Top Law Schools

I'm applying to law school in the next cycle, 2016-2017. I'm doing the LSAT, as well as all the other stuff right now.

Are there any sources of good information the different legal markets and what it's like to live somewhere?

This is coming from someone who has lived in Tampa/Orlando, FL his whole life. I am excited for the new opportunities, and I think I'll be a good applicant to the top schools, but I am not sure of the various cities. How do I know if I'd prefer SF, LA, DC, NY, Boston, etc?

I think I'd like Boston, but it's tough to tell for me. I want to practice transnational/corporate if at all possible.

Law school is not like undergrad, you can't just randomly go somewhere without any ties. NY does not care about ties and DC doesn't really either, but DC is very grades conscience and hard to crack. The other cities you mentioned prefer people that have ties to the city. And just going to law school there won't necessarily be enough. If you really want to live in Boston, take a year off and work and live there. That is really the only way you're going to know if a city is right for you. Otherwise, at least visit and spend some time in the cities you are considering.

For now focus on the LSAT and try to get a scholarship to a t14 school. Then you'll have more options on where to practice.

This depends on too many factors. Are your stats good enough to go to Harvard, or good enough to go to Boston College? If the former, you can delay your eventual market choice because of a mobile degree. If the latter, you need to decide where you want to live. Do you want to end up in Florida? It's a real rough market. Most places are, though, so it's kind of pick your poison depending on what you want to do.

Everywhere in the US is pretty much the same. If you have the numbers to get into a top school, pick based on scholarship with weather as a tiebreaker. For your job, pick based on weather with salary vs. cost-of-living as a tie-breaker.

If you don't have the numbers to get into a top school, stay in Florida because you'll need the ties to find a job and the weather's decent.

Nothing really compares to getting out and living and working in one of these markets for yourself, but there are guides that can at least give you an idea of what kind of work is being done in different cities. If you're interested in BigLaw it's important learn everything you can about the available jobs, the type of work, the expectations placed on associates, and just how difficult it is to land something in a given market. A lot of people have this dream they'll go to a good school and have magical opportunities anywhere in the country, and this is simply not the case. Most of the Biglaw jobs are in New York, but the billable hours requirements for NY associates are also amongst the highest anywhere (though plenty of other markets are still brutal, depending on the firm). NY has a huge emphasis on corporate law, financial services, and a whole bunch of stuff I don't know much about, though there's a lot of litigation work as well. DC is a huge market, but still significantly smaller than NY, and there's a general perception that the hours are slightly more humane; this all translates to a much more competitive atmosphere for biglaw jobs, and NY is already competitive. Other big markets include Chicago, LA, SF, Houston, and Dallas and probably a few I'm forgetting. Meanwhile, smaller cities like Portland and Austin sound great on paper, but they're virtually impossible to land due to the tiny class size for incoming associates. It changes year by year, but Portland hires something like 20 new biglaw associates per year. Out of the entire country. Most of those jobs go to people that were born and raised there and either went to a local school and came out at the top of their class, or went to Harvard and did well.

This is a long and rambling way to say that you need to dive in and really explore a LOT of issues before you can make an informed decision on where you want to (and where you might be able to) build a career. Good starting place for regional research is the chambers-associate regional guides:
http://www.chambers-associate.com/where ... nal-guides

Well, seems like I should forget about it right now and slay my apps. It sounds like it is not yet time to decide. I have a corporate background but no specific interests, so I guess the Northeast makes sense at the moment.