. Forum

[emwallen]

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[CanadianWolf]

Seems like you'd be leaving too much of your personal life behind you if you went to the West Coast.

My best guess is that the Berkeley brand doesn't mean much on the East Coast.

[Traynor Brah]

Gtown seems like the clear answer here.

[L’Étranger]

My best guess is that the Berkeley brand doesn't mean much on the East Coast.

^Incorrect

[Redamon1]

My best guess is that the Berkeley brand doesn't mean much on the East Coast.

^Incorrect

[CanadianWolf]

Do you have any recent east coast (DC & NYC) placement figures for Berkeley ?

I found 8.3% for DC & 7.7% for NYC on Berkeley's law school page on TLS.

[Redamon1]

Do you have any recent east coast (DC & NYC) placement figures for Berkeley ?

I found 8.3% for DC & 7.7% for NYC on Berkeley's law school page on TLS.

What conclusion do you draw from these numbers? Stanford placed 16% of its graduates in NYC and an undisclosed number in DC (LST). The Stanford degree must not carry much weight on the East Coast.

[CanadianWolf]

Stanford places twice as many of its grads in NYC than does Berkeley.

Go down the list of T-14 law schools & examine the percentage of grads placed in NYC. You'll find Berkeley at the low end--probably at the bottom. Granted it's tough to define "prestige", but what better method than by biglaw NYC or DC placement ?

[OhBoyOhBortles]

Both are great options. I'd go with gtown though. Congrats!

[Redamon1]

Stanford places twice as many of its grads in NYC than does Berkeley.

Go down the list of T-14 law schools & examine the percentage of grads placed in NYC. You'll find Berkeley at the low end--probably at the bottom. Granted it's tough to define "prestige", but what better method than by biglaw NYC or DC placement ?

Ok, let me try another example: Yale places only 10% of its graduates in CA, so it must be a regional school. I'm just trying to point out the role of self selection and the limited value of these numbers to prove prestige or even placement POTENTIAL.

I'm not a top student and I got several offers on the East Coast (V5) but chose to stay in CA. We can debate at the margins schools' relative ability to place in this or that city, but to say that the Berkeley degree does not weigh much on the East Coast is flat out incorrect.

[BiglawAssociate]

TBF, a lot of NY offices of firms don't actively recruit from Berkeley or Stanford, although I'm sure they'd accept mass mailings

I can't really give you advice since you haven't told us COA and you want to do PI (which means you should go for cheap somewhere). But yeah I guess I'd choose GULC here

[Blue0613]

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[Tiago Splitter]

I realize the OP is interested in public interest but I wanted to make a tangential point regarding regional factors that some of the other posters have alluded to.

I spoke to career services at Berkeley, because I was unsure if it made sense to head back east (I'm from PA) from Berkeley vs. going to a school on the east coast. For me, I am currently tempted by NYC biglaw, and many people on this website therefore suggested Cornell was the obvious choice.

I brought this up to the career services dean at berkeley to see what he thought. He said explicitly that getting a big law job in NYC from Berkeley was exceptionally easy. He said that most years around three-dozen top firms come to Berkeley to recruit, and each year there are usually less than 30 Berkeley students interested in heading to NY. He actually said, many top east coast firms almost see a Berkeley degree as "a diversity hire" because firms hope to have a diverse class among the top-tier.

Now again, I realize the OP is interested in PI, but the Berkeley degree is not only especially portable, but it seems to be at a premium for getting a private sector job in non-west coast markets because so few Berkeley kids want to head east.

OTOH, firms know this and NYC OCI participation isn't as robust at Berkeley as it is at most other T-14's. Still pretty easy to get an NYC firm job from Berk but it's pretty easy from any T-13 in the current economy.

The bigger problem is that PI is totally different. I know you acknowledged this but it's worth repeating. Being near your target market matters a lot more for PI than for big firm work.

[dwil770]

In order to receive the best feedback in this forum, please provide as much of the following information in your original post as possible:

-The schools you are considering
-How good of a cook is your SO?
-Is this your first SO?
-How old are you/how much time do you have left to find a new SO?
-Do you have any other options on deck?
-Attractiveness (1-10) of both your SO and you.
-Would they make a good parent?
-Does your family like him/her
-Are you basically looking for a way out?

Please provide this information so TLS can make a proper evaluation of your options.

[usn26]

I seem to remember GULC having a pretty decent selection of family/education clinics/externships/etc. If you don't want to uproot your life I don't see anything wrong with going that route.

[Redamon1]

PI folks should jump in but one thing you want to look at potentially is clerkship and PI fellowship placement... Geographical proximity is useful to build ties with employers, but I also wanted to point out that you can spend your summers in DC from Boalt if you'd like, and there's also the UCDC program that allows you to extern for a semester for a DC nonprofit or a government agency.

[Redamon1]

Oh and compare LRAPs of course...

[usn26]

I also wanted to point out that you can spend your summers in DC from Boalt if you'd like, and there's also the UCDC program that allows you to extern for a semester for a DC nonprofit or a government agency.

This is uber-anectdotal, so I hope current GULC students can weigh in, but an LLM there told me GULC students have trouble finding summer PI jobs in DC, because the agencies/non-profits realize they can get CULC students as externs during the year, so they use their summers to get students from other places. Which makes sense to me, but idk how accurate it is.

[emwallen]

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[Yea All Right]

What would be your reason for uprooting and going to Berkeley? A few ranks up in USN wouldn't be worth it on its own (and Berkeley is ranked too high anyway)

If it's true that Berkeley can get you better PI jobs than Georgetown, then that's one thing, and others will have to chime in on that since I don't know about PI