CLS 3.2-3.3 Potential Bid List Forum

[Anonymous User]

How low into the class does Skadden dip at CLS? A couple of grades below Stone here (between 3.3 and 3.4), and wondering if it's worth it to add them to my bid list since the common wisdom seems to be that Skadden is (a) huge and (b) not as grade conscious. No special experience, no IP background, not a URM.

[Anonymous User]

How low into the class does Skadden dip at CLS? A couple of grades below Stone here (between 3.3 and 3.4), and wondering if it's worth it to add them to my bid list since the common wisdom seems to be that Skadden is (a) huge and (b) not as grade conscious. No special experience, no IP background, not a URM.

Along the same lines, should someone at median but with good other factors throw in bids for Weil, Simpson, or DPW or would those be a lost cause? Have already included Skadden, Kirkland, Debevoise, Cleary, Shearman, and Sidley.

[Anonymous User]

I hate to scare you, but striking out at OCI is seriously hell. It's why I post on this forum so much now. I don't want other people to go through the same crap I did all because they made bidding mistakes that nobody caught for them.

Your interview advice below is really helpful. Can you speak at all about some of the bidding mistakes you made?

[Anonymous User]

For individual firms and how low they will dip, the best you can do is look into the honors book. Realize it is a pain in the ass, but asking around on the forum just results in a lot of conjecture that isn't too helpful. The main thing with any firm is that the lower your grades are, the more likely you will need to emphasize W/E, alternative backgrounds, and charisma. I also struck out at EIP last year, and was prolly my lack of these plus median grades and really bad interview performance. OCS tends to be way too optimistic about prospects, to the point of sounding rose colored and totally out of touch. OCS will make it sound like you have a shot with places in like Texas, even though have bare minimal connection. They seem to get on your case more for being pessimistic and nontraditional rather than being unrealistic in job search. So be careful. Striking out is real hell. Even w/ mass mailing it is very difficult to get a firm job still, ending up more luck of the draw than anything else. In house rarely hires from places like CLS, so left mainly w/ govt and public interest that has almost nonexistent prospects for the immediate future. What may have been the worse part is being treated like a cancer by your school and classmates. What makes things even worse this year is that Fall OCI will be almost nonexistent since most of those firms are now participating in EIP (yet OCS refuses to give even basic numbers from these firms). Good luck.

[imchuckbass58]

How low into the class does Skadden dip at CLS? A couple of grades below Stone here (between 3.3 and 3.4), and wondering if it's worth it to add them to my bid list since the common wisdom seems to be that Skadden is (a) huge and (b) not as grade conscious. No special experience, no IP background, not a URM.

Along the same lines, should someone at median but with good other factors throw in bids for Weil, Simpson, or DPW or would those be a lost cause? Have already included Skadden, Kirkland, Debevoise, Cleary, Shearman, and Sidley.

To the first question, definitely throw a bid at Skadden, but realize that even though Skadden is quite large, they had a very small summer class this year (41 in NY - compare with 60-100 for most other NY V20s), so the fact that they're huge as a firm didn't really matter. I have no idea what their class will be like next year, but it's worth keeping in mind.

DPW is a lost cause for someone at median. STB probably is too, but there's an outside shot. Definitely throw a bid at Weil. Weil is less selective than pretty much every other firm you listed except for possibly Shearman and Sidley.

[timbs4339]

I hate to scare you, but striking out at OCI is seriously hell. It's why I post on this forum so much now. I don't want other people to go through the same crap I did all because they made bidding mistakes that nobody caught for them.

Your interview advice below is really helpful. Can you speak at all about some of the bidding mistakes you made?

Very briefly, I:

1) Bid primarily on a secondary market. I didn't realize how secondary market EIP works. Basically, secondary market EIP is a mini-EIP with everyone from your market with ties, only the firms a) give fewer callbacks, and b) care less about meeting some set number of "CLS spots" especially if there are a lot of local schools to choose from, so they won't yield protect like some NYC firms do (by yield protect I also mean give out a ton of cbs). So the few people with the highest grades (and transfers who do very well) will probably get all the callbacks.

