How much of an advantage is a T14 for Big Law for a given student? Forum

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nealric

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Re: How much of an advantage is a T14 for Big Law for a given student?

Post by nealric » Wed Jun 15, 2022 1:44 pm

latinx wrote:
Tue Jun 14, 2022 9:38 pm
The Lsat Airbender wrote:
Tue Jun 14, 2022 10:45 am
latinx wrote:
Mon Jun 13, 2022 1:56 pm
Billy Bob gets admitted to a T14 and to a T2. Billy Bob would have an advantage at a T14, but how much of an advantage?
For biglaw? Massive advantage. So large an advantage that that suggesting Billy attend the T2 is irresponsibly stupid advice; anyone dispensing such advice should be ashamed of themselves.
Let's use a definition that big law is represented on the ABA 509 statements as firms with more than 500 lawyers. Using that definition, and using the 2021 data, I added up 2371 graduates of T14 schools got into big law, 1999 graduates of the other Tier 1 schools got into big law, and 950 graduates of Tier 2 schools got into big law. There are also hundreds of Tier 3 and Tier 4 school graduates that got into big law, but I didn't want to add those all up. The point being that MORE LAW SCHOOL GRADUATES FROM SCHOOLS OUTSIDE THE T14 GOT BIG LAW THAN T14 GRADUATES. Again, we are all in agreement that for various reasons, graduates of T14 schools have an advantage in obtaining big law. But the majority of 2021 big law came from outside the T14, despite the lower recruiting, lower networking, lower resources, and other disadvantages. No denying that a smaller fraction of students outside the T14 get big law, and this fraction drops the lower in the ranking you go (meaning you either have to finish higher in the ranking or have connections). But I continue to argue that part of the reason for this is due to the lower quality of the student body (if you use mean LSAT and undergraduate GPA to determine quality). If you take a given student, Billy Bob, the advantage of attending T14 is not as massive as might first appear. Now if Billy Bob feels his life is over if he doesn't get big law, there is no question he should enroll in T14, cost be damned (of course, being in T14 doesn't guarantee big law, and Billy Bob could end up disappointed and broke). There is no doubt there is an advantage but how big of an advantage is it and how much is that advantage worth? Hence the title of this post.
This just sounds like a willful misreading of the statistics. It's not surprising that 86 schools collectively place more people in biglaw than 14. But the percentage of a given student body getting biglaw drops massively with every tier town in the rankings. Of those 86, I think you'll find a huge portion of the biglaw placement comes from schools ranked 15-30. Biglaw placement is generally poor for schools in the 50-100 band.

We've already explained why "student body quality" isn't meaningful for this purpose. You don't actually have to do all that well in the T-14 to get biglaw. At HYSCCN, it's all but guaranteed if you really want it (absent times like the immediate aftermath of the great recession). And if you can get into HYSCCN, you are probably getting significant money (if not a full ride or close) to a lower T14.

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Re: How much of an advantage is a T14 for Big Law for a given student?

Post by Mbrendza » Fri Aug 12, 2022 9:05 pm

nealric wrote:
Tue Jun 14, 2022 2:02 pm
The Lsat Airbender wrote:
Tue Jun 14, 2022 10:45 am
latinx wrote:
Mon Jun 13, 2022 1:56 pm
Billy Bob gets admitted to a T14 and to a T2. Billy Bob would have an advantage at a T14, but how much of an advantage?
For biglaw? Massive advantage. So large an advantage that that suggesting Billy attend the T2 is irresponsibly stupid advice; anyone dispensing such advice should be ashamed of themselves.
This. First of all, to have a shot at Biglaw from most T2s, Billybob can't just do well. He can't just do better than the vast majority of his peers. To have a high chance of success at biglaw, Billybob is going to need to be one of the top handful (5-10 students) in his class, be on the law review, and otherwise be a supestar of the school after the end of 1L year. And EVEN IF he does all that, he's going to be limited to a small handful of firms that recruit at his school.

Lets assume for the sake of argument that Billybob's relatively high LSAT means he's likely to outperform most of his classmates academically. All it takes is ONE bad day for that not to happen. Law school grades are determined almost entirely on a single exam at the end of a semester. You are not feeling well that day, couldn't sleep the night before, dog died, girlfriend broke up with you? Too bad- you have to take that exam. If the bar is that you need to be one of the top 5-10 people, all it takes is a bad day on one exam. Or maybe you just slightly misread an essay prompt, or maybe you simply don't jive with that specific professor. I personally got pretty good grades 1L year, but had a single bad grade that was a total outlier. I just didn't jive with the class or professor. I was at a T-14, so I got biglaw in the end, but had I gone to a T2, that one grade probably would have blown my chances.

