Top Law Schools

Take Suffolk University, ranked 144th with a 39% jd requiring job 9 months after grad rate (I think that's right). What is life like for their career services people? Are the deans like oh nice job! you exceeded the 37% expectation (ie we know our school has very little prestige and your life must be really hard)? Or are they constantly getting fired in an effort to bring in new people that will "do better"? How much of the blame falls on them? And is 39% a bad number by their standards? These are just general things I was wondering, but any insight or speculation would be, at the least, somewhat entertaining.

objctnyrhnr wrote:Take Suffolk University, ranked 144th with a 39% jd requiring job 9 months after grad rate (I think that's right). What is life like for their career services people? Are the deans like oh nice job! you exceeded the 37% expectation (ie we know our school has very little prestige and your life must be really hard)? Or are they constantly getting fired in an effort to bring in new people that will "do better"? How much of the blame falls on them? And is 39% a bad number by their standards? These are just general things I was wondering, but any insight or speculation would be, at the least, somewhat entertaining.

a) I doubt they think as much about it as you think about it. b) I doubt much blame falls on them. c) People tend to compare themselves within tiers. If Suffolk starts doing worse than NESL, then heads will be chopped. But if they are doing ok within their tier, it is probably business as usual.

Pokemon wrote:

objctnyrhnr wrote:Take Suffolk University, ranked 144th with a 39% jd requiring job 9 months after grad rate (I think that's right). What is life like for their career services people? Are the deans like oh nice job! you exceeded the 37% expectation (ie we know our school has very little prestige and your life must be really hard)? Or are they constantly getting fired in an effort to bring in new people that will "do better"? How much of the blame falls on them? And is 39% a bad number by their standards? These are just general things I was wondering, but any insight or speculation would be, at the least, somewhat entertaining.

a) I doubt they think as much about it as you think about it. b) I doubt much blame falls on them. c) People tend to compare themselves within tiers. If Suffolk starts doing worse than NESL, then heads will be chopped. But if they are doing ok within their tier, it is probably business as usual.

While I disagree with (a), given that it is literally their job and it was just some random thing I wondered the other day, I think the rest of what you say sounds like it could be pretty accurate.

Yeah, I don't think that career services is overly concerned with getting people jobs (especially at TTTT's). If they were they would probably give better advice.

Ditto pre-law advisors and giving people solid pre-law school advice.

I was just reading about Suffolk today.

Man, that is some horrible stats

BankruptMe wrote:I was just reading about Suffolk today.

Man, that is some horrible stats

I know! The reason I mentioned it was because my friend is thinking of going there at cost, so I looked it up and was like holy shit. And of course I gave him the TLS speech, and he gave me the "but I'm a special snowflake speech." And I said, "so you work really hard?" And he said "yeah. I work insanely hard." And I gave him the "why didn't they give you more money for high GPA? What did you graduate with?" And he said "uhhh a 3.1...." and this is with some bs lib arts major at Uconn too.

Then I said "dude only 39% have JD requiring jobs 9 months after grad!" he was like "oh that's not that bad. I can definitely work harder than 61% of my class." TTTT students deserve their fate, I decided.

I am 0/2 on talking people out of going to Suffolk. The first one was a while ago (had he just retaken and raised 3 points, he could have gone to bu/bc!) and then he realized it was a bad idea after 1L so he decided to double down and get a TTTT MBA also, at full cost.

BankruptMe wrote:I was just reading about Suffolk today.

Man, that is some horrible stats

They have a pretty good reputation in Boston.

CSO counselor sounds like a really cushy job with great hours.

newyorker88 wrote:

BankruptMe wrote:I was just reading about Suffolk today.

Man, that is some horrible stats

They have a pretty good reputation in Boston.

The day class too, or just the night class?

worldtraveler wrote:CSO counselor sounds like a really cushy job with great hours.

assume they work 8:30-5:30. what do you think they make...ballpark?

dead head wrote:

newyorker88 wrote:

BankruptMe wrote:I was just reading about Suffolk today.

Man, that is some horrible stats

They have a pretty good reputation in Boston.

The day class too, or just the night class?

Neither one. Every private sector person scoffs at them, and every public sector person wonders how they made judges/DA's, and then realizes that it occurred at a time (decade or two ago) when every single decent school's graduates went private at a rate of 99%, so the only graduates left to go public sector were TTTT.

objctnyrhnr wrote:

worldtraveler wrote:CSO counselor sounds like a really cushy job with great hours.

assume they work 8:30-5:30. what do you think they make...ballpark?

$110,000 is my guess

spleenworship wrote:

objctnyrhnr wrote:

worldtraveler wrote:CSO counselor sounds like a really cushy job with great hours.

assume they work 8:30-5:30. what do you think they make...ballpark?

$110,000 is my guess

Nah, only if you're like dean of career services. U Michigan career counselors in 2013 made $62-88K (the 88K was a director). Rutgers people make $59-72K.

(Not saying those are bad salaries, just not $110K.)

spleenworship wrote:

objctnyrhnr wrote:

worldtraveler wrote:CSO counselor sounds like a really cushy job with great hours.

assume they work 8:30-5:30. what do you think they make...ballpark?

