Top Law Schools

Hey all! Posting for a non-TLS friend. She wants to pursue a career in entertainment law, specifically music law. She is currently working at an entertainment law firm and probably has a job lined up there coming out of law school. She is based is LA, and from Chicago, not opposed to either city or New York. Her current options are:

Chicago, $45,000 scholarship
Cornell, full-tuition scholarship
Michigan, $135,000 scholarship
Northwestern, $90,000 scholarship
UC Berkeley, $80,000 scholarship
UCLA, $110,000 scholarship

Any/all opinions welcome. Would love to know whether program strength beats prestige for some of the lower ranked schools.

Cornell or Berkeley. Berkeley if she is OK with debt.

Does your friend have a rich family, rich partner, or an independent source of wealth? If not, Cornell hands down.

No rich family or partner. She does want to be somewhere that will help her network with professionals in the entertainment law industry. So she would rather something in a city, or at the very least something that is not so remote that she couldn't do any internship or externship stuff during the semester.

Probably Berkeley since that's the the best school that also has a very good entertainment law program, but if your friend's debt averse I'd say Cornell, they also have an outstanding entertainment law program (somehow).

Cornell or Berkeley.

People who are saying Berkeley--go calculate the COA and then reassess. $80k is not that much at a T14, especially for someone who a) wants a unicorn job and b) may have a job lined up. Why would you literally double your debt load to go to a peer school? Bc of a specialty program? That seems dumb.