2) Bid my big New York firms at the bottom of my list. Basically, I ranked the firms in order of where I wanted to work, rather than what would guarantee me the best interviews. I mixed some NYC firms in with the top 10, but mostly it was secondary market firms. And I REALLY wanted to work in this secondary market. This was bad because a) those firms are the most heavily bid on, and so bidding them 20-30 is useless because you probably won't get those interviews, b) out of the 16 or so secondary market firms I bid in the top 20 bids, about half of them were underbid and became available at add/drop. Imagine how pissed off I was when 2 of my top 5 bids were available on add/drop. I'd wasted my top bids. Moreover, a lot of those high-grade people, who had not spent bids on the firms in my secondary market, now came back in add/drop and added those firms.

3) Not really a bidding mistake, but not mass mailing before EIP.

[timbs4339]

For individual firms and how low they will dip, the best you can do is look into the honors book. Realize it is a pain in the ass, but asking around on the forum just results in a lot of conjecture that isn't too helpful. The main thing with any firm is that the lower your grades are, the more likely you will need to emphasize W/E, alternative backgrounds, and charisma. I also struck out at EIP last year, and was prolly my lack of these plus median grades and really bad interview performance. OCS tends to be way too optimistic about prospects, to the point of sounding rose colored and totally out of touch. OCS will make it sound like you have a shot with places in like Texas, even though have bare minimal connection. They seem to get on your case more for being pessimistic and nontraditional rather than being unrealistic in job search. So be careful. Striking out is real hell. Even w/ mass mailing it is very difficult to get a firm job still, ending up more luck of the draw than anything else. In house rarely hires from places like CLS, so left mainly w/ govt and public interest that has almost nonexistent prospects for the immediate future. What may have been the worse part is being treated like a cancer by your school and classmates. What makes things even worse this year is that Fall OCI will be almost nonexistent since most of those firms are now participating in EIP (yet OCS refuses to give even basic numbers from these firms). Good luck.

+1 to feeling like a leper.

One other thing: many organizations don't even begin hiring until April/May, so you have an entire year to muse about your EIP failure and think about dropping out. And of course the constant job search gets in the way of getting your grades up, which sucks when OCS best advice is "get those grades up for 3L EIP!"

[Anonymous User]

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[Anonymous User]

How low into the class does Skadden dip at CLS? A couple of grades below Stone here (between 3.3 and 3.4), and wondering if it's worth it to add them to my bid list since the common wisdom seems to be that Skadden is (a) huge and (b) not as grade conscious. No special experience, no IP background, not a URM.

Along the same lines, should someone at median but with good other factors throw in bids for Weil, Simpson, or DPW or would those be a lost cause? Have already included Skadden, Kirkland, Debevoise, Cleary, Shearman, and Sidley.

To the first question, definitely throw a bid at Skadden, but realize that even though Skadden is quite large, they had a very small summer class this year (41 in NY - compare with 60-100 for most other NY V20s), so the fact that they're huge as a firm didn't really matter. I have no idea what their class will be like next year, but it's worth keeping in mind.

DPW is a lost cause for someone at median. STB probably is too, but there's an outside shot. Definitely throw a bid at Weil. Weil is less selective than pretty much every other firm you listed except for possibly Shearman and Sidley.

Weil had 100% Stone/Kent offer rate last year. Not sure how they are less selective.

[imchuckbass58]

Weil had 100% Stone/Kent offer rate last year. Not sure how they are less selective.

The year before it was 60%. And I forget which thread, but someone at a V10 posted that the average GPA for Weil offerrees at their school was 3.3, versus 3.5-3.6 for most other V10s.

And if you ask around Weil has had a rep for years of being the least selective V10 by far.