At most T14 schools, average performance is fine. While most people at T14s have pretty good credentials, there are still going to be people who are slackers, don't jive with law school, were admitted because their parents are bigshots of some sort, had a personal crisis, etc. Those folks make up most of the bottom 25% of the class. And the thing is, even the bottom of the class has a shot at biglaw because T14 schools obfuscate rankings. At a T2, you will know your exact class rank. A T14 will list cutoffs for "dean's list" or Latin honors designations (usually top 1/3, top 10%, top 5% ish), but it can be very hard to distinguish between bad grades and average grades. At the very top schools, they dispense with traditional grades altogether. Even where there are traditional grades, it's extremely difficult to get a truly bad grade that stands out on your transcript. Anything below a "B-" is rarely given, and it would be almost impossible to actually fail out unless you aren't even trying. At many T2s, a portion of the class flunks out despite trying very hard (that can become a pretty significant percentage at a T4).

So yes, if the goal s biglaw, then the chances of a specific individual achieving that goal are SIGNFICNALTY higher by attending a T14 over a second tier school. That doesn't mean Billybob should never choose the T2. If Billybob got a full ride to his hometown school and wants to be local prosecutor in his hometown, then the T2 could be a fine choice. It's just not the right choice of Billybob has dreams of working for Wachtell (which, by the way does effectively no recruiting below the T14, and very limited recruiting below HYSCCN).
I'll start of by saying I completely agree with Latinx here.

The bolded paragraph above--I disagree with it. On the margins you will have people who mess up and don't live up to their potential. One little thing goes wrong. But everyone has things go wrong! If you average it out, a good student will get good grades, and a bad student will get bad grades. Not everyone starts from zero when they start school. If you're a biglaw candidate to begin school, chances are you will be a candidate when its hiring time.

Its a question of causality. Why do the T14 schools send more kids to biglaw? Is it because they are picked more from those schools? Really, no! That's not the causal mechanism. Its because there are more biglaw quality candidates at those schools. The biglaw recruiters go to where the biglaw candidates are, not the biglaw candidates go to where the recruiters are. I'm not saying this is 100% the case, but this is what determines how the t14 is established. Its a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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Re: How much of an advantage is a T14 for Big Law for a given student?

Post by Mbrendza » Fri Aug 12, 2022 9:09 pm

nealric wrote:
Wed Jun 15, 2022 1:44 pm
You don't actually have to do all that well in the T-14 to get biglaw.
You don't have to, but everyone is still trying their ass off, because they're a T14 law student. Which means there's a level of competition that really drops outside of it.

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Re: How much of an advantage is a T14 for Big Law for a given student?

Post by danishblue » Mon Aug 15, 2022 6:10 am

"T14 schools have better networking, and presumably better faculty."
From above. Doesn't T14 just scoop up the attractive people, like a modelling agency? T14 is not responsible for their students' attractiveness. It's a selection effect, not a treatment effect.

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Re: How much of an advantage is a T14 for Big Law for a given student?

Post by Access » Mon Aug 15, 2022 6:56 am

Mbrendza wrote:
Fri Aug 12, 2022 9:05 pm

Its a question of causality. Why do the T14 schools send more kids to biglaw? Is it because they are picked more from those schools? Really, no! That's not the causal mechanism. Its because there are more biglaw quality candidates at those schools. The biglaw recruiters go to where the biglaw candidates are, not the biglaw candidates go to where the recruiters are. I'm not saying this is 100% the case, but this is what determines how the t14 is established. Its a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This is circular reasoning, and just plain wrong. Biglaw recruit from top schools because the biglaw candidates are in top schools, because biglaw recruit from top schools. But biglaw firms recruit from the top schools because they are prestige focused, so it is causal to an extent, and that's why you're wrong.

What came first, chicken or egg? Idk and idc. Is it so we can say to clients "here's a bright kid from NYU, that should justify your paying 600 an hour"? Maybe. Or maybe it's for no reason at all. I'm not defending this but I can't change the facts.

Also I think there was a discussion earlier if biglaw at a T14 is guaranteed or only very likely. It's true that in boom years anyone with a pulse can get a job from a T13 and not necessarily in tighter years. But the difference is much more stark in a T30. Some schools are 25% biglaw in good years but 10% in bad. Being above 75% LSAT won't save you.

