Top Law Schools

I was told by a friend that you need to be in the top 1/2, if not top 1/3, to comfortably get good employment, EVEN IF you are coming from HYS.

First, I don't even know how HYS structures their ranking systems (I believe Y is unranked, S has some semi-thing and H is moving to a similar system). I'm wondering if there's an innate advantage in going to Y or S due to this fact.

I'm also skeptical of this statement, unless she was being overly cautious due to current economic times.

i think that's a little too harsh, but i have no idea

but innate advantage? WTF. all else being equal, top performers will benefit from going to a graded school, because they get credit for being a top performer. people who would be bottom 1/2 at a graded school would be better off at a non-graded school. BUT some employers might possibly be turned off by the whole non-graded thing (though this isn't applicable for HYS) BUT a non-graded school might be an overall less stressful environment

but since everyone on TLS is confident they'll be top 10%, there is no "innate advantage"

btw YLS is pass/pass for 1L.

From friends at each of HYS, that's really pessimistic. I guess it depends on what your definition of "good legal employment" is, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that everyone at Yale will be fine. At Stanford, I've heard that people who struck out at OCI's this year are better counted by numbers rather than percentages.

At Harvard, there have been more visible cases of people scrambling, and I don't want to overreach by naming a percentage that is struggling (although bottom quarter or third seems right). It's also not clear how much of this is due to bad bidding strategy. I've heard current students say that even near the bottom of the class, those who bid realistically ended up fine. But who knows.

The thing is, there's no real hard data on how people are doing ITE. The closest thing we have is the 2009 NLJ 250 data, which is depressed by all the no-offers in major markets. Even using those stats, when you take clerkships into account, HYS are still placing grads into desirable positions at rates much higher than 50%. In 2006, YHSCC all placed between 2/3 and 4/5 of 2Ls into Vault 100 summer associate jobs. Those were boom times that won't come back anytime soon, if at all. The last couple of years have been really, really bad, and the general sense is that we can expect slow improvement.

So bottom line--Yale, everyone is in good shape. Stanford and Harvard--there are some people struggling, but the solid majority are still doing well. There's no real way of knowing how much of the classes (especially at Harvard) are really struggling, and there are tons of variables besides class rank (even if there is no actual class rank, employers are still very capable of counting H's and LP's). But to say that top 1/3 or even 1/2 is needed for "good legal employment" at these schools isn't right.

It could be more or less accurate if they were referring to V50 or something. But I'd say that's an objectively silly definition of "good legal employment."

Or since they said "comfortably" maybe they meant the point at which your grades virtually guarantee you a (V50 or whatever) job as long as you show up to OCI and even if you're a poor interviewee. No outside job search necessary.

Harvard's new grading system is much more relaxed... basically Pass or High Pass, with a low pass at the discretion of the professor (~5% at that now probably).

I think previously the Low Passes sort of acted like a negative brand on some students as some professors thought they had to award a certain percentage (and also due to ITE), but going forward it seems that the vast majority of HLS students should be fine.

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Not true for Yale as Yale Law does not rank (unless this policy was very recently changed). Probably close to accurate for Harvard with respect to top half of the class, although there are probably a lot of exceptions since so many Harvard grads arrive with outstanding achievements & qualifications outside of law that might make them attractive to some employers.

You don't need to be anywhere near top 1/3 at Harvard.

Almost everyone I spoke to at HLS this past weekend said that if ones goes to HYS and is involved in other activities on campus outside of school (there are like a billion of them, you'd be a fool not to get involved), that he would be in very good shape in the job market barring an LP. In addition, most of the anecdotal evidence seems as though most of the people that get LP grades now "deserved" them in the opinion of their peers (people that did noticeably little work).

Furthermore, Dean Minow seemed to reassure us that in comparisons between the old system and the new, almost no one would have had a record void of honors in the new system. Almost no one leaves the school feeling as though they were duped unless they relied completely on the brand of the school as a substitute for legwork. Although some people are struggling during their 2L summer ITE, all seemed to be confident that they would be leaving 3L employed at a meaningful job.

As someone who worked their butt off for an (undeserved) LP at HLS, I hope I don't end up in BAD shape at EIP because of one poor grade...I'll check back in after I have a job offer in two years and let you know

Thread title should be changed to "importance of interviewing from HYS" seeing as how a person could theoretically get straight P's and under the old system be at median. If you can convince the interviewer that your P's were really at the cusp of being an H then grades don't matter as much.

oh true that. i suppose interviewing & "personality" matter all the more when there's no grades...

I heard from the head of career services at HLS that 95% of the class of 2009 will be employed at graduation. He followed up with the fact that maybe some people got their second or third choice gig, but they're employed nonetheless. Based on preliminary numbers, the average salary for private employment is going to be around 145k, down from a typical 155k just before the crash.

but how many people who wanted a private sector job got one?

also HLS sucks then cause DUKE has 100% at graduation AND after 6 months or whatever that USNEWS cutoff is. what a TTT HLS is

Yeah, I asked, but they said they won't get those numbers for awhile (they get them from employers, apparently). It's tough to figure that out because there's some who bid unrealistically, which is a reflection more of the individual than of the institution, and apparently there is a block of people who bid high since they're not super interested in private sector law (looking toward business, apparently).