Edit: Here it is: http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 3&t=159259

Well, I'm just basing this off of the mean/median GPA stats from other T10 schools, where GDC NY took an average 3.35. Compare that to Paul Weiss at 3.55, Cleary at 3.65, Simpson at 3.55, Skadden at 3.55, Weil at 3.3, Kirkland at 3.45, and Debevoise at 3.6.

[imchuckbass58]

Guy who asked the Skadden question above here. Just finished my bid list - really confused about how to rank things; more interested in transactional than anything else. The firms I put at the top are the firms I'd want to work at most that also have big summer classes. GPA is > B+ average, but below Stone (no other special factors). Anyone have any advice?

Shearman & Sterling
Ropes & Gray
Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy
Jones Day
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher
Cahill Gordon & Reindel
Linklaters
Schulte Roth & Zabel
Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft
Sidley Austin
Dechert
Wilmer Hale
White & Case
Kirkland & Ellis
Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson
Debevoise & Plimpton
Latham & Watkins
Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton
Weil, Gotshal & Manges
Clifford Chance
Dewey & LeBoeuf
Akin Gump
Skadden
O’Melveny & Myers
Hogan Lovells
Baker Hostetler
Freshfields
Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe
Willkie Farr & Gallagher
King & Spalding

Bid firms like Weil, Skadden, Freshfields and Kirkland higher, or don't bid them at all - they routinely receive close to 2x as many bids as they have slots. Bid Cahill and Milbank lower - they usually do not fill up.

Here's what most people don't realize about bidding: You should not base your bid list primarily on how much you want to work for a firm. You should base it on how hard it is to get an interview. I very much wanted to interview with DPW and Wachtell, but I bid them 29th and 30th because I knew they never fill up.

Here's how I recommend you think about bidding:
(1) Make a list of 30 firms you want to work for.
(2) Rank order them from highest to lowest in terms of the ratio of bids:interviews.
(3) Make adjustments based on how much you want to interview with a firm (i.e., bump up or down a few slots).

It's a complete waste to bid a firm that doesn't fill up in your top half. Similarly, it's a complete waste to bid a firm that's routinely oversubscribed in your bottom 15, because you are pretty much guaranteed of not getting them.

[englawyer]

I agree with your strategy. The ratio of bids/interviews is a very good indicator of how tough it is to get an interview at pure lottery schools. That ratio is not as reliable for preselect schools though (because the ratio could be changed via selectivity).

[Anonymous User]

Weil had 100% Stone/Kent offer rate last year. Not sure how they are less selective.

The year before it was 60%. And I forget which thread, but someone at a V10 posted that the average GPA for Weil offerrees at their school was 3.3, versus 3.5-3.6 for most other V10s.

And if you ask around Weil has had a rep for years of being the least selective V10 by far.

Edit: Here it is: http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 3&t=159259

Well, I'm just basing this off of the mean/median GPA stats from other T10 schools, where GDC NY took an average 3.35. Compare that to Paul Weiss at 3.55, Cleary at 3.65, Simpson at 3.55, Skadden at 3.55, Weil at 3.3, Kirkland at 3.45, and Debevoise at 3.6.

Thank you, this is useful. I only had last year's stats to go on and was going to drop Weil based on them. I'll keep them up in my bid list now.

[Anonymous User]

I've been following this thread for the past couple weeks, and it seems that bid lists for a 3.13 (me) and a median student (say, 3.26ish) should not be all that different, except for a few tweaks. am i reading people's comments correctly on this? i've posted a potential bid list below, and welcome any critiques/commentary/"dude wake up and pull your head out of whatever it is you've had it stuck up"

i'm going to start emailing non-eip firms next week (after journals are announced), and then a couple weeks later email eip firms that i don't land interviews with after the bidlists/interviews are finalized. also, while i'd love to bid more on LA, i've only included one CA firm low on my list (and may remove it, or move it up), as having a job is more important than leaving the larger NYC market for California. i realize a few of these firms are absolutely longshots, but i have a few years of work experience (though not really relevant to a legal career) and hope to nail my interviews.

