Top Law Schools

A list detailing where every individual ended up post graduation. Very impressive.

via Law School transparency project:
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Direct link to pdf:
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how do we know this is "every" graduate?

wiseowl wrote:how do we know this is "every" graduate?

it probably isn't - lawschooltransparency says that it's every "employed graduate" - but if you count up the numbers, you'll find they're incredibly close to the normal class size (200) - not to mention if you count up the number of v50 placements, i think you'll find it's over 70% of the normal class size

of course, you have to take into account things like deferrals and first-year layoffs (at places like latham) - still, not bad overall

wiseowl wrote:how do we know this is "every" graduate?

Count them and compare to the graduating class size.

I stand corrected. Only 189/199 represented on the sheet.

Unemployed wrote:I stand corrected. Only 189/199 represented on the sheet.

I have the list of every graduate - this list accompanied the list on LST - at home (at the library now). As soon as I get back, I'll tell you how many graduates they reported. Where'd you get the 199 number? Even if that number is right, 189/199 (95%) isn't exactly far off of what they reported in 2007 (96.50% employed at graduation). This list represents somewhere in between graduation and 9 months, but presumably not many more (if any) of the few who don't have jobs at graduation get a job before taking the bar in July.

One thing to keep in mind is that the list includes two graduates who appear to be getting their MBA - one at NW and one at Chicago. However, this is not terribly clear. I suppose they could be working at NW/Chicago, though I would say that's unlikely.

Also on the MBA note. If we take them out of the employment %, and use 199, we end up with 187/197 or 94.9%. Still not far off the 2007 numbers (a peak for almost every school).

this makes me feel pretty good about my choice.

tintin wrote:this makes me feel pretty good about my choice.

+1. Based on this and the claims from SLS's ASW, it seems like being at a smaller school really is a sizable advantage ITE.

AngryAvocado wrote:

tintin wrote:this makes me feel pretty good about my choice.

+1. Based on this and the claims from SLS's ASW, it seems like being at a smaller school really is a sizable advantage ITE.

Let me clarify... these are post-graduation stats for the Class of 2009. These people did their OCI in Fall 2007.

Stanford's claim was with respect to OCI in Fall 2009, which is much more impressive.

I'll be more impressed when I see school's numbers for c/o 2010 and 2011. Obviously they're not available yet, but biglaw was still doing pretty well in 2007 OCI.

Unemployed wrote:

AngryAvocado wrote:

tintin wrote:this makes me feel pretty good about my choice.

+1. Based on this and the claims from SLS's ASW, it seems like being at a smaller school really is a sizable advantage ITE.

Let me clarify... these are post-graduation stats for the Class of 2009. These people did their OCI in Fall 2007.

Stanford's claim was with respect to OCI in Fall 2009, which is much more impressive.

Very true. Didn't mean to suggest this was as impressive as SLS by any means, just that ~70% making ending up within the V50 despite all the hoopla about no-offers and such seems pretty impressive regardless.

AngryAvocado wrote: all the hoopla about no-offers

c/o 2009 didn't have to deal with the no-offers in the way c/o 2010 did

they had to deal with layoffs, which won't be reflected in the list chicago put out

i can tell you that c/o 2010 had a very impressive number of summers in v50 firms (they did oci during the lehman collapse) - but i can't tell you how many of them got no-offered (their summer was when no-offers hit with a vengeance)

so it really will be the next two lists that measure just how well chicago, and any other school, weathered the downtown

Just to make it absolutely clear: These people were hired in 2007, and the data are meaningless compared to the carnage that are/will be C/O 2010 and 2011. I'm sure many of these associates were deferred to start in 2010 or even 2011, but they tended to get their toes in the door before all hell broke loose.

doyleoil wrote:i can tell you that c/o 2010 had a very impressive number of summers in v50 firms (they did oci during the lehman collapse) - but i can't tell you how many of them got no-offered (their summer was when no-offers hit with a vengeance)

so it really will be the next two lists that measure just how well chicago, and any other school, weathered the downtown

Vanderbilt also had very impressive numbers for its Class of 2010 summers. Observationalist posted these somewhere on here. That said...

disco_barred wrote:Just to make it absolutely clear: These people were hired in 2007, and the data are meaningless compared to the carnage that are/will be C/O 2010 and 2011. I'm sure many of these associates were deferred to start in 2010 or even 2011, but they tended to get their toes in the door before all hell broke loose.

