Michigan Law Releases Full Employment Stats Forum

[rayiner]

I can understand the New York part, but what the hell happened at Kirkland, Sidley, and Winston? Those three firms had over 70 associates in Chicago for C/O 2011, and Michigan got at most 6 of those spots.

[Anonymous User]

At the Gibson Dunn dinner I saw at least 15 people as well.

They don't make offers to everyone who attends these dinners.

[Julio_El_Chavo]

Good to see K&L Gates elbowing other firms in the neck to get at some of Michigan's class of 2011 when they finally got the chance to get them.

[Anonymous User]

I can confirm the Davis Polk numbers. I think they made at least 15 offers this year, too. A number decided to go elsewhere.

I'm pretty sure that DPW is 7, not 9. Either way, you're correct that many more offers were made.

Can confirm there were DPW offers turned down.
Honestly, from the numbers I know of, our class looks a lot better than even 2010.

[MachineLemon]

One of the nonlegal employment folks listed his/her employment as "sheep farmer." Awesome.

[albusdumbledore]

How does Paul Campos still have a job? I find it hilarious that he's out to single-handedly take out the scam law schools, but in the process never manages to fact check his own stuff or bother with accurate details. He's scammier than the scam law schools...driving up the blog views with his sensationalist bullshit.

EDIT: This is in reference to Dean Z's blog post about this by the way. I should probably provide some context.

[beachbum]

How does Paul Campos still have a job? I find it hilarious that he's out to single-handedly take out the scam law schools, but in the process never manages to fact check his own stuff or bother with accurate details. He's scammier than the scam law schools...driving up the blog views with his sensationalist bullshit.

EDIT: This is in reference to Dean Z's blog post about this by the way. I should probably provide some context.

I just don't like his delivery; he comes off as angry and sarcastic. Which is too bad. It seems to me we have enough of the overzealous whistle-blowers (scam blogs), and not enough of the reasoned authority figures questioning the law school system.

[sunynp]

I think he is angry, in this case, in part because of the Dean's response to a NYtimes article. Note: I generally support what Campos is trying to do. I don't care at all about Michigan and I have no interest in debating what numbers were mentioned when. I wasn't there and it seems trivial to me in the big picture of law school employment information. Note also Campos may be upset as he has 3 degrees including law from Michigan, so he is emotionally attached.

In response to some comments on his latest blog post about Michigan Campos wrote:

Anybody who continues to defend SZ should really read her response to the original Segal NYT piece. Keep in mind she wrote this immediately after UM had "hired" nearly 20% of the 2010 class which had been unemployed several months after graduation.

http://www.law.umich.edu/connection/a2z ... aspx?ID=48

This is what counts for unusually forthcoming transparency in the law school world I suppose.

This is from her blog post that Campos linked:
"Having worked with law students for more than a decade, I am pretty dubious about any institution that claims to have completely eliminated the population of unemployed, not looking, and unknown. Clearly, our mission has to be to minimize those numbers—but realistically, in a group of 400, a couple of people are going to have a very hard time finding a job."


Like I said, I don't care, but I think this hypocrisy might be fueling some of Campos' anger, since you mentioned how angry he seems to be.

[shoeshine]

Wow this is depressing.

It looks like the major firms are taking only a couple Michigan summer associates each. This is when having a large class hurts.

[rayiner]

How does Paul Campos still have a job? I find it hilarious that he's out to single-handedly take out the scam law schools, but in the process never manages to fact check his own stuff or bother with accurate details. He's scammier than the scam law schools...driving up the blog views with his sensationalist bullshit.

EDIT: This is in reference to Dean Z's blog post about this by the way. I should probably provide some context.

Campos's article was good and the response it got was good. He was reporting inside information at a time when Michigan had not reported that information on its website. He had no way to know that Michigan was planning on releasing more details in a few days. Other T14 schools posted information about the number of law school-funded for months (NU posted them along with the C/O 2010 data, and so did Penn IIRC).

Sometimes when you're reporting rumors and gossip it doesn't pan out, but that's a valuable function in an area like this where schools have a lot to lose by being fully transparent.

Also, he was spot-on about the number of "fellows" (60-70) hired by the law school because they graduated unemployed. It's great that those folks got permanent positions, and only 8 were still unemployed at 9 months, and I think that's a lot better than people expected. However, let's be straight--that doesn't make everything rainbows and unicorns. Nearly 20% of the class graduating unemployed is a legitimate issue in and of itself, and one has to wonder about the kinds of jobs they ended up getting after the fellowship.