Thoughts, new advice, concerns? Am I on the right track, or need to rethink my bidding all the way around? Any sleepers or obvious exclusions that I should be considering? Thanks in advance.

1. Proskauer Rose
2. Kirkland & Ellis
3. Quinn Emmanuel
4. Dewey & LeBouef
5. Sidley Austin
6. Latham & Watkins
7. Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft
8. Linklaters
9. White & Case
10. Ropes & Gray
11. Akin Gump
12. Paul Hastings
13. Stroock Stroock & Lavan
14. Jones Day
15. Debevoise & Plimpton
16. Hughes Hubbard & Reed
17. Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson
18. Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel
19. Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy
20. Schulte Roth & Zabel
21. Dechert
22. Chadbourne & Parke
23. Paul Weiss
24. Cleary Gotlieb Steen & Hamilton
25. Winston & Strawn
26. clifford chance
27. O’Melveny & Myers (LA Office—will probably move up or simply remove)
28. Vinson & Elkins
29. Cahill Gordon & Reindel
30. Brown Rudnick

[Anonymous User]

You are taking a lot of risks with your bid list. If I had a 3.1, I would take out many of those firms, including Kirkland, Quinn Emmanuel, Latham and Paul Weiss - the fact that Paul Weiss is so far down also makes it highly unlikely that you will get an interview.

[swc65]

I've been following this thread for the past couple weeks, and it seems that bid lists for a 3.13 (me) and a median student (say, 3.26ish) should not be all that different, except for a few tweaks. am i reading people's comments correctly on this? i've posted a potential bid list below, and welcome any critiques/commentary/"dude wake up and pull your head out of whatever it is you've had it stuck up"

i'm going to start emailing non-eip firms next week (after journals are announced), and then a couple weeks later email eip firms that i don't land interviews with after the bidlists/interviews are finalized. also, while i'd love to bid more on LA, i've only included one CA firm low on my list (and may remove it, or move it up), as having a job is more important than leaving the larger NYC market for California. i realize a few of these firms are absolutely longshots, but i have a few years of work experience (though not really relevant to a legal career) and hope to nail my interviews.

Thoughts, new advice, concerns? Am I on the right track, or need to rethink my bidding all the way around? Any sleepers or obvious exclusions that I should be considering? Thanks in advance.

1. Proskauer Rose
2. Kirkland & Ellis
3. Quinn Emmanuel
4. Dewey & LeBouef
5. Sidley Austin
6. Latham & Watkins
7. Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft
8. Linklaters
9. White & Case
10. Ropes & Gray
11. Akin Gump
12. Paul Hastings
13. Stroock Stroock & Lavan
14. Jones Day
15. Debevoise & Plimpton
16. Hughes Hubbard & Reed
17. Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson
18. Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel
19. Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy
20. Schulte Roth & Zabel
21. Dechert
22. Chadbourne & Parke
23. Paul Weiss
24. Cleary Gotlieb Steen & Hamilton
25. Winston & Strawn
26. Clifford Chance
27. O’Melveny & Myers (LA Office—will probably move up or simply remove)
28. Vinson & Elkins
29. Cahill Gordon & Reindel
30. Brown Rudnick

I am not sure if you are the one with a similar GPA who posted in the other thread, but the bolded are the ones that IMO are way too much of a longshot to spend bids on. You are in a shaky position at bottom 1/3 and should put a lot of effort into your bidlist if you are in any way counting on BigLaw.

[Anonymous User]

I am not sure if you are the one with a similar GPA who posted in the other thread, but the bolded are the ones that IMO are way too much of a longshot to spend bids on. You are in a shaky position at bottom 1/3 and should put a lot of effort into your bidlist if you are in any way counting on BigLaw.

