V25 hiring director: non-T20 hiring to decline permanently Forum

[TTT-LS]

From Elie Mystal's post from the NALP conference today:

The future doesn’t look bright for young litigators, but it looks especially bleak for young litigators coming from schools outside the U.S. News top 20. Long directly addressed the NALP recruiting change that forces firms to recruit earlier and for a shorter amount of time. This puts a strain on firm resources, which means that firms won’t be able to recruit at the same number of schools that they have traditionally gone to.

You can guess who gets screwed in that equation. One of Long’s slides read:

Placement levels for many schools outside the top 20 will fall and stall – the stall will be permanent.

Long engaged the law firm recruiters in the audience in a bit of a workshop, in terms of how to tell a school that their firm won’t be coming for OCI. Interestingly, she mentioned that most of the resistance these firm hiring coordinators will face will not be from the schools themselves, but from partners who are pissed that they’ll no longer be interviewing at their alma mater. Still, Long encouraged them by saying that partners will eventually be convinced that it doesn’t make sense to go to certain schools any more.

Yikes. The full story is available here: --LinkRemoved--.

[miamiman]

The 'T20' advocates are finally bailed out

[evilgenius]

Yikes - guess I shouldn't have turned down T20 for T2.

[09042014]

Paying sticker at NU just became a lot more palatable.

[eldizknee]

.

[clintonius]

Paying sticker at NU just became a lot more palatable.

+1 for NYU

[romothesavior]

I wonder if when they say "T20" if they mean the top-20 schools, or the schools typically lumped in together around the top-20 mark. I mean, common TLS wisdom says WUSTL/UIUC/ND are peers, but only one of them is truly a T20 school. I can't see ND and UIUC getting slaughtered while Wash U someone maintains decent placement.

[miamiman]

I wonder if when they say "T20" if they mean the top-20 schools, or the schools typically lumped in together around the top-20 mark. I mean, common TLS wisdom says WUSTL/UIUC/ND are peers, but only one of them is truly a T20 school. I can't see ND and UIUC getting slaughtered while Wash U someone maintains decent placement.

is the opinion affected somewhat (read: a lot) by your recent deposit at wustl? like glenn beck, im just asking questions here

[romothesavior]

I wonder if when they say "T20" if they mean the top-20 schools, or the schools typically lumped in together around the top-20 mark. I mean, common TLS wisdom says WUSTL/UIUC/ND are peers, but only one of them is truly a T20 school. I can't see ND and UIUC getting slaughtered while Wash U someone maintains decent placement.

is the opinion affected somewhat (read: a lot) by your recent deposit at wustl? like glenn beck, im just asking questions here

I am saying that I cannot see Wash U doing significantly better than its traditional counterparts just because they are the only one ranked in the T20. I feel like choosing Wash U over ND/UIUC just based off of the ranking is silly, as their employment data is so similar.

I am not one of the T20 advocates that you describe above. I think many of the non-T20s are just as good as the lower T20s. There is no firm line at the 20 mark that significantly differentiates schools.

[rando]

Obviously firms will change their hiring patterns yearly on account of USNEWS rearrangement of the T20.

^ sarcasm

[facetious]

Paying sticker at NU just became a lot more palatable.

+1 for NYU

[eldizknee]

.

[Helmholtz]

I wonder if when they say "T20" if they mean the top-20 schools, or the schools typically lumped in together around the top-20 mark. I mean, common TLS wisdom says WUSTL/UIUC/ND are peers, but only one of them is truly a T20 school. I can't see ND and UIUC getting slaughtered while Wash U someone maintains decent placement.

is the opinion affected somewhat (read: a lot) by your recent deposit at wustl? like glenn beck, im just asking questions here

I am saying that I cannot see Wash U doing significantly better than its traditional counterparts just because they are the only one ranked in the T20. I feel like choosing Wash U over ND/UIUC just based off of the ranking is silly, as their employment data is so similar.

I am not one of the T20 advocates that you describe above. I think many of the non-T20s are just as good as the lower T20s. There is no firm line at the 20 mark that significantly differentiates schools.

Yeah, you're right. I imagine WashU would get screwed over just like ND/UIUC.

[TTT-LS]

.

[Helmholtz]

I wonder if when they say "T20" if they mean the top-20 schools, or the schools typically lumped in together around the top-20 mark. I mean, common TLS wisdom says WUSTL/UIUC/ND are peers, but only one of them is truly a T20 school. I can't see ND and UIUC getting slaughtered while Wash U someone maintains decent placement.

I assume they meant either T-18 or T-22. T-20 is a pretty arbitrary cut-off. As a future T-22 attendee I'm *hoping* they meant to include T-22's.

They probably meant schools that are historically almost always in the T20, i.e. the T18, just like people, when referring to "top 10 law schools" usually mean HYSCCNBMVP even though schools like Duke, Northwestern, Cornell, and GULC have made appearances in the past.

[romothesavior]

Just to be clear: in re-posting this material I was not endorsing, nor was I hoping for, a border war about which schools properly belong in (or were contemplated by the hiring director as being within) the "top 20." Frankly, there's a cadre of schools that hover between 19 and 25 and I'm sure they'll all be affected in a roughly similar manner--for good or bad.

+1. I would assume it operates more like a sliding scale. There is no hard and fast line where some people are okay and other people are SOL. The T14 will still place the best, with T20-25 schools doing alright as well. (And by alright, I mean relative to other schools ITE). A lot of the firm's decisions to attend OCI's will probably be fueled by region once you get out of the T14 or so. A NYC firm is probably more likely to cut back from attending Illinois for OCI than a Chicago firm would be.

[eldizknee]

.

[miamiman]

Romo, sorry bro. RC fail on my part. Glad you didn't make a T19 distinction.

[Renzo]

Just to be clear: in re-posting this material I was not endorsing, nor was I hoping for, a border war about which schools properly belong in (or were contemplated by the hiring director as being within) the "top 20." Frankly, there's a cadre of schools that hover between 19 and 25 and I'm sure they'll all be affected in a roughly similar manner--for good or bad.

This.

NO ONE puts as much stock in the USNWR as the list-obsessed on this board. Each firm/partner/judge will have some version of what they think the "top 10" or "top 20" schools are. These individual's opinions do not fluctuate from year to year as the USNWR rankings rise and fall. USNWR should be seen as a rough approximation of the schools standing, not as gospel.

[romothesavior]

Romo, sorry bro. RC fail on my part. Glad you didn't make a T19 distinction.

Ha no prob, I would never make that distinction. Love the tar, btw.

[floppymex]

-

[98234872348]

*kills self*

[A'nold]

The author should have waited until...ahem....AFTER transfer season to do this. Bastards.

[Kobe_Teeth]

After reading this and some of the comments, my question is, do you think this sort of thinking at BigLaw firms will allow mid-law firms to snatch up some of that business and won't this even out the job market a bit for those in the lower T1 and even T2?

[rando]

After reading this and some of the comments, my question is, do you think this sort of thinking at BigLaw firms will allow mid-law firms to snatch up some of that business and won't this even out the job market a bit for those in the lower T1 and even T2?

What business?