[Anonymous User]

I am another Michigan 2L here (have not posted in this thread yet). I know probably the situation of at least 50 people in my class. I can probably count 6-7 who do not have biglaw when they wanted it. Of the rest many have biglaw, a handful have midlaw, or legitimately did not do OCI/did not want biglaw. My sample may be biased (in fact, it certainly is) but still, I do not think the current class is anywhere near 40%. Do not get me wrong: there are people who struck out. And there are people with good grades who struck out. A couple of my friends found jobs in December. Some found them only this year. It is not 2006. But, it is not 2010/2011 either. Our class bid much more intelligently. Our class mass-mailed. I am not sure what happened two years ago, but we did everything we could not to repeat it.

Class of 2013 has people going everywhere. The big Chicago firms are hiring tons of Michigan people again. Our connection with Kirkland, for example, is as strong as ever. I know several people going to each of the top 4-5 Chicago firms. All of the top NY firms also have decent Michigan populations (I think S&C gave several offers to Michigan folk, but lots turned them down; I also think Cravath did not have the greatest showing here. Many people going to Davis Polk. Some going to Paul Weiss. Some going to Skadden. etc.). I do not think we have that many going to DC, but I know a few. California has a bunch as well (though I cannot tell if it is more in socal or in norcal). Many people are going to secondary markets. Michigan's national student body is no joke.

Someone mentioned dinners. Dinners are a pretty bad way to measure success. I definitely went to dinners that did not turn into offers. And the same people ended up at multiple dinners (but can only accept one firm). But, with all that said, we had a good showing at OCI.

I know the sum of many anecdotes (or in this case, one anecdote) does not make good data. I cannot empirically show you that Michigan Class of 2013 did better, but once the data comes out we can have this conversation.

[Anonymous User]

How does Paul Campos still have a job? I find it hilarious that he's out to single-handedly take out the scam law schools, but in the process never manages to fact check his own stuff or bother with accurate details. He's scammier than the scam law schools...driving up the blog views with his sensationalist bullshit.

EDIT: This is in reference to Dean Z's blog post about this by the way. I should probably provide some context.

Campos's article was good and the response it got was good. He was reporting inside information at a time when Michigan had not reported that information on its website. He had no way to know that Michigan was planning on releasing more details in a few days. Other T14 schools posted information about the number of law school-funded for months (NU posted them along with the C/O 2010 data, and so did Penn IIRC).

Sometimes when you're reporting rumors and gossip it doesn't pan out, but that's a valuable function in an area like this where schools have a lot to lose by being fully transparent.

Also, he was spot-on about the number of "fellows" (60-70) hired by the law school because they graduated unemployed. It's great that those folks got permanent positions, and only 8 were still unemployed at 9 months, and I think that's a lot better than people expected. However, let's be straight--that doesn't make everything rainbows and unicorns. Nearly 20% of the class graduating unemployed is a legitimate issue in and of itself, and one has to wonder about the kinds of jobs they ended up getting after the fellowship.

To be fair, it seems that Campos was operating on a word of mouth gossip tidbit and rolled with it instead of saying, "Hey, Michigan is making a business legal move and will roll out data soon." I read Dean Z.'s post and didn't see anything odd about her exchange with a potential student or whomever the individual was.

And I also disagree with the notion that UMich has a lot to lose. UMich is a household name. I hope that their squabble is over because it is coming off like a jilted lover who won't put down the phone.

[ahnhub]

Wow this is depressing.

It looks like the major firms are taking only a couple Michigan summer associates each. This is when having a large class hurts.

Virginia's class size is equal and Columbia, NYU and Georgetown are much bigger.

I think it's more plausible to think what happened to Michigan in 2009 was more a result of how the school responded to the crash rather than an indictment of its placement power.

[shoeshine]

Wow this is depressing.

It looks like the major firms are taking only a couple Michigan summer associates each. This is when having a large class hurts.

Virginia's class size is equal and Columbia, NYU and Georgetown are much bigger.

I think it's more plausible to think what happened to Michigan in 2009 was more a result of how the school responded to the crash rather than an indictment of its placement power.

NYU, UVA, and Georgetown's numbers aren't much better here:

http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNL ... slreturn=1
NYU has tried to dispute these numbers but even if you give them the benefit of the doubt it is obvious that class size has at least a small correlation to the ITE hiring.

[ahnhub]

Campos's article was good and the response it got was good. He was reporting inside information at a time when Michigan had not reported that information on its website. He had no way to know that Michigan was planning on releasing more details in a few days. Other T14 schools posted information about the number of law school-funded for months (NU posted them along with the C/O 2010 data, and so did Penn IIRC).

Sometimes when you're reporting rumors and gossip it doesn't pan out, but that's a valuable function in an area like this where schools have a lot to lose by being fully transparent.

