Assessing course offerings by area Forum

[sdp001]

I'm considering about 10 law schools at the moment, and am hoping to narrow that to 6 - 7 by the time I apply this fall for the Fall 2015 class. There are a couple of criteria I want to use to narrow my list, first and foremost whether the school has a good selection of courses in the areas I'm looking at practicing on (health care, elections, or bankruptcy). My question is, how do I know whether a school has a good selection of upper-level courses? Is 3 classes in bankruptcy that are regularly offered a lot, a little, about right? I'd hate to wind up at a law school with 3 courses in the area I want to focus on and learn that graduates from 'good' programs in that area typically have taken 5-6 upper level classes in that area.

[brazleton]

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[northwood]

employment outcomes, tuition cost, cost of attendance, distance to your target area- and reputation amongst practicing ( and hiring) attorneys in that are relvant... not classes that they offer/ professors who work there

[timbs4339]

You can find courses by looking at the Course Catalog for the school. It should usually be available online, for example http://web.law.columbia.edu/courses

What you'll realize if you spend more time researching this is that every school will pretend to have a good program in every area of law. They will usually all offer the same courses. What you will also learn is that course offerings don't really matter for employment. If you want to work in the bankruptcy practice of a major law firm, you ace the same 6/7 1L classes that every other student at every other law school takes, and then you apply to firms with large bankruptcy practices and hope they are hiring into that group. Then you can take bankruptcy classes your 2L/3L. If you want to do personal bankruptcies at a smaller law firm, you go out and try to get internships and jobs during law school at those smaller firms so you can build a network and some experience. Taking bankruptcy with some overpaid Yale grad who didn't practice for more than a few years is not going to help you get a job.

The only time a program in bankruptcy might help you is in getting a bankruptcy clerkship- but it's vastly more important to go to an elite law school for those.

This analysis is basically the same for "health care" and "election" law- with the added caveat that if you don't have full-time work experience in either of those areas, it's going to be very hard to convince the boutique firms in those areas to hire you over the 1 million other people who have also taken their school's obligatory one or two classes in those areas.

[sdp001]

You can find courses by looking at the Course Catalog for the school. It should usually be available online, for example http://web.law.columbia.edu/courses

What you'll realize if you spend more time researching this is that every school will pretend to have a good program in every area of law. They will usually all offer the same courses. What you will also learn is that course offerings don't really matter for employment. If you want to work in the bankruptcy practice of a major law firm, you ace the same 6/7 1L classes that every other student at every other law school takes, and then you apply to firms with large bankruptcy practices and hope they are hiring into that group. Then you can take bankruptcy classes your 2L/3L. If you want to do personal bankruptcies at a smaller law firm, you go out and try to get internships and jobs during law school at those smaller firms so you can build a network and some experience. Taking bankruptcy with some overpaid Yale grad who didn't practice for more than a few years is not going to help you get a job.

The only time a program in bankruptcy might help you is in getting a bankruptcy clerkship- but it's vastly more important to go to an elite law school for those.

This analysis is basically the same for "health care" and "election" law- with the added caveat that if you don't have full-time work experience in either of those areas, it's going to be very hard to convince the boutique firms in those areas to hire you over the 1 million other people who have also taken their school's obligatory one or two classes in those areas.

Thanks for your feedback! As it turns out I do have fairly substantial work experience in both health care and election law, but thankfully only minimal experience with bankruptcy!

[jbagelboy]

This should be one of your last, least significant criterion for deciding where to attend.

Once you're staring down the barrel of equal COA at peer schools, then you can start looking at professors and course offerings to tickle your fancy.