Top Law Schools

Just curious.

Say Person A would honestly be happy in any American city, and has spent time in a wide variety of cities.

Let's say Person A has decent social skills, networking ability, and looks with limited connections coming in.

Person A has a unique background, but this background displays a charitable nature and proven ability to build clientele with limited resources.

Anonymous User wrote:Just curious.

Say Person A would honestly be happy in any American city, and has spent time in a wide variety of cities.

Let's say Person A has decent social skills, networking ability, and looks with limited connections coming in.

Person A has a unique background, but this background displays a charitable nature and proven ability to build clientele with limited resources.

JAG is much much harder to get then a 70k job, but assuming 70k is sufficient and that you would also take non-legal work that paid 70k, avoiding the bottom 15% should get you there. If you want 70k & legal, then probably outside the bottom quarter or bottom third to be safe.

wow that easy?

plugging in the numbers, i think 70k even with loan repayments and taxes would be the bare minimum to support a decent quality of life for myself (i don't really require that much money to be put together and happy). i literally spend most of my free time at the gym or watching sport games at bars with friends, and don't drink that much for athletic reasons (i like staying pretty decent at sports) and cook so my COL is pretty low. With 35k post taxes, I would honestly have extra money. Don't get me wrong, I would love 160k, but I'd honestly probably just use this extra money to invest and give to charity.

See http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNL ... slreturn=1, see also http://www.law.umich.edu/careers/classs ... stats.aspx

Penn shoves 57% into NLJ250 firms. UVA shoves 40% and Mich shoves 31%. That only counts firms with more than 160 lawyers. By the time you figure in government (federal and state), smaller firms, and non-legal jobs, even Mich is probably throwing at least 2/3 into 70k+ work.

Anonymous User wrote:wow that easy?

plugging in the numbers, i think 70k even with loan repayments and taxes would be the bare minimum to support a decent quality of life for myself (i don't really require that much money to be put together and happy). i literally spend most of my free time at the gym or watching sport games at bars with friends, and don't drink that much for athletic reasons (i like staying pretty decent at sports) and cook so my COL is pretty low. With 35k post taxes, I would honestly have extra money. Don't get me wrong, I would love 160k, but I'd honestly probably just use this extra money to invest and give to charity.

If you borrow the whole thing, loan payments are pretty high. ~2500 a month. You'll end up with less than 35K.

LawIdiot86 wrote:See http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNL ... slreturn=1, see also http://www.law.umich.edu/careers/classs ... stats.aspx

Penn shoves 57% into NLJ250 firms. UVA shoves 40% and Mich shoves 31%. That only counts firms with more than 160 lawyers. By the time you figure in government (federal and state), smaller firms, and non-legal jobs, even Mich is probably throwing at least 2/3 into 70k+ work.

Let's not make the assumption that Mich will continue to 'shove 31%' into biglaw. Clearly a one year anomaly.

Plus that's the worst year's stats, they'll be higher for all of MVP from here on out.

this actually paints a much rosier picture than TLS would have led me to believe. it makes it seem if you go to a t-14, truly want to be a lawyer, and aren't awful at top-law-schools.com won't be all that shabby. i know people who performed 50th percentile at top 10 business schools who can't find any employment.

Anonymous User wrote:this actually paints a much rosier picture than TLS would have led me to believe. it makes it seem if you go to a t-14, truly want to be a lawyer, and aren't awful at top-law-schools.com won't be all that shabby. i know people who performed 50th percentile at top 10 business schools who can't find any employment.

They are being optimistic. Small firms are hard to get. And small firms that pay 70K will be in high cost of area places. Once you miss big law your grades aren't really that important. It's not like some small firm is going to take you because you are bottom 30 but the other guy is bottom 15. You'll have to hustle, network and really struggle to get any job.

At michigan, for class of 2011, only 55% reported salary. Of those the bottom 25% made less than 65K. Nearly 50% of Michigan 2011 could be making less than 65K.

Northwestern gives a detailed salary breakdown that might be enlightening: http://www.law.northwestern.edu/career/statistics/

Between the salary breakdown and the employment stats, you can pretty much figure out what happened to everyone in the class.

60% were in jobs making $100k+ (firm or business).[1]
2% made between $80k-$100k.
8% were in federal clerkships (could have gotten $100k+ firm jobs).
4% were in permanent public interest or government jobs (almost certainly by choice)
25% were unemployed or in (likely) undesirable jobs: http://top-law-schools.com/forums/viewt ... 1&t=181723.

The people in the last category aren't necessarily the bottom 1/4 of the class. They include people with decent grades who wanted public interest but couldn't get it because it's so competitive, they include people with decent grades who were bad interviewers or bid poorly or were just unlucky.

All told, I'd say 80% of the class was in a position, grades-wise, where getting a $100k+ firm job was not out of the question.

[1] This is a lower bound, assuming every person who didn't report was making < $100k. That said I think it's pretty close to the upper bound too. Amongst groups who are likely to make > $100k (e.g. 100+ attorney firms) the reporting rate was 97.5%.

For those not in T14, keep in mind, Northwestern is placing about 60% into Big Law based on that report. That is why the numbers and salary average is so high. For lower tiered schools, this information has no relevance. Likely 5% Big Law on average and average salary likely in the $ 50-60,000 range.

Yeah i dont know how ill interview. I would say I'd def fit into a firm socially, and have a diverse group of friends. I'm smart and hardworking, but so are most people out mvp so o was just wondering worst case scenario. Seems i def wont be homeless! Thanks!!

Anonymous User wrote:Yeah i dont know how ill interview. I would say I'd def fit into a firm socially, and have a diverse group of friends. I'm smart and hardworking, but so are most people out mvp so o was just wondering worst case scenario. Seems i def wont be homeless! Thanks!!

Having a diverse group of friends tells you nothing. You need to go to your CSO and have them do mock interviews and resume review the moment finals are over.