Also, he was spot-on about the number of "fellows" (60-70) hired by the law school because they graduated unemployed. It's great that those folks got permanent positions, and only 8 were still unemployed at 9 months, and I think that's a lot better than people expected. However, let's be straight--that doesn't make everything rainbows and unicorns. Nearly 20% of the class graduating unemployed is a legitimate issue in and of itself, and one has to wonder about the kinds of jobs they ended up getting after the fellowship.

I think Paul Campos is doing a lot of good--it's possible he is directly responsible for some of the very specific info we're getting now.

But he has a serious problem with accuracy. In his original post he accused Michigan of using 70 postgrad fellowships so they could claim a high employment % at the 9-month mark. Without directly saying it he was insinuating that 95% or whatever number they reported to NALP was totally bogus because 20% of it were students being paid by the school (the truth was somewhere in between, of course). He did the same thing earlier when he basically insinuated that NYU and Columbia were flat-out lying about how many of their grads god Biglaw (I noticed the discrepancy earlier and a little research convinced me it was NLJ and not NYU/CLS who had the numbers wrong). He is remarkably level-headed with some of his analysis but he often slips into total scamblog--"burn the whole thing down" mode.

And he hurts his own case (which I basically agree with--law school is a questionable-to-terrible idea for almost everyone who goes, and the system should be ashamed of itself) by pressing his point too far. He has basically been saying that 50% of every Michigan graduating class and 30% of every Columbia graduating class since 2010 has been completely screwed and ruined their lives, and that it's only going to get worse. Well we already know c/o 2012 did somewhat better, and from all signs c/o 2013 had an OCI which got a whole bunch of people Biglaw--maybe not that far off from a pre-boom, pre-recession year. It's going to hurt his argument when that information becomes more widely known.

[rayiner]

Wow this is depressing.

It looks like the major firms are taking only a couple Michigan summer associates each. This is when having a large class hurts.

Virginia's class size is equal and Columbia, NYU and Georgetown are much bigger.

I think it's more plausible to think what happened to Michigan in 2009 was more a result of how the school responded to the crash rather than an indictment of its placement power.

I think this is accurate. OCI 2009 was a perfect storm for Michigan--CSO told everyone to bid Chicago, but Chicago firms retrenched to U Chicago/NU. Michigan's lack of a home market combined with the CSO telling students not to bid on the one market that's amenable to every T14 resulted in a cluster-fuck of an OCI.

[shoeshine]

Wow this is depressing.

It looks like the major firms are taking only a couple Michigan summer associates each. This is when having a large class hurts.

Virginia's class size is equal and Columbia, NYU and Georgetown are much bigger.

I think it's more plausible to think what happened to Michigan in 2009 was more a result of how the school responded to the crash rather than an indictment of its placement power.

I think this is accurate. OCI 2009 was a perfect storm for Michigan--CSO told everyone to bid Chicago, but Chicago firms retrenched to U Chicago/NU. Michigan's lack of a home market combined with the CSO telling students not to bid on the one market that's amenable to every T14 resulted in a cluster-fuck of an OCI.

Could be but NYU, UVA, and Georgetown's numbers aren't much better here:

http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNL ... slreturn=1

NYU has tried to dispute these numbers but even if you give them the benefit of the doubt it is obvious that class size has at least a small correlation to the ITE hiring.

[ahnhub]

Could be but NYU, UVA, and Georgetown's numbers aren't much better here:

http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNL ... slreturn=1

NYU has tried to dispute these numbers but even if you give them the benefit of the doubt it is obvious that class size has at least a small correlation to the ITE hiring.

Sure there's probably some correlation. If you accept CLS/NYU's explanations for their discrepancies with NLJ (I do, based on what I've read), both of those schools (each with 430+ grads) have probably landed in the Top 5 of Biglaw hiring in 2010 and 2011. CLS may have been #1 both years.

[rayiner]

Could be but NYU, UVA, and Georgetown's numbers aren't much better here:

http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNL ... slreturn=1

NYU has tried to dispute these numbers but even if you give them the benefit of the doubt it is obvious that class size has at least a small correlation to the ITE hiring.

So we don't have C/O 2011 data from NYU, but they claim that 58 graduates were left out of the NLJ's accounting. If you add those in, that puts them at 53%, about the same as Penn and NU (who have published C/O 2011 data which closely matches the NLJ's accounting).

[JoeMo]

How does Paul Campos still have a job? I find it hilarious that he's out to single-handedly take out the scam law schools, but in the process never manages to fact check his own stuff or bother with accurate details. He's scammier than the scam law schools...driving up the blog views with his sensationalist bullshit.

EDIT: This is in reference to Dean Z's blog post about this by the way. I should probably provide some context.

