Please tell me if I'm being unrealistic Forum

[Anonymous User]

KJD. Transferred from a T4 to a lower end T1. Was top 15% at T4. Currently seeking in Texas and California. Have ties there. Seeking 180k. Will settle 160k. Had nooooo luck at OCI, 0 callbacks as of now had only 2 screeners. OCI all preselect. Should I start seeking 100-140k? Are those even out of my reach. Please just tell me how much of a moron I'm being. Have already applied to some 100-140/50k. This all goes for a SA.

Don't know where to start with mid law? How much is pay and where would one go about finding mid law.

[Anonymous User]

Yes. Kids over median aren't getting SAs from Duke/Uva right now. Any job that pays should be your concern right now.

[Anonymous User]

Yeah I figured.

[Anonymous User]

You are being unrealistic. You should open up to anything that pays over $50k because that may be hard for you to land.

[Anonymous User]

Guess I should stop now taking law school too seriously. Here I was joining journals, moot court, etc. lol

[Anonymous User]

Honestly OP not trying to be a dick but if you land a $50k job then you had a great outcome.

[Anonymous User]

Dude, half of the class at the lower T14 don't get those jobs. Hopefully you have been applying to those jobs you weren't necessarily willing to accept.

[rpupkin]

Guess I should stop now taking law school too seriously. Here I was joining journals, moot court, etc. lol

Uhhhh....no. You should both (1) continue to take law school seriously, and (2) keep aggressively looking for a legal job of some sort.

[lavarman84]

Honestly OP not trying to be a dick but if you land a $50k job then you had a great outcome.

Honestly, not trying to be a dick, OP isn't the only one being unrealistic here.

[Anonymous User]

Honestly OP not trying to be a dick but if you land a $50k job then you had a great outcome.

Honestly, not trying to be a dick, OP isn't the only one being unrealistic here.

You are right it is probably unrealistic he will land a 50k job

[lavarman84]

Honestly OP not trying to be a dick but if you land a $50k job then you had a great outcome.

Honestly, not trying to be a dick, OP isn't the only one being unrealistic here.

You are right it is probably unrealistic he will land a 50k job

Still wrong, anon. Shall we take another crack at this?

[Anonymous User]

OP here, you guys are right man fuck this shit. I came in with high hopes and all. What's the point of taking a lower end T1 sewer seriously lmao when your T4 stinks even more and will be on your resume forever.

[lavarman84]

OP here, you guys are right man fuck this shit. I came in with high hopes and all. What's the point of taking a lower end T1 sewer seriously lmao when your T4 stinks even more and will be on your resume forever.

You'll be fine. T4 won't be on your resume past your first job. Work hard. Hustle hard. You'll find a job. Biglaw hiring is on a far earlier schedule than other firms. You do have an unrealistic expectation if you think you can only apply to $180k or $160k jobs. But if you work hard, hustle hard, and make the extra effort, you can certainly land a job making $50k out of law school. And you might even land a job making $75k or $100k. It's just going to take more patience and work.

[FloridaCoastalorbust]

Posters are dumb. Congrats on the transfer. Get good grades and be a gunner with your job search. Mass mail broadly, but tailor each cover letter. You will land at least 160k, I am confident. Don't settle for anything less.

[KunAgnis]

OP here, you guys are right man fuck this shit. I came in with high hopes and all. What's the point of taking a lower end T1 sewer seriously lmao when your T4 stinks even more and will be on your resume forever.

It could be that OCI didn't go as well because it's preselect. I think in your case you crushed it at your old school so I'd focus your old school's primary market and see where your old school's alumni went and MM there. Barring that, you probably have a very high GPA so you could take a crack at some smaller NYC firms

[bk1]

Posters are dumb. Congrats on the transfer. Get good grades and be a gunner with your job search. Mass mail broadly, but tailor each cover letter. You will land at least 160k, I am confident. Don't settle for anything less.

People may have been a bit harsh, but there's no need to peddle in false hope. I'm not saying that OP is definitely shut out of 160k+ jobs, but nobody should be "confident" that OP will get one based on the information provided so far.

@OP: You were top 15% at a T4. At some T4 schools, not much more than 15% of the class even gets full time legal jobs, let alone ones that pay 6 figures or close to it. And at some T4 schools, the 15th percentile of salaries was 60k. So yes, your expectations were probably inaccurate. As rpupkin noted, that's not to say that you shouldn't try or that you don't need to, if anything you should be trying even harder if you want to be a lawyer because you are fighting an uphill battle. That's also not to say you shouldn't apply to high-paying firms, just realize that it's a difficult road, recalibrate your expectations and put everything you can towards getting a job as a lawyer.

[Anonymous User]

Op here damn. My transferor is so shitty that even LST questions them. TBH, it ranks around 190-200/ out of 202 or 203 ABA accredited schools. And given its that bad nobody gives a fuck that I have a good rank or great gpa during interviews. Even though I transferred, firms still look at my transferor because obviously they have nothing else to determine my potential with. you might as well throw my transferor in the same garbage as Cooley. I was once a smart guy if not at least so my mother told me so. I'm loosing hope and probably won't even take myself seriously in a few years. FML. Even my lower end transferee T1( 35-50) can go to hell. I should've played my cards right from the start. People at my T1 are fucking struggling as well. The only thing good my life thus far proves is pretty much if you want to transfer from a school like Cooley, you can. Hell I jumped three whole tiers. What good is that though? Imagine if I had started at a lower end T1 I could have probably jumped exceptionally well at least 20 ranks or so.

This forum helps me relieve some of this unnecessary stress. I love TLS and most of the people here. Let the truth be spoken.

And guess what? No salary information provided either.

[zhenders]

Apply to everything. Don't think of anything as out of your reach, but recognize the reality of the odds. A friend of mine just did a T4 -> T1 transfer, and got Chicago Biglaw. If I were in your shoes, I'd be thinking of everything I could to be hustling and connecting with attorneys. Sell them on your energy, drive, and excitement. Ask to have coffee with attorneys. Your odds are slim, but it's been done before -- and when people are successful, it's usually some variation of this that makes them so.

That said, legal work is the goal -- but you can have a realistic goal and a reach goal at the same time; they aren't (nor should they ever be) mutually exclusive.

[Anonymous User]

Apply everywhere and get your grades up. I was top 2% at a TTT and got a 15/hr job for my summer after 2L. Kept my grades up and eventually got biglaw/180K as a 3L. Don't know what the market in your school is like, but mine was in a major market and the top 15% was not high enough for 160K unless you are a URM, not trying to be a dick, just the sad reality.

[Anonymous User]

Wish you had come here before transferring. We would have told you you had no shot at big law from your TTTT at 15% or your non-T14. The reality is that top 15% outside the T14 isn't good enough. I went to a TTT where the (one) 160 firm said for screeners that you had to be top 15% but as a preselect place the reality is that you were only getting a screener at top 10%. I got an offer at top 5% but literally the only people from a non-T14 in my class at the firm were all top 5%. They don't need to dip below that, so they don't. And certainly not down to top 15%.

THAT SAID....I was hired as a 3L so there is a chance, albeit a very very small one that if you bust ass and end up in the top 5% at your new school a secondary market somewhere will pick you up. Gonna be even more difficult though, and you basically are going to need a 4.0 and connections to get you in the door.

[Dr. Nefario]

The reality is that top 15% outside the T14 isn't good enough.

This is not a reality. Several non-T14 have BL rates of 25-35%. While I get what you meant, I just wanted to keep the light on that you don't have to be that high up at T1 schools. Obviously it helps, but not necessary.

[Anonymous User]

The reality is that top 15% outside the T14 isn't good enough.

This is not a reality. Several non-T14 have BL rates of 25-35%. While I get what you meant, I just wanted to keep the light on that you don't have to be that high up at T1 schools. Obviously it helps, but not necessary.

If OP's position is that a 160K is "settling"....top 15% is not enough and he is being unrealistic.

Also, I would love to know how those people are scoring BL jobs. Is it something through the school? Or is through the students' own personal connections/efforts? For example, let's say school X, ranked 23 has 25% BL rate. What percentage of those people got their BL jobs through the school and what percentage got their job through outside efforts? Isn't it possible that schools just outside the T14 get applicants and students who can't take standardized tests or didn't do super well in college but have the social networking abilities and hustle to land jobs that way? Or maybe they're picking up kids from prominent, well-connected families that can't quite get into the T14 but are still going to be able to land something through no effort of their own. Without more information, we can't know.

[Anonymous User]

I'm not sure why you are so down, OP.

Look, you went to a T4 and transferred to a T1. To the extent any law student can expect to walk into a 180/160k job (and there are very few schools at which is the case, in fact I'd say maybe only YS fit this category), that was never going to be you. You are going have to do what many tens of thousands of lawyers did before you - take a job making ~60K or maybe ~100K and then actually be a competent lawyer who people want to promote or hire on the basis of your skills and professionalism, not on how you did on the LSAT and a bunch of 1L exams. That's not some impossible or even particularly challenging task.

You