Bottom line is multiple people who know how things work are telling you that it really does matters where you go to school. You can decide for yourself what to do with that information.

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Re: How much of an advantage is a T14 for Big Law for a given student?

Post by danishblue » Mon Aug 15, 2022 7:02 am

"The biglaw recruiters go to where the biglaw candidates are, not the biglaw candidates go to where the recruiters are. I'm not saying this is 100% the case, but this is what determines how the t14 is established. Its a self-fulfilling prophecy."
From above.
I think the BigLaw candidates do go where the recruiters are, in the same way a model must go to the modeling agency to get hired. The modeling agency is where the people with the money hang out. T14 are the modeling agencies. They're not responsible for the attractiveness of the model but the model must hang out there to get hired.
By the way, this is slowly changing because BigLaw are realizing that they're really really bad at making smart hiring decisions.

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Re: How much of an advantage is a T14 for Big Law for a given student?

Post by nixy » Mon Aug 15, 2022 7:12 am

Mbrendza wrote:
Fri Aug 12, 2022 9:09 pm
nealric wrote:
Wed Jun 15, 2022 1:44 pm
You don't actually have to do all that well in the T-14 to get biglaw.
You don't have to, but everyone is still trying their ass off, because they're a T14 law student. Which means there's a level of competition that really drops outside of it.
To the extent everyone in the T14 is trying hard (which I question - I’ve seen tons of T14 students talk about not going to class, learning an outline at the end of the semester, and taking their gentleman’s B+), there’s no cliff that everyone falls off of wrt effort outside the T14. If you’re talking about a school that takes basically everyone regardless of GPA/LSAT, sure. But most of the T1 (and probably a decent number of T2) schools still have plenty of people who work their asses off. To the extent those schools do have people who aren’t willing to work, the percentage they make up doesn’t neatly match the number of people who don’t get biglaw - there are fewer people who simply aren’t working hard than those who don’t get biglaw.

(It’s also generally accepted that there’s much less competition at the T14 because everyone will have a good outcome, whereas at lower-ranked schools your performance wrt your peers matters way more and so people are more competitive, not less.)

Also, re your point about grades - the problem with “averaging it out” is that for the purposes of biglaw, you’re talking about maybe 7-8 discrete instances of getting grades - your final exams over 1L year. That’s not a lot of grades to average out. There are always people who don’t get law school exams the 1st semester, then it clicks the second time around and they excel, but they’re still stuck with 50% of their grades being average or even not good. If that happened at a lower-ranked school, it would tank someone’s shot at biglaw.

Finally, you may be right that recruiters go to where the biglaw candidates are - but your framing of that premise already recognizes that the biglaw candidates are at the T14. Biglaw firms just don’t recruit nearly as heavily outside the T14 as inside it. And yes, you can mass mail, but once a firm has a history of not hiring from a particular school, mass mailing won’t change that.

The best way to be seen and noticed by these employers is to go the T14. Maybe if you’re one of the top students in your class, you’ll be fine wherever. But there isn’t some neat algorithm where you can say, “I got into this T14 school and this T1 school with money, if I got into the T14 I’ll perform better than all the others at the T1, so I can take the T1 and have the same outcome that I would have at the T14.” That may happen, but it may not. The differences between GPA/LSAT at many of the schools at issue aren’t stark enough to allow predicting performance that way. You also never know who else decided to take that T1 admission with money. (Plenty of smart students who know they want to practice local to the T1 just go to the T1, regardless of ability to get into the T14.)

And you never know what’s going to happen - I had a friend who went to a T1 on a full scholarship whose boyfriend dumped her halfway through the first semester. She had thought they were going to get married and was a mess and tanked her exams. That’s not a situation where averaging out your grades is going to get a biglaw job the following summer at a school where biglaw only hires out of the top 10%. If she’d gone to a T14 she’d still have done badly first semester, but would have still had a shot based on how much further into the class biglaw firms hire.

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Re: How much of an advantage is a T14 for Big Law for a given student?

Post by danishblue » Mon Aug 15, 2022 8:58 am

"Biglaw firms just don’t recruit nearly as heavily outside the T14 as inside it. And yes, you can mass mail, but once a firm has a history of not hiring from a particular school, mass mailing won’t change that."
From Nixy above.
There are not enough people in T14 to satisfy the requirements of BigLaw, so they MUST go outside T14. They don't want to. They have to. Some BigLaw won't even interview at Yale Law since they see so many Yale Law grads going into academia or government.

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Re: How much of an advantage is a T14 for Big Law for a given student?

