-dependent), then YOLO to me means the freedom that comes from being totally debt-free with a top-notch law degree under your belt.

It should be noted that OP doesn't seem to want legal academia (if I'm reading correctly), so YLS's extra academia magic probably isn't worth as much as it otherwise would be. I would take the Ruby. It's hardly a bad decision to choose Yale but you're probably going to end up at a big firm either way -- only from Yale you'll be at a "better" firm and with six figures of extra debt. Maybe that's worth it to you. If Yale is going to actually cost you $250k in real money (like, you'd personally get the fund money or parental support otherwise) then that starts to sound like a bad decision.

aboutmydaylight wrote:What percentage of Yale admits do you guys think get either Hamilton or Ruby or even Levy? Seems like by TLS logic, Yale shouldn't even exist.

Debt wasn't always an issue the way it is today. 30 years ago, perhaps our opinions would be entirely different. Back then, they genuinely could downplay the debt (since any solid job would allow you to pay it off), and just say "dude, we're freakin Yale" and it would be a done deal.

Actually, wtf am I doing...

ATTENTION ALL UCHI SCHOLLY PEEPS (AND ESPECIALLY RUBYS): Please submit your deposits to YHS now. There is nothing that can compare to the educational quality and professional opportunities that you will experience at these schools. The debt is meaningless in the long-run. Don't kick be that guy who lives with regret in his typical, boring job that he had to settle for because he was too short-sighted and miserly in his 20s. You only live once. Thank you, and godspeed.

cotiger wrote:Actually, wtf am I doing...

ATTENTION ALL UCHI SCHOLLY PEEPS (AND ESPECIALLY RUBYS): Please submit your deposits to YHS now. There is nothing that can compare to the educational quality and professional opportunities that you will experience at these schools. The debt is meaningless in the long-run. Don't kick be that guy who lives with regret in his typical, boring job that he settled for because he was too short-sighted and miserly in his 20s. You only live once. Thank you, and godspeed.

Lol, love it. And tell them that, when they decline that Ruby, that they should pass along a note saying that they bequeath the money specifically to cotiger

Yale for clerking/academia goals

nebula666 wrote:Yale for clerking/academia goals

It isn't legal academia though.

As a living, breathing law school grad, I can tell you that if you straight up that if you got into Yale then you should be able to crush it in any law school if you put in the work and have no problem getting a clerkship. I went to a T-14 and know kids who did top-third with fed clerkships.

Also, YLS doesn't get you business school professor jobs (did no one else read that in the OP?) and becoming a sports agent? Guess what dude, you know how much money you make a agencies like CAA before you have clients? I can tell you it isn't going to help pay off 200K in loans.

For this guys career goals (if even possible to achieve) a free ride from Chicago (also a school with a ridiculously good B school btw) would be absolutely retarded to turn down in favor of YLS or HLS with 200K in debt. If you take Chicago and get in with bschool students by taking classes there you may never have to work a day of biglaw in your life.

0Ls should not be having an opinion on this at all, they know nothing, I know this because I was once an 0L and I knew absolutely nothing. Now I pay 2000 a month to the USA for my ability to read a contract a little bit better than a normal smart person. Trust me when I say T5 for free is greater than anything for 200K

2L here. Took SLS over Yale/Ruby. Agree that for most people that choose between Yale/Ruby/whatever, your career options will be such that the debt will go away. There are things in life worth $150k, and a really positive law school experience/not insignificant jump on clerkships (which seem to be very positive experiences for the lion's share of clerks) might be some of those things, so if OP's gut is to go with Yale, I would say do it.

That said, OP also has kind of half-baked career ideas. The old, handful-of-years-in-biglaw-and-then-cushy-professor-job plan, plus oh maybe be a sports agent? If you're not committed to following the money after you graduate (i.e., staying the biglaw route for more than a couple of years), not being strapped to a 150k loan will make it easier for you to move into another world (even the extremely unlikely worlds you've suggested), given you have the right connections (obviously a degree from Yale as opposed to H/S/C/C isn't going to be worth anything in the move into sports, and maybe quite a bit in the move into academia).