Top Law Schools

I am thinking about which school I should go to? Does anyone have any ideas about these schools? Like school reputation? Teaching quality?

No, hell no and no

omar1 wrote:No, hell no and no

This.

To give a more substantive and less dismissive response, (1) what kind of law do you hope to practice? and (2) where do you want to live?

(1) None of these schools guarantees you a chance to practice law altogether, and even if you get a job practicing law, things like big law, clerkships and working for the DA or the like will be very difficult to get. Namely, the employment prospects are not great and while you can ultimately work your way up, it's likely you will be making between $50-80k for a while.

(2) These schools are super regional and spread all over the country. Rutgers will limit you to north and mid-Jersey and I have worked with quite a few practicing lawyers in NJ. Hofstra will probably limit you to Long Island - maybe NYC if you get lucky. IU: Indy will limit you to Indianapolis.

I can say that the employment prospects for IU: Indy in Indianapolis are not terrible, and the likelihood of getting a job in Indy are comparable for a McKinney grad as for a Bloomington grad despite the latter's better ranking. However, you don't want to go to IU: Indy and expect to get to the East Coast. That's very unlikely to happen.

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To answer your immediate questions:

Hofstra has a very bad reputation that you will have to succeed in spite of. Rutgers generally has a very bad reputation outside of NJ, but some in NJ see it as a school you go to hustle if you want to hustle your way up from the bottom of the legal profession. McKinney has a very bad reputation but a decent reputation as a workman/workwoman's school in Indianapolis, which is a more working-class city.

But re: reputation - are you speaking about jobs or how other lawyers will view you or if people will assume you're smart? If jobs, see above. If its reputation in the legal industry, their reputations aren't great but they're not generally perceived as downright scams. If whether people will think you're smart, I'd ask you why you care. All you should care about are career satisfaction (money + enjoying what you do) and happiness (work-life balance/loving work so much you don't need one).

Teaching quality is useless. The professors at most law schools will be very intelligent and accomplished, but they're primarily judged on the basis of their research and not their teaching ability. Law school is also taught in an intentionally inefficient manner and not intended to really prepare you for practice. You're really just there to learn how to pass the bar (though indirectly so) and to see how well you take law school exams relative to other students.

^ Your focus should be on (1) and (2) above, not "teaching quality" and "reputation".

I went to Hofstra and I got a job at a vault 50 biglaw firm straight out of graduation. Several of my friends are at vault 5 firms...

Many of my friends work for mid level firms in NYC and DA offices in all boroughs.

Like any school, you’re going to get out of it what you put into it. You’re gonna have to work a little harder than your colleagues at NYU, etc. but it’s not impossible like the people above me said (who likely have no experience with any of these schools).

Hofstra gives a lot of scholarship money, and it’s always worth it to be in the NYC market. I don’t know much about Rutgers or McKinney but I would definitely choose Hofstra if I were to do it all again.

hermionegranger6 wrote:I went to Hofstra and I got a job at a vault 50 biglaw firm straight out of graduation. Several of my friends are at vault 5 firms...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

While you're perusing that, don't think too hard about the 25% (minimum--the numbers prior to the last reports were much bleaker) of your class that weren't working as lawyers 9 months after graduation.

hermionegranger6 wrote:

I went to Hofstra and I got a job at a vault 50 biglaw firm straight out of graduation. Several of my friends are at vault 5 firms...

Many of my friends work for mid level firms in NYC and DA offices in all boroughs.

Like any school, you’re going to get out of it what you put into it. You’re gonna have to work a little harder than your colleagues at NYU, etc. but it’s not impossible like the people above me said (who likely have no experience with any of these schools).

Hofstra gives a lot of scholarship money, and it’s always worth it to be in the NYC market. I don’t know much about Rutgers or McKinney but I would definitely choose Hofstra if I were to do it all again.

See generally survivorship bias.

Not to detract from the conversation, but wouldn't we agree it is easier to place better on the curve at Hofstra than at NYU? I would never say that they present anything near equal outcomes or an NYU student is necessarily smarter than a Hofstra student, but on average would you not think it was easier to do better on a Hofstra curve than an NYU one? Top 5% at Hofstra does sound easier than top 25% at NYU.

LSATWiz.com wrote:Not to detract from the conversation, but wouldn't we agree it is easier to place better on the curve at Hofstra than at NYU? I would never say that they present anything near equal outcomes or an NYU student is necessarily smarter than a Hofstra student, but on average would you not think it was easier to do better on a Hofstra curve than an NYU one? Top 5% at Hofstra does sound easier than top 25% at NYU.

I wouldn't assume that, especially given how easily a single capricious professor can wreck your GPA.

More importantly, top 5% at Hofstra doesn't even guarantee the kinds of outcomes that can be expected from the top 75% at NYU.

cavalier1138 wrote:

LSATWiz.com wrote:Not to detract from the conversation, but wouldn't we agree it is easier to place better on the curve at Hofstra than at NYU? I would never say that they present anything near equal outcomes or an NYU student is necessarily smarter than a Hofstra student, but on average would you not think it was easier to do better on a Hofstra curve than an NYU one? Top 5% at Hofstra does sound easier than top 25% at NYU.