Are there specific recommendations from people about what firms to bid on for those in the 3.1-3.2 range? summer class size, bid/interview ratio and the honors list have helped some, but in addition to some of the non-bolded above, where should people in this position be bidding?

[imchuckbass58]

You are taking a lot of risks with your bid list. If I had a 3.1, I would take out many of those firms, including Kirkland, Quinn Emmanuel, Latham and Paul Weiss - the fact that Paul Weiss is so far down also makes it highly unlikely that you will get an interview.

I agree that is quite an aggressive bid list. Quinn probably won't even consider you since they have a hard cutoff which you are likely below.

You want to bid on firms that give more than 10 CLS offers on a regular basis, and where fewer than 30% of the offers go to people with honors.

[Anonymous User]

You are taking a lot of risks with your bid list. If I had a 3.1, I would take out many of those firms, including Kirkland, Quinn Emmanuel, Latham and Paul Weiss - the fact that Paul Weiss is so far down also makes it highly unlikely that you will get an interview.

I agree that is quite an aggressive bid list. Quinn probably won't even consider you since they have a hard cutoff which you are likely below.

You want to bid on firms that give more than 10 CLS offers on a regular basis, and where fewer than 30% of the offers go to people with honors.

You're all probably right, those bids are essentially just wasted--they were really more for an outside shot because of larger class sizes. I'm going to take these off and head back to the honors book, but there are a ton of firms that have no honors stats listed, so it's difficult to tell. Even for those who do have a low honors percentage, many had small SA classes. So if you can think of any that aren't on that list and meet the 10 offer/ less than 30% honors criteria, I'm all ears.

[imchuckbass58]

You're all probably right, those bids are essentially just wasted--they were really more for an outside shot because of larger class sizes. I'm going to take these off and head back to the honors book, but there are a ton of firms that have no honors stats listed, so it's difficult to tell. Even for those who do have a low honors percentage, many had small SA classes. So if you can think of any that aren't on that list and meet the 10 offer/ less than 30% honors criteria, I'm all ears.

You have most of them but the point is you should bid them high enough that you're virtually assured of getting an interview with them.

Firms in that category include:
-Stroock
-Kramer Levin
-Schulte (this is a big one - they made 38 CLS offers last year)
-Kaye Scholer
-Cadwalader
-Paul Hastings
-Hughes Hubbard (barely over 30%)
-Dechert (barely over 30%)
-Sidley
-White and Case

[Anonymous User]

So, I've updated my bid list (from above). Again, I'm at 3.13, non-URM with a few years of professional but not legal work experience, and just landed a decent journal--though don't know that this matters at all. I realize there are still a few longshots on here, two of which I have connections at otherwise they'd be off the list. Thoughts?

1. Proskauer Rose
2. Jones Day
3. Schulte Roth & Zabel
4. Stroock Stroock & Lavan
5. Sidley Austin
6. Latham & Watkins
7. Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft
8. Linklaters
9. White & Case
10. Paul Hastings
11. Akin Gump
12. Hughes Hubbard & Reed
13. Dechert
14. Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy
15. Kaye Scholar
16. Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel
17. Vinson & Elkins
18. Ropes & Gray
19. clifford chance
20. Willkie Farr
21. Brown Rudnick
22. Chadbourne & Parke
23. Winston & Strawn
24. O’Melveny & Myers (LA Office—will probably move up)
25. Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson
26. Pillsbury
27. Mayer
28. Patterson Bellknapp
29. Cahill Gordon & Reindel
30. Dewey & LeBouef

[Anonymous User]

Same boat as many with a 3.1x GPA -- did a relevant Dean then just lie to my face when I told him/her I was freaked out about my GPA and he/she said that I was just about median? If median is 3.25ish, that's a ridiculous ridiculous thing to tell a student sincerely interested in knowing where he/she stands to prepare for OCI. Anyone else have a similar experience? Does anyone actually have the hard and fast number or range for median from an official's mouth at CLS?

