Deciding Between Schools Forum

[2592798jf]

Thoughts on Cardozo (with full ride) v. William & Mary (half tuition) v. University of Washington v. UC Davis

[Anon-non-anon]

What do you want to do? Where do you want to live? Any other money on the table? Able to negotiate?

[2592798jf]

I could live anywhere, and between a career in art/entertainment law or dispute resolution.
Looking for opinions on the programs/perceptions if you knew a JD at one of the schools.

[Anon-non-anon]

I could live anywhere, and between a career in art/entertainment law or dispute resolution.
Looking for opinions on the programs/perceptions if you knew a JD at one of the schools.

What do you mean by dispute resolution? As in, litigation?

Art/entertainment law is, I believe, quite difficult to get into. That said, a full ride to Cardozo isn't a horrible option, as you're in NYC and can focus on internships/networking. Your still at a big risk of not getting what you want, but at least you won't have a ton of debt when you graduate.

No idea about the other schools, though I would guess if you look at median outcomes, it's not great.

If your GPA is decent and/or you haven't studied for the LSAT a ton already, may be worth retaking and reapplying. Higher ranked schools will give you better opportunities (especially I imagine Columbia, NYU, USC/UCLA) and less risk.

Individual programs are not important.

[decimalsanddollars]

+1 to non-anon's commentary generally, especially art law being tough to crack into and individual programs being unimportant. I would also recommend retaking and reapplying to get into a higher-ranked school if you have the option to do so, but your choices are OK so far. Here are a few other recommendations:

1) I highly recommend visiting each of these schools, spending a day or two in the city each school is in, and narrowing down where you would want to be. Law school is hard, and it's way harder if you hate being where you are.
2) You should research career paths for getting into "dispute resolution." That could mean a lot of things: do you want to be an arbitrator or mediator? A judge? Do you want to represent clients in arbitration or mediation? The main biglaw/bigfed track is to join a firm or agency as a litigator and develop certain procedural specialties, but honing in on arbitration/mediation is difficult because many of the clients, some of the procedural backdrop, and virtually all of the substantive law overlaps directly with courtroom litigation. If you want to do biglaw/bigfed litigation early in your career---which you will probably have to do to become a marketable arbitrator or mediator---I very highly recommend clerking, and it's easier to do that from higher-ranked schools.
3) Try to get money from UW or UC-D if you haven't already; I remember getting more from them than from W&M back in my day.

As for your current palette of options, I would take Cardozo at full if (and only if) you want to be in NYC. Cardozo has a fine reputation there, and full-tuition will give you less loans/more flexibility to take jobs that aren't biglaw. I know a fair number of grads from W&M and UC-D, and my impression is that W&M places above their weight in biglaw and clerkships, but it's still very much a regional school. UC-D obviously places better on the West Coast. UW is the best school for being in Seattle but places just okay elsewhere. Because these schools are all regional, your options may be (read: probably will be) limited to jobs in the geographical region that school services. That's why I recommend visiting each school and taking some time to interact with each school's city, because it's at least 3 years of your life and, in all likelihood, a lot longer than that. If you want to move around more, you should retake, reapply, and go to a t13 (or at least t20) school.