Top Law Schools

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Probably helpful to mention the school and your relative ranking within it. There are a few schools in that area with pretty substantial differences in big law hiring rates.

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This is the second post you made with basically the same question (http://top-law-schools.com/forums/viewt ... 3&t=224248). At Michigan, you are almost certainly not competitive for those firms at top 30%, barring extraordinary softs or compelling diversity.

Outside of HYS, the top DC firms hire pretty much from the top 10-15% of the class (either on Law Review or could have been on Law Review based on grades). You can consider A&P, Covington, Williams & Connolly, Wilmer Hale, etc. among them. Almost all DC offices are highly biased toward stellar grades, but the ones you mentioned are particularly sticky and very unlikely to dip much below their typical standards without a compelling reason to do so.

To a lesser extent the local DC firms that are a bit less elite (Akin, Crowell, Dickstein, Hogan, Steptoe, Wiley Rein etc.) are more likely to dip down a bit lower but not substantially.

DC offices of national firms are more idiosyncratic since they are generally smaller and have narrower practice area focuses that are more tailored to DC. Some will be selective because their larger firms are selective (V10) and some will be selective because they have highly regarded DC practices (i.e. Jones Day, Sidley). Some smaller offices may dip lower too, but they will also have fewer spots in their summer programs.

TL;DR is that DC is super competitive. You shouldn't focus too much on DC unless you can be competitive with the other students who are really focusing on getting DC since the number of SA spots in the city is relatively small compared to other markets and overall demand.

bdubs wrote:Outside of HYS, the top DC firms hire pretty much from the top 10-15% of the class (either on Law Review or could have been on Law Review based on grades). You can consider A&P, Covington, Williams & Connolly, Wilmer Hale, etc. among them. Almost all DC offices are highly biased toward stellar grades, but the ones you mentioned are particularly sticky and very unlikely to dip much below their typical standards without a compelling reason to do so.

To a lesser extent the local DC firms that are a bit less elite (Akin, Crowell, Dickstein, Hogan, Steptoe, Wiley Rein etc.) are more likely to dip down a bit lower but not substantially.

DC offices of national firms are more idiosyncratic since they are generally smaller and have narrower practice area focuses that are more tailored to DC. Some will be selective because their larger firms are selective (V10) and some will be selective because they have highly regarded DC practices (i.e. Jones Day, Sidley). Some smaller offices may dip lower too, but they will also have fewer spots in their summer programs.

TL;DR is that DC is super competitive. You shouldn't focus too much on DC unless you can be competitive with the other students who are really focusing on getting DC since the number of SA spots in the city is relatively small compared to other markets and overall demand.

I would endorse this post as very solid information, from someone who is going to a V10 national firm's DC office for my upcoming 2L summer. The one thing I would blatantly disagree with is grouping Hogan with those other firms as likely to dip down a bit, they are extremely grade-conscious, and absolutely on the same level as A&P, Wilmer, etc. in at least that respect

Anonymous User wrote:

bdubs wrote:Outside of HYS, the top DC firms hire pretty much from the top 10-15% of the class (either on Law Review or could have been on Law Review based on grades). You can consider A&P, Covington, Williams & Connolly, Wilmer Hale, etc. among them. Almost all DC offices are highly biased toward stellar grades, but the ones you mentioned are particularly sticky and very unlikely to dip much below their typical standards without a compelling reason to do so.

To a lesser extent the local DC firms that are a bit less elite (Akin, Crowell, Dickstein, Hogan, Steptoe, Wiley Rein etc.) are more likely to dip down a bit lower but not substantially.

DC offices of national firms are more idiosyncratic since they are generally smaller and have narrower practice area focuses that are more tailored to DC. Some will be selective because their larger firms are selective (V10) and some will be selective because they have highly regarded DC practices (i.e. Jones Day, Sidley). Some smaller offices may dip lower too, but they will also have fewer spots in their summer programs.

TL;DR is that DC is super competitive. You shouldn't focus too much on DC unless you can be competitive with the other students who are really focusing on getting DC since the number of SA spots in the city is relatively small compared to other markets and overall demand.

I would endorse this post as very solid information, from someone who is going to a V10 national firm's DC office for my upcoming 2L summer. The one thing I would blatantly disagree with is grouping Hogan with those other firms as likely to dip down a bit, they are extremely grade-conscious, and absolutely on the same level as A&P, Wilmer, etc. in at least that respect

Second that Hogan is grades focused. A recruiter once told me they only take 3.4 or above.

I would say that top third at UM will get you an interview with A&P. They dip to 3.5 at GULC.

bdubs wrote:TL;DR is that DC is super competitive. You shouldn't focus too much on DC unless you can be competitive with the other students who are really focusing on getting DC since the number of SA spots in the city is relatively small compared to other markets and overall demand.

Most of your post was credited, but you went off the rails here. D.C. is the second biggest legal market in the country behind only NYC, and it's not really even close between it and #3. It is not relatively small compared to anywhere. See http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes231011.htm. So yeah, targeting D.C. only is generally a bad idea if you're BigLaw or bust, but that has more to do with the fact that getting BigLaw period is hard, and not because there aren't enough jobs in D.C.

KidStuddi wrote:

bdubs wrote:TL;DR is that DC is super competitive. You shouldn't focus too much on DC unless you can be competitive with the other students who are really focusing on getting DC since the number of SA spots in the city is relatively small compared to other markets and overall demand.

Most of your post was credited, but you went off the rails here. D.C. is the second biggest legal market in the country behind only NYC, and it's not really even close between it and #3. It is not relatively small compared to anywhere. See http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes231011.htm. So yeah, targeting D.C. only is generally a bad idea if you're BigLaw or bust, but that has more to do with the fact that getting BigLaw period is hard, and not because there aren't enough jobs in D.C.

The prior poster wasn't talking about the number of lawyers in DC, just the number of SA positions. That there are a lot of lawyers in DC does not mean that there are a lot of SA positions. Especially since thousands of lawyers in DC are employed by the federal government.

I think the one big exception that no one has talked about ITT is IP. I know guys who were barely top 1/3 at T10s who got multiple offers at DC biglaw firms because they had patent and hard science backgrounds.

IME, it isn't hard to lateral into top firms in DC if you have transferable experience from a good firm. I think firms are less grade savvy in that context (speaking from experience--I've received lateral offers from top DC firms with law school grades that they wouldn't even touch... talking about below median here).

Hogan may be more selective at other schools, but my school's callback sheets shows a pretty extreme difference in minimums for the other top-tier firms and Hogan in DC.

There might be some variation from school to school though since A&P is one of the most grade selective firms (behind Williams & Connolly and on par with Covington) at my school and it sounds like they are less selective at GULC.

The number of SA spots in DC isn't necessarily small compared to other non-NYC markets like LA, Chicago, SF and TX but it is small compared to NYC. I think the thing that makes it most competitive is that demand is much higher in DC relative to other major markets because many top students want to do DC centered work. It's also seen as a city that is open to people without ties, unlike other non-NYC markets.

I think there is a pretty good consensus that DC is a hard market to recruit in without top grades or have something else going for you (i.e. IP qualifications or something similar).