Top Law Schools

As someone who is biglaw or bust, which would be better BU or Fordham? I would like to live in either Boston or NYC but neither has an edge over the other. Similar COL costs and expecting similar scholarships.
Lsat: 164
Gpa: 3.75

Neither if biglaw or bust. Your pick based on which is cheaper/which city you'd prefer living in if you're actually comfortable with the possibility of finding work in a smaller firm or jobs that will likely pay more modestly. Otherwise retake for an option that places more than 50% of its graduates into Biglaw. That's the only reasonable way to be "Biglaw or bust."

Change your LSAT score or change your career goals. Neither of these schools are viable for someone who is "biglaw or bust".

I applied this most recent cycle with similar stats and received 90k from fordham and 75k from BU. So evaluate total cost of attendance based on that.

The posters above are pointing out that both schools place roughly a third of their graduates into biglaw. While it's attainable, you can't assume you'll land in the top third. These schools are loaded with students who are just as intelligent and driven as you are.

Will you be financing law school entirely through loans? Would you be categorically unhappy doing anything else? My point is, these schools have solid employment stats and will put you in a good position to be a lawyer in their respective markets. But, if you finish around the median, you can assume you're not landing big law.

My advice is to retake if you're actually dead set on big law or would be financing the remainder of your attendance entirely through loans.

mrtux45 wrote:I applied this most recent cycle with similar stats and received 90k from fordham and 75k from BU. So evaluate total cost of attendance based on that.

The posters above are pointing out that both schools place roughly a third of their graduates into biglaw. While it's attainable, you can't assume you'll land in the top third. These schools are loaded with students who are just as intelligent and driven as you are.

Will you be financing law school entirely through loans? Would you be categorically unhappy doing anything else? My point is, these schools have solid employment stats and will put you in a good position to be a lawyer in their respective markets. But, if you finish around the median, you can assume you're not landing big law.

My advice is to retake if you're actually dead set on big law or would be financing the remainder of your attendance entirely through loans.

That's solid advice I'll think I'll focus my energy on a retake and go from there. The reason i made this post is because Fordham advertises that they put 40% of their graduates into large firms in NYC. I had taken that to mean that the top 40% (which is really only a little above the median?) Gets a shot at biglaw. I assumed that BU might have similar numbers in the Boston law market. Am I misinterpreting those numbers or being too optimistic?

I took Fordham with 45k a year over NU at sticker. No regrets. 40% doesn't necessarily mean top 40. I'd definitely want to be top half though, and maybe have some experience interviewing.

Have you met Lydia? wrote:I took Fordham with 45k a year over NU at sticker. No regrets. 40% doesn't necessarily mean top 40. I'd definitely want to be top half though, and maybe have some experience interviewing.

Can I ask what your stats were?
NU is a school that I'm also interested in but I consider to be a bit of a reach with my stats. Are you currently at Fordham or are you an alum? Was there anything that gave Fordham an edge for you or was purely financial?

Take a look at my post history for a bunch of posts on the subject from 3 years ago. Won't be hard to find because I've only posted 20 times lol.

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Fredfredburger0123 wrote:

mrtux45 wrote:I applied this most recent cycle with similar stats and received 90k from fordham and 75k from BU. So evaluate total cost of attendance based on that.

The posters above are pointing out that both schools place roughly a third of their graduates into biglaw. While it's attainable, you can't assume you'll land in the top third. These schools are loaded with students who are just as intelligent and driven as you are.

Will you be financing law school entirely through loans? Would you be categorically unhappy doing anything else? My point is, these schools have solid employment stats and will put you in a good position to be a lawyer in their respective markets. But, if you finish around the median, you can assume you're not landing big law.

My advice is to retake if you're actually dead set on big law or would be financing the remainder of your attendance entirely through loans.

That's solid advice I'll think I'll focus my energy on a retake and go from there. The reason i made this post is because Fordham advertises that they put 40% of their graduates into large firms in NYC. I had taken that to mean that the top 40% (which is really only a little above the median?) Gets a shot at biglaw. I assumed that BU might have similar numbers in the Boston law market. Am I misinterpreting those numbers or being too optimistic?

You're correct about BU putting a similar % of their graduates in big law as Fordham. And as another poster mentioned, it isn't "top 40%" who get big law, because some high ranking people may have different goals, etc. But from what I understand, you want to approach the big law % number as a reasonable class rank benchmark when evaluating your own chances at making big law

It's hard to know exactly what percentage of its graduating class Fordham sends to "BigLaw", because they don't tell you that. When I graduated from Fordham (several years after the recession), it was about 25-33%, if you include federal clerkships. That is compared to around 40% of graduates who didn't have full time legal employment (JD required) 9 months after graduation; i.e., you were more likely to not have any job at all than you were to have a job in Big Law (or a federal clerkship). That is a terrible outcome given the cost of attendance and the limited geographic range of the school's influence.

That said,Fordham's numbers appear to have improved some in recent years; based on their ABA required disclosures for the class of 2018, their BigLaw/federal clerkship class percentage has now peaked at about 35-40%. But even now, 20% of the class is unemployed 9 months out. So attending the school with anything less than half tuition is still risky.

Also, there are usually a handful of people (maybe 5-10% of the class) who wanted to work in BigLaw while they were in school, who could not get a job in BigLaw right out of school, but who are eventually able to lateral into a BigLaw firm after 2-3 years. Typically, these are either federal or New York State Court of Appeals judicial law clerks, or associates at a good mid-size or boutique law firms specializing an area of law for which a large law firm had a need. I hope this is helpful.