Post by nealric » Mon Aug 15, 2022 11:57 am

Mbrendza wrote:
Fri Aug 12, 2022 9:09 pm
nealric wrote:
Wed Jun 15, 2022 1:44 pm
You don't actually have to do all that well in the T-14 to get biglaw.
You don't have to, but everyone is still trying their ass off, because they're a T14 law student. Which means there's a level of competition that really drops outside of it.
I think the opposite is more likely. At a school where you MUST get top grades to be considered for remunerative employment (that will realistically pay off loans on a reasonable timeframe), there's a huge impetuous to work hard. At a school where anybody with a pulse and a decent handshake gets a biglaw offer, there's much less reason to gun. Also, you have to be egregiously bad to get seriously poor grades at a T14. If you bothered to show up to class and at least spend exam week cramming such that you have at least a passing familiarity with the material, you are going to get at least Bs. Many professors won't even award grades below that mark. At lower tier schools, there are plenty of students who study hard and get Cs or below (in fact some schools will set the curve to a C+ or B-).

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Re: How much of an advantage is a T14 for Big Law for a given student?

Post by nealric » Mon Aug 15, 2022 12:04 pm

danishblue wrote:
Mon Aug 15, 2022 8:58 am
"Biglaw firms just don’t recruit nearly as heavily outside the T14 as inside it. And yes, you can mass mail, but once a firm has a history of not hiring from a particular school, mass mailing won’t change that."
From Nixy above.
There are not enough people in T14 to satisfy the requirements of BigLaw, so they MUST go outside T14. They don't want to. They have to. Some BigLaw won't even interview at Yale Law since they see so many Yale Law grads going into academia or government.
Biglaw firms have historically used the non-T14 schools as overflow (there are some regional exceptions like UTexas in Texas, and UCLA in LA that serve as primary Biglaw feeders rather than overflow on a regional basis). So in a strong hiring year, they will hire a lot, and in a bad year they retreat to the T-14 (the worse things are, the more they retreat). So HYSCCN will only see a modest hit to their biglaw recruiting numbers in a bad recession, but it will be catastrophic in the lower T20 (at least that's what the numbers showed during the great recession period).

There are firms that won't go to Yale, but not because they think they are all just going to academia. It's that lower-tier biglaw firms know that nobody from Yale is likely to accept their offer, so they would be wasting their time going. Wachtell can attract Yale students no problem, DLA Piper is going to have a tough time. It's the same reason why someone with a 3.0 GPA and 155 LSAT probably isn't going to bother applying to Harvard absent some very special circumstance or total delusion, not because they wouldn't accept Harvard in a heartbeat.

Part of the reason why firms go to the T14 is that it's easy. They know the schools, they have a good sense of the academic quality of the given schools, and it's a bit of a "one stop shop." Most NYC biglaw firms are very familiar with Columbia graduates. They aren't going to be nearly as familiar with the graduates of a second tier school across the country. Since they can't send recruiters to every school, and prefer not to pay for flyback interviews when they can't meet candidates in person, there's going to be a strong bias towards the tried and true.

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Re: How much of an advantage is a T14 for Big Law for a given student?

Post by KEbro93 » Mon Aug 15, 2022 2:15 pm

Mbrendza wrote:
Fri Aug 12, 2022 9:09 pm
nealric wrote:
Wed Jun 15, 2022 1:44 pm
You don't actually have to do all that well in the T-14 to get biglaw.
You don't have to, but everyone is still trying their ass off, because they're a T14 law student. Which means there's a level of competition that really drops outside of it.
Hahahahaha. actually some of the most competitive law schools are those between rankings 15-30. They have a shot at big law but it is far from a guarantee so you have to be ruthless to ensure you are in the top third or quarter or tenth or whatever it is. Once you are are in the second or third tiers you are never getting big law so it does not matter that much and a lot of students had lazy habits from bad undergrad institutions

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Re: How much of an advantage is a T14 for Big Law for a given student?

Post by nealric » Mon Aug 15, 2022 2:27 pm

Mbrendza wrote:
Fri Aug 12, 2022 9:05 pm
nealric wrote:
Tue Jun 14, 2022 2:02 pm
The Lsat Airbender wrote:
Tue Jun 14, 2022 10:45 am
latinx wrote:
Mon Jun 13, 2022 1:56 pm
Billy Bob gets admitted to a T14 and to a T2. Billy Bob would have an advantage at a T14, but how much of an advantage?
For biglaw? Massive advantage. So large an advantage that that suggesting Billy attend the T2 is irresponsibly stupid advice; anyone dispensing such advice should be ashamed of themselves.
This. First of all, to have a shot at Biglaw from most T2s, Billybob can't just do well. He can't just do better than the vast majority of his peers. To have a high chance of success at biglaw, Billybob is going to need to be one of the top handful (5-10 students) in his class, be on the law review, and otherwise be a supestar of the school after the end of 1L year. And EVEN IF he does all that, he's going to be limited to a small handful of firms that recruit at his school.