Both of you slightly miss the point of how these data can be huge insights into the entry-level legal hiring market, which goes to not discounting what these lists say. While you shouldn't judge the safety of a particular school from the Class of 2009 data - nor should somebody do this from any year - you can use it as a proxy of what the market opinion is for a particular school relative to other schools. In order to measure how well Chicago weathers the downturn, you need to know how it was doing before and during it.

So while the Class of 2010 and 2011 have been slaughtered on the market, those data aren't any good on their own either for prospectives judging for the class of 2013 and beyond. What matters are these data in context. How did a school do when the market retracted? Which schools were largely unaffected? Why were they unaffected? Is the retraction proportional? Why not? Can it be explained by self-selection or tuition/debt? Lots of questions here. These data (2009) are still hugely important and meaningful for many of the questions people should be asking.

I'm a bit surprised at how few Chicago students ended up clerking. I count 15 federal court clerkships and 2 state court clerkships (about 7-8% of the graduating class). There certainly are some top notch judges on the list (Wood, Easterbrook, Posner), but based on all the "Chicago is a clerkship powerhouse" stuff I see on this board, I figured more students overall would have landed clerkships.

twistedwrister wrote:I'm a bit surprised at how few Chicago students ended up clerking. I count 15 federal court clerkships and 2 state court clerkships (about 7-8% of the graduating class). There certainly are some top notch judges on the list (Wood, Easterbrook, Posner), but based on all the "Chicago is a clerkship powerhouse" stuff I see on this board, I figured more students overall would have landed clerkships.

1) Chicago is a great school with great clerkship placement, but the data suggest it is a stretch to consider them a powerhouse compared to their peers. That's kind of a stereotype/gloss that gets tossed around without much factual backup.

2) Keep in mind many alumni clerk, so in any given graduating class you might see double or even triple the number of federal clerkships completed within a 5 year time period.

disco_barred wrote:

twistedwrister wrote:I'm a bit surprised at how few Chicago students ended up clerking. I count 15 federal court clerkships and 2 state court clerkships (about 7-8% of the graduating class). There certainly are some top notch judges on the list (Wood, Easterbrook, Posner), but based on all the "Chicago is a clerkship powerhouse" stuff I see on this board, I figured more students overall would have landed clerkships.

1) Chicago is a great school with great clerkship placement, but the data suggest it is a stretch to consider them a powerhouse compared to their peers. That's kind of a stereotype/gloss that gets tossed around without much factual backup.

2) Keep in mind many alumni clerk, so in any given graduating class you might see double or even triple the number of federal clerkships completed within a 5 year time period.

Outside of Harvard and Yale, UVA is the real judicial powerhouse (clerkships + representation within the federal judiciary).

Unemployed wrote:

disco_barred wrote:

twistedwrister wrote:I'm a bit surprised at how few Chicago students ended up clerking. I count 15 federal court clerkships and 2 state court clerkships (about 7-8% of the graduating class). There certainly are some top notch judges on the list (Wood, Easterbrook, Posner), but based on all the "Chicago is a clerkship powerhouse" stuff I see on this board, I figured more students overall would have landed clerkships.

1) Chicago is a great school with great clerkship placement, but the data suggest it is a stretch to consider them a powerhouse compared to their peers. That's kind of a stereotype/gloss that gets tossed around without much factual backup.

2) Keep in mind many alumni clerk, so in any given graduating class you might see double or even triple the number of federal clerkships completed within a 5 year time period.

Outside of Harvard and Yale, UVA is the real judicial powerhouse (clerkships + representation within the federal judiciary).

UVA is fantastic (and vastly outperforms it's ranking for SCOTUS clerkships), but I think this other state school in the midwest deserves an equal mention if we're talking about Article III placement figures.


/end trolling.


Also, that list of employers is incredibly impressive. Chicago is fantastic.