Prospective Students - Why are you fixated on Harvard Law School? Forum

[nealric]

If your goal was to show that Harvard's "lay prestige" and "alumni network" makes it equal to YLS and superior to the rest of the T13, then I think these charts fail miserably. Which is weird, because I actually agree that HLS has great lay prestige and a strong alumni network. Not enough prestige/network for me to condone kids taking HLS with $200K debt over a Hamilton or Ruby, but 0Ls gonna 0L.

An excellent post and a terrific summation.

I do think there are a few situations where taking H with the debt may make sense. For example, someone wanting to work in a foreign country (and I don't mean as a U.S.-qualified associate in a London/Hong Kong BigLaw cap markets group). If (admittedly a big if!) it makes sense for this hypothetical 0L to attend law school in the U.S. (as opposed to, say, doing an MBA/MPP or attending law school abroad), then the power of Harvard's global lay prestige may actually justify a much higher price tag over Chicago. Or, say, a 0L laser-focused on academia, with a particular interest in a niche area where only Harvard (due to its tremendous faculty size) has professors interested in that area. Again, debatable whether a 0L ought to be so laser-focused on a particular niche area, but in that rare case then it could make sense to attend Harvard over Chicago.

But again, these are pretty rare exceptions. For the vast, vast majority of 0Ls, choosing HLS with $200k debt over a Ruby at Chicago would be foolish in the extreme. The typical HLS grad is going to have outcomes functionally identical to the typical CCN grad.

I know we've disagreed on this before, but I think "foolish in the extreme" overstates the case. $200k in debt just isn't that much money compared to the career of the median HLS or CCN grad. I'd pay gladly $200k to trade my GULC degree for an HLS degree (if such a thing were possible)- even though I'm already ensconced in a great job.

[The Lsat Airbender]

I don’t think anyone’s really argued there’s significant daylight between H and S, I think it’s more than S is more like Y in being an admissions black box (and of course small).

Why are we back to lumping H in with Y/S again [...]?

The dispute right now ITT is different: it's the time-old question of whether HLS is on par with (or even better than) YLS/SLS. To this day, in the relevant legal community I've only seen (some) HLS students/alums advance the HLS >= YLS/SLS view.

Sure Harvard is objectively better than CCN all things equal, but I do agree with QC that it is more similar to CCN than it is to Y or even S.

Personally, if I were giving advice to a friend or relative deciding between HLS and SLS at equal cost I'd have to start looking for tiebreakers - preference for this or that climate, interest in a particular professor's niche research area. If Stanford were even $10-20k more expensive I'd lean Harvard absent a unique reason for preferring the former. Chicago, on the other hand, would have to be $50-60k cheaper than H/S before we get into tiebreaker territory, and I'm a huge Chicago homer.

[QContinuum]

For the vast, vast majority of 0Ls, choosing HLS with $200k debt over a Ruby at Chicago would be foolish in the extreme. The typical HLS grad is going to have outcomes functionally identical to the typical CCN grad.

Surely you'd say the same about Stanford though, right?

I'm still waiting for someone to explain why there's so much daylight between HLS and SLS (it's always seemed to me that the former is better at things where a large class size is helpful and the latter is better at things where a small class size is helpful, and unless you have a strong SF/Boston preference it's hard to regret choosing one over the other) that the classic HYS/CCN formulation is misleading and needs to be replaced with YS/HCCN. Instead the goalposts keep moving to "Harvard isn't worth $200k more than Chicago" or "Yale is better than Harvard". Some of these posts feel like red-herring LR answer choices.

Stanford's an interesting case. My view is that even the "national" T13 schools still have some regionality to them. Typically 0Ls have an East Coast/West Coast preference that tilts the calculus one way or another on Stanford.

I will say this. I don't think it's ever economically a wise choice to attend Y, S, or H at a $200k COA vs. CCN on a full-ride. The saying goes, you don't go to YLS to get rich. I also think it's very rare to have a situation where - even "deprioritizing" cost relative to other goals - it makes sense to attend H at $200k vs. CCN on a full-ride. There is a placement differential but it simply isn't that great. I do think that the placement differential between S and CCN is probably big enough that in some cases, if cost is "deprioritized" relative to unicorn ambitions, it may make sense to choose S.

[The Lsat Airbender]

I will say this. I don't think it's ever economically a wise choice to attend Y, S, or H at a $200k COA vs. CCN on a full-ride. The saying goes, you don't go to YLS to get rich. I also think it's very rare to have a situation where - even "deprioritizing" cost relative to other goals - it makes sense to attend H at $200k vs. CCN on a full-ride. There is a placement differential but it simply isn't that great. I do think that the placement differential between S and CCN is probably big enough that in some cases, if cost is "deprioritized" relative to unicorn ambitions, it may make sense to choose S.

That's fair. I think we all agree that the cliff many 0Ls perceive between #3 and #4 isn't really so huge.

[legalace]

They are the same people eager to let you now that they are the holders of juris doctorates."

It is a Juris Doctor not a Juris Doctorate. Juris is Latin and Doctorate is English. Using Juris Doctorate is like calling a Bachelor of Arts an Artium Bachelor or an Arts Baccalaureus.