Lets assume for the sake of argument that Billybob's relatively high LSAT means he's likely to outperform most of his classmates academically. All it takes is ONE bad day for that not to happen. Law school grades are determined almost entirely on a single exam at the end of a semester. You are not feeling well that day, couldn't sleep the night before, dog died, girlfriend broke up with you? Too bad- you have to take that exam. If the bar is that you need to be one of the top 5-10 people, all it takes is a bad day on one exam. Or maybe you just slightly misread an essay prompt, or maybe you simply don't jive with that specific professor. I personally got pretty good grades 1L year, but had a single bad grade that was a total outlier. I just didn't jive with the class or professor. I was at a T-14, so I got biglaw in the end, but had I gone to a T2, that one grade probably would have blown my chances.

At most T14 schools, average performance is fine. While most people at T14s have pretty good credentials, there are still going to be people who are slackers, don't jive with law school, were admitted because their parents are bigshots of some sort, had a personal crisis, etc. Those folks make up most of the bottom 25% of the class. And the thing is, even the bottom of the class has a shot at biglaw because T14 schools obfuscate rankings. At a T2, you will know your exact class rank. A T14 will list cutoffs for "dean's list" or Latin honors designations (usually top 1/3, top 10%, top 5% ish), but it can be very hard to distinguish between bad grades and average grades. At the very top schools, they dispense with traditional grades altogether. Even where there are traditional grades, it's extremely difficult to get a truly bad grade that stands out on your transcript. Anything below a "B-" is rarely given, and it would be almost impossible to actually fail out unless you aren't even trying. At many T2s, a portion of the class flunks out despite trying very hard (that can become a pretty significant percentage at a T4).

So yes, if the goal s biglaw, then the chances of a specific individual achieving that goal are SIGNFICNALTY higher by attending a T14 over a second tier school. That doesn't mean Billybob should never choose the T2. If Billybob got a full ride to his hometown school and wants to be local prosecutor in his hometown, then the T2 could be a fine choice. It's just not the right choice of Billybob has dreams of working for Wachtell (which, by the way does effectively no recruiting below the T14, and very limited recruiting below HYSCCN).
I'll start of by saying I completely agree with Latinx here.

The bolded paragraph above--I disagree with it. On the margins you will have people who mess up and don't live up to their potential. One little thing goes wrong. But everyone has things go wrong! If you average it out, a good student will get good grades, and a bad student will get bad grades. Not everyone starts from zero when they start school. If you're a biglaw candidate to begin school, chances are you will be a candidate when its hiring time.

Its a question of causality. Why do the T14 schools send more kids to biglaw? Is it because they are picked more from those schools? Really, no! That's not the causal mechanism. Its because there are more biglaw quality candidates at those schools. The biglaw recruiters go to where the biglaw candidates are, not the biglaw candidates go to where the recruiters are. I'm not saying this is 100% the case, but this is what determines how the t14 is established. Its a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Your 1L grades in law school are the product of 6-8 exams total. Biglaw recruits on the basis of 1L grades. Yeah, average it out over enough rolls of the dice and the best students will consistently get better grades. But understand that a single B- in a string of As is enough to throw you out of biglaw contention at lower tier schools. Not everyone has something happen during exam week. If it's you and you have zero room for error, you've just missed the biglaw boat at a lower-tier school.

Sure, the T14 is a self-fulfilling prophesy. There's no question they get stronger candidates from the get-go. But even though there are people who would be great biglaw candidates at lower-ranked schools, they are far more likely to be overlooked because Biglaw isn't looking hard at their schools. Likewise, there are some folks who really aren't good Biglaw candidates who get biglaw because they are good test takers and managed to get into a T14 school.

If you don't believe me, I'd invite you to compare the academic credentials of T14 entrants and those just a step below. It's maybe 2-3 points on the LSAT and a couple of tenths of GPA on average. Do you really think someone at WUSTL is a meaningfully less intelligent/driven person because they missed two questions on the LSAT that a similar at a T14 didn't? Do you really think that fine difference is going to mean it's so much easier for them to stand out at recruiting time?

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