I just don't like his delivery; he comes off as angry and sarcastic. Which is too bad. It seems to me we have enough of the overzealous whistle-blowers (scam blogs), and not enough of the reasoned authority figures questioning the law school system.

It could be that when he went to look for an academic job he tried to return to his alma mater (where he went for his three degrees) and wasn't hired. This would leave almost anyone with a sour taste in their mouth and he's out to get them. Of course, this is all speculative but it does seem like he has a bigger bone to pick with Michigan than with any of the other top schools and with Dean Z in particular. I think Michigan has been very forthcoming and I also think that Paul Campos should refocus his energies on other schools that might have an easier time fudging numbers because their information is not as readily available or easy to dissect.

[planeride]

How does Paul Campos still have a job? I find it hilarious that he's out to single-handedly take out the scam law schools, but in the process never manages to fact check his own stuff or bother with accurate details. He's scammier than the scam law schools...driving up the blog views with his sensationalist bullshit.

EDIT: This is in reference to Dean Z's blog post about this by the way. I should probably provide some context.

I just don't like his delivery; he comes off as angry and sarcastic. Which is too bad. It seems to me we have enough of the overzealous whistle-blowers (scam blogs), and not enough of the reasoned authority figures questioning the law school system.

It could be that when he went to look for an academic job he tried to return to his alma mater (where he went for his three degrees) and wasn't hired. This would leave almost anyone with a sour taste in their mouth and he's out to get them. Of course, this is all speculative

What a ridiculous accusation to make with absolutely no evidence.

I don't care for Campos or his fan-boys but the shoot-the-messenger attitude of some is unseemly. The anger comes from the fact that thousands of law students are graduating with massive debt and almost no chance to pay it off. Not because Dean Z stole his winning Mega Millions ticket.

[LawBrah]

at non-legal employment for c/o 2011

*Actor, dentist's office, independent contractor, pharmacy, restaurant, sheep farmer, chief writer at Univision, startup, e-commerce consulting, Thomson Reuters, nonlaw university faculty position (2)

[JoeMo]

What a ridiculous accusation to make with absolutely no evidence.

I don't care for Campos or his fan-boys but the shoot-the-messenger attitude of some is unseemly. The anger comes from the fact that thousands of law students are graduating with massive debt and almost no chance to pay it off. Not because Dean Z stole his winning Mega Millions ticket.

Hahahahaha... Let the speculative nature of what I said be just that, speculation. I never said take what I'm saying as fact. I wasn't accusing him either I was just saying it's a totally plausible explanation for why he seems to be so hurt.

[JoeMo]

at non-legal employment for c/o 2011

*Actor, dentist's office, independent contractor, pharmacy, restaurant, sheep farmer, chief writer at Univision, startup, e-commerce consulting, Thomson Reuters, nonlaw university faculty position (2)

The sheep farmer is my absolute favorite. I want to meet that guy/gal.

[ScrabbleChamp]

Maybe it is just because I am older and have worked in the real world, or maybe it is just because I believe people need to take full responsibility for their lives, rather than passing off blame to others (i.e. "I don't have a job, so it MUST be the school's fault, not mine),but why do people here continue to bitch about problems they don't need to have?

I don't get the train of thought behind being "scared" of going to a law school (Michigan or not) and still going. If you are unsure of your decision, then DON'T GO. Don't invest 3 years of your life, excessive amounts of debt, and time probably better spent elsewhere if you are not 100% sure of your choice.

Even in the best of times, I don't imagine any school reported a 100% employment rate... even if they did, what happened in the past is not a guarantee of what will happen in the future. If a prospective student is too dumb to do their own research before dropping $150k to attend a shit institution (or even a great school), they, not anyone else, is responsible for the outcome.

Having said all that, if the numbers published by any school make you faint of heart, maybe law school isn't for you and you should find something else to do with your life.

I chose Michigan over Stanford because I felt Michigan was a better fit for me and I'm confident enough in my abilities that the job numbers aren't really a concern for me, especially after having read a lot of the "Class of 2015" threads... most of the people that post in the threads seem to have no clue what the real world is about and are more concerned with the dating scene, parties, and the social scene than anything else. And, it appears a majority of students are also their own worst enemies: they appear to be entering law school with an already negative attitude. I can only imagine going into law school with a negative attitude is only going to hinder your ability to do well.

Why does XYZ T14 school have a bad placement percentage? Maybe it is because the incoming students go into the school experience with the wrong attitude, and that attitude negatively affects their academic performance, which in turn affects their ability to speak well about their experience during interviews. Maybe not...

Either way, if you are not 100% sure about attending law school, don't, and save yourself the money/time and the rest of us your incessant bitching about bleak employment prospects.