[imchuckbass58]

Same boat as many with a 3.1x GPA -- did a relevant Dean then just lie to my face when I told him/her I was freaked out about my GPA and he/she said that I was just about median? If median is 3.25ish, that's a ridiculous ridiculous thing to tell a student sincerely interested in knowing where he/she stands to prepare for OCI. Anyone else have a similar experience? Does anyone actually have the hard and fast number or range for median from an official's mouth at CLS?

Median is somewhere between 3.25-3.30 (I have actually seen the stats for past years, but it is no longer reported). It probably shifts slightly from year to year, but the curve hasn't changed so I can't imagine it's significantly outside of that range.

But, especially assuming the x is in the high range (e.g., 3.18), you are not meaningfully below median. Employers simply don't make granular distinctions between 3.18 and 3.25, or 3.28 and 3.33. They probably don't even calculate GPAs in most cases. They see if you are stone or not, and then glance to see if you get mostly Bs, mostly B+s, or mostly A-s.

In terms of an actual meaningful difference in prospects driven by grades, there probably are really only four groups (the numbers for which I'm approximating):
-Really high grades (i.e., 3.6+)
-Stone (3.4-3.6)
-Medianish (3.1-3.4)
-Bad (<3.1)

Within these groups, your prospects are probably pretty much the same. That is, people with a 3.55 probably don't perform noticeably better than people with a 3.45. In both cases they see you have grades that are good enough for Stone, but not astronomically high. Similarly, a 3.25 probably doesn't perform meaningfully better than a 3.18. Either way you are roughly around median, with mostly Bs and B+s. Between groups there's a difference, but even that is probably overstated in most cases.

[timbs4339]

Same boat as many with a 3.1x GPA -- did a relevant Dean then just lie to my face when I told him/her I was freaked out about my GPA and he/she said that I was just about median? If median is 3.25ish, that's a ridiculous ridiculous thing to tell a student sincerely interested in knowing where he/she stands to prepare for OCI. Anyone else have a similar experience? Does anyone actually have the hard and fast number or range for median from an official's mouth at CLS?

Median is somewhere between 3.25-3.30 (I have actually seen the stats for past years, but it is no longer reported). It probably shifts slightly from year to year, but the curve hasn't changed so I can't imagine it's significantly outside of that range.

But, especially assuming the x is in the high range (e.g., 3.18), you are not meaningfully below median. Employers simply don't make granular distinctions between 3.18 and 3.25, or 3.28 and 3.33. They probably don't even calculate GPAs in most cases. They see if you are stone or not, and then glance to see if you get mostly Bs, mostly B+s, or mostly A-s.

In terms of an actual meaningful difference in prospects driven by grades, there probably are really only four groups (the numbers for which I'm approximating):
-Really high grades (i.e., 3.6+)
-Stone (3.4-3.6)
-Medianish (3.1-3.4)
-Bad (<3.1)

Within these groups, your prospects are probably pretty much the same. That is, people with a 3.55 probably don't perform noticeably better than people with a 3.45. In both cases they see you have grades that are good enough for Stone, but not astronomically high. Similarly, a 3.25 probably doesn't perform meaningfully better than a 3.18. Either way you are roughly around median, with mostly Bs and B+s. Between groups there's a difference, but even that is probably overstated in most cases.

This is pretty spot on, although there may actually be some firms that bust out the calculator.

It would be interesting to see if different recruiters have different preferences (say some prefer all B+s to mostly B's with some A's mixed in or vice versa, or if getting a B- lowers your chances compared to someone with the same GPA but all B or above.

[Anonymous User]

About a B+ average at CLS here. Looking for a few DC firms to throw bids at. Was thinking maybe WilmerHale and Paul Hastings...does anyone have any suggestions? Don't waste a single bid on DC would be a valid suggestion.