Top Law Schools

During a conversation earlier this week someone told me that partners these days are almost universally drawn from HYSCCN. Is this true?

Cool list

This has been discussed to death on these forums.

First, that list from taxprof is only relevant up to a point, given the substantial difference in class size between the schools. You would expect Stanford, Duke, Yale, and Cornell (which have class sizes around or below 200 students) to be lower on the list than, say, Georgetown (600), Harvard (550), and Michigan (375).

Second, current partner elevation is not the same as past partner elevation, and these numbers are cumulative. If you look at the most recent partners at top firms, your statement about HYSCCN does not hold water. Limited anecdotal evidence from the most recent crop of new partners:

- WLRK made three partners who went to these law schools: Harvard, Duke, Cornell. --LinkRemoved--

- Cravath made five partners who went to these law schools: Duke, Fordham, UW, Penn, UVA. http://abovethelaw.com/2012/11/new-part ... w-bonuses/

Partnership depends on luck, economy and X-factor predominantly. What school you went to... probably not at all.

And at Gibson, of course, your 2L and 3L grades.

What school you went to only comes in as a factor because your chances of being hired at any given biglaw firm is higher if you went to HYSCCN(rest of t14). If a firm's SA class is like 70% HYSCCN people (and like 30% rest-of-T14 people) then it wouldn't come as much of a surprise when the remaining 5 people from year's class is eventually up for partnership and they're mostly from HYSCCN. . .

,

Awesome. Thanks for clearing it up.

Cooley is starting an LL.M. in Partnership-track Law at their new Nome, Alaska campus. I suggest you look into it.


But seriously? Its all about how much cash you can take into the firm for the most part. Higher tier schools have more partners if only because those grads are in the same peer group as the best clients. If some TTTT grad somehow snagged five insanely great clients firms would jump (well, at least to abscond said clients).

This is irrelevant

.

What school you go to matters a little for partner (even beyond the initial hiring decisions). But only a little, and primarily because it's easier to impress clients when you have Harvard on your resume than when you have Indiana University. Once you're an associate at a firm it's going to be 95% based on the quality of work you do, the connections you make, the business you bring in, etc (not necessarily in that order).