$110,000 is my guess

At UT they make between 50-80K. Not a bad salary in TX.

"Did you try hard enough?"

A. Nony Mouse wrote:

spleenworship wrote:

objctnyrhnr wrote:

worldtraveler wrote:CSO counselor sounds like a really cushy job with great hours.

assume they work 8:30-5:30. what do you think they make...ballpark?

$110,000 is my guess

Nah, only if you're like dean of career services. U Michigan career counselors in 2013 made $62-88K (the 88K was a director). Rutgers people make $59-72K.

(Not saying those are bad salaries, just not $110K.)

Hmmm. Well, the more you know...

I go to a TTT, our employment rates are abysmal, the CSOs don't know crap, and they still have their jobs (same people all 3 years I've been in). So, life for them isn't that bad.

A. Nony Mouse wrote:

spleenworship wrote:

objctnyrhnr wrote:

worldtraveler wrote:CSO counselor sounds like a really cushy job with great hours.

assume they work 8:30-5:30. what do you think they make...ballpark?

$110,000 is my guess

Nah, only if you're like dean of career services. U Michigan career counselors in 2013 made $62-88K (the 88K was a director). Rutgers people make $59-72K.

Damn, that's bad. Maybe that explains why career services employees are generally pretty terrible. These schools make like $55k /year per head across around 1200 students, so $66 million a year. Factor out scholarships, and it's probably still around $50 million /year. They should really just start paying career services people $200-300k /year (clearly they should be able to afford it on a $50 million /year budget), which would allow them to recruit some higher quality people... It's never been totally clear to me what law schools do with all this money that they make each year, assuming they aren't profit centers for the rest of the universities (like many deans claim they aren't).

My school is now unranked, mainly due to bad employment stats. The main issue is that many of the older administrators and faculty don't believe that the career services office should be responsible for finding jobs. They have the old school mentality of "you should go out and find your own job! Nothing is going to get handed to you!" After pressuring by certain members of the student body and other, younger faculty, the school relented and added a third person in the office. The only problem is they hired a 25 year old with no direct firm or hiring experience.

BTW, I saw the job listing and the CSOs in my school make between 45-55K a year. Less stress than a firm for OK money for the area. Great for working moms which most of them are or aspire to be. Not so great for students who want them to hunt down jobs. We had literally zero accepted offers come to our class through OCI this year and no one seems to care. Our job board is a ghost town that only seems to have offers of jobs for national positions that were found online and not cultivated by the CSOs. Many people in charge don't keep up on this stuff and honestly don't care as long as things stay the same. It will likely be too late once they actually figure it out.

Anonymous User wrote:

dead head wrote:

newyorker88 wrote:

BankruptMe wrote:I was just reading about Suffolk today.

Man, that is some horrible stats

They have a pretty good reputation in Boston.

The day class too, or just the night class?

Neither one. Every private sector person scoffs at them, and every public sector person wonders how they made judges/DA's, and then realizes that it occurred at a time (decade or two ago) when every single decent school's graduates went private at a rate of 99%, so the only graduates left to go public sector were TTTT.

That's interesting that you say that because I've noticed that a lot of judges in Boston are Suffolk grads.

I wouldn't worry CSOs, they certainly don't give a crap about you.

I think people here are being too hard on their CSOs. I'm sure there are some schools out there with really bad CSOs, but I don't think all the people there don't care or aren't doing anything. You have to remember that the CSO is supposed to provide career services and is not a placement agency. While I realize getting a job is part and parcel to what you expect when paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a law degree, the CSOs cannot create jobs for you.

The legal market is still tough. Even legal recruiters are struggling to find positions for laterals with tons of experience. If recruiters, who get a commission for their placement, are struggling to find jobs for their clients, you can imagine the difficulty CSOs are having with freshly minted law school grads. There are a lot of behind the scenes work good CSOs are doing that you may not be aware of. They are in constant contact with the larger firms that actively recruit from the school and check with their contacts in other places for job leads.

I'm not trying to be a lackey for CSOs and agree that some criticism is justified. In fact, I am currently struggling to find a job myself. However, I think some folks are acting too quickly by blaming the folks at the CSOs for not doing enough.

There's really very little the CSOs can do, and the growth in their offices has more to do with (1) the way law schools take in and spend money to bump their USNWR rankings, (2) the pressure on a Dean to appear to be "doing something" about the jobs crisis and the easy way in which throwing money at CSOs looks like it's solving the problem.

The truth is that there's not much a CSO can do. They can't create jobs, they can't headhunt for people with no experience or skills, and they can't suddenly make hiring partners at big firms see your school in a different light, or, as Justice Scalia put it, you can't make a sow's ear out of a silk purse and vice versa. At best, they can look over your resume for typos and formatting issues, organize OCI, and maybe do some mock interviews.

Maybe they can hit up the alumni running smaller firms for information on job leads that you wouldn't otherwise get, but this could also be done by the alumni office.

probably pretty shitty having to deal with people like OP

I'm more concerned with what life is like in the Admissions Office.

I'm thinking straight up Stratton Oakmont.

Telling a kid that "he can knock off a few $$$ from the annual tuition by putting his 1L SA summer money towards his/her loans," as he/she mimes getting a BJ from the phone receiver.