Just a hop, skip and a jump from all DAT RALEIGH BIGLAW THO.BigZuck wrote:No, no, I got the point, typical Mono authoritative tone and allscotth724 wrote:NYC to Durham is a "long trip." Anyways, you're missing the point that this doesn't apply to the T14.BigZuck wrote:This is some pretty disgustingly virulent anti-Durham trolling. You know they have an airport there in Raleigh, right bro? The flight is only like an hour and a half tops and then maybe a half hour drive from the airport to Duke. I wouldn't say two hours is a "long trip"Monochromatic Oeuvre wrote:Worth noting that past UT/UCLA/USC/Vandy, employment statistics within a particular USNWR tier are better correlated with location than with markets. To the extent that applicants use employment statistics at all to make their decisions, you'll see a shift away from "small-town" schools not because applicants don't want to spend three years there (although they may not want to) but because Biglaw doesn't want to recruit there. A big part of why schools like BC and Fordham outperform their rankings is that there are a relatively greater number of interviews conducted there.
It isn't hard to see why. Suppose you are a NYC firm with targets of top 10% for a T1 school. And suppose about a third of that won't interview with you (for self-selection reasons). If you go to Fordham, you are talking about doing ~30 interviews--definitely a worthy endeavor when it's right down the street. If you go to W&L, this is what, eight or nine potential interviewees? The odds that you'll even make an offer to one of that group are probably below 50-50, much less that it will actually be accepted. Getting to Lexington is then a two-hour flight plus a three-hour car ride. That's a giant hassle for a very small likelihood someone from W&L is actually going to join your firm. Remember, this is all time someone could be billing. And so understandably, many don't bother. W&L students can still send resumes and whatnot, but of course the chances of actually getting hired when you interview are exponentially greater. A lot of firms are only going to take those long trips if it turns into 75 interviews or so (like in Charlottesville or Durham).
Ithaca would be a better example but I think Cornell does its OCI in Manhattan. (Side note: Do other schools do this? Wouldn't it be advantage for someone like UIUC to do OCI in Chicago, or UGA to do it in Atlanta?) None of the other T14 schools are in super-irrelevant locations, although I think we're getting to the point where Durham is a more relevant place than Ann Arbor for the first time in over 100 years. Durham is still quite a haul from any relevant legal market, though. But of course, T14 will be fine. The people really getting screwed job-wise are the Iowas of the world who LOOK LIKE they have a decent USNWR rank but are actually too small and isolated to attract any actual employers.
On another note, I'd argue W&L is the worst law school in the country when it comes to a combination of high tuition, bad job prospects, and potential to delude an applicant into thinking they're going to a good school. Anyone could see that Cooley and its ilk are awful by looking at USNWR. It's not all that unreasonable to go through the process thinking #26 was probably a pretty good school and...wow, you'd be lucky to even have a job out of there. The most dangerous schools are the ones that don't have the same laughable quality of the TTTs but are just as ruinous a life choice.