I wouldn't assume that, especially given how easily a single capricious professor can wreck your GPA.

More importantly, top 5% at Hofstra doesn't even guarantee the kinds of outcomes that can be expected from the top 75% at NYU.

Well, we're speaking about on average. I know quite a few people who transferred from these schools to the t-14 who would tell me that some of their classmates read on an 8th or 9th grade level. I'd imagine the top of the curve is highly competitive, but you do have people that are going to struggle to read and write at a college level, much less be able to write like a lawyer.

I find it hard to believe that anyone at a t-14 reads on that level. The LSAT is definitely learnable to an extent, but to get a high score you really need to be able to read quickly (and understand what your read).

As for main focus of this thread, I'd say main point, as others have brought up, is all of these are regional schools. I know plenty of people who went to similar regional schools, and ended up fine, but you really have to be set on practicing in the applicable region. And taking on a debt level that you don't need big law (or even settling for JD advantage).

ghostoftraynor wrote:I find it hard to believe that anyone at a t-14 reads on that level. The LSAT is definitely learnable to an extent, but to get a high score you really need to be able to read quickly (and understand what your read).

As for main focus of this thread, I'd say main point, as others have brought up, is all of these are regional schools. I know plenty of people who went to similar regional schools, and ended up fine, but you really have to be set on practicing in the applicable region. And taking on a debt level that you don't need big law (or even settling for JD advantage).

Yes, I mean at the Hofstra/NYLS/Touro level. Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The premise was they could only get through 4 or 5 pages of case reading a class because a significant percentage of the class simply couldn’t read and understand a standard case. Consequently, an exam may only consist of 20 percent of the material as at a top 14. It certainly favors being good at law school exams but a decent percentage of the class is going to be incapable of applying law to fact on any meaningful level.

hermionegranger6 wrote:

I went to Hofstra and I got a job at a vault 50 biglaw firm straight out of graduation. Several of my friends are at vault 5 firms...

Many of my friends work for mid level firms in NYC and DA offices in all boroughs.

Like any school, you’re going to get out of it what you put into it. You’re gonna have to work a little harder than your colleagues at NYU, etc. but it’s not impossible like the people above me said (who likely have no experience with any of these schools).

Hofstra gives a lot of scholarship money, and it’s always worth it to be in the NYC market. I don’t know much about Rutgers or McKinney but I would definitely choose Hofstra if I were to do it all again.

Teach me your ways

LSATWiz.com wrote:

ghostoftraynor wrote:I find it hard to believe that anyone at a t-14 reads on that level. The LSAT is definitely learnable to an extent, but to get a high score you really need to be able to read quickly (and understand what your read).

As for main focus of this thread, I'd say main point, as others have brought up, is all of these are regional schools. I know plenty of people who went to similar regional schools, and ended up fine, but you really have to be set on practicing in the applicable region. And taking on a debt level that you don't need big law (or even settling for JD advantage).

Yes, I mean at the Hofstra/NYLS/Touro level. Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The premise was they could only get through 4 or 5 pages of case reading a class because a significant percentage of the class simply couldn’t read and understand a standard case. Consequently, an exam may only consist of 20 percent of the material as at a top 14. It certainly favors being good at law school exams but a decent percentage of the class is going to be incapable of applying law to fact on any meaningful level.

Ok, maybe I've just been assuming that most law students are relatively competent across the board, but that's just depressing. That's only the case at a T3/T4 school, right?

cavalier1138 wrote:

LSATWiz.com wrote:

ghostoftraynor wrote:I find it hard to believe that anyone at a t-14 reads on that level. The LSAT is definitely learnable to an extent, but to get a high score you really need to be able to read quickly (and understand what your read).

As for main focus of this thread, I'd say main point, as others have brought up, is all of these are regional schools. I know plenty of people who went to similar regional schools, and ended up fine, but you really have to be set on practicing in the applicable region. And taking on a debt level that you don't need big law (or even settling for JD advantage).

Yes, I mean at the Hofstra/NYLS/Touro level. Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The premise was they could only get through 4 or 5 pages of case reading a class because a significant percentage of the class simply couldn’t read and understand a standard case. Consequently, an exam may only consist of 20 percent of the material as at a top 14. It certainly favors being good at law school exams but a decent percentage of the class is going to be incapable of applying law to fact on any meaningful level.

Ok, maybe I've just been assuming that most law students are relatively competent across the board, but that's just depressing. That's only the case at a T3/T4 school, right?

Yes, but we generally assume all law students are relatively equal on average - like the average student at NYU will turn in the same exam as the average student at Cardozo, but that's really an untenable assumption. While it's probably easier to be above median at the former than top 10% at the latter, I doubt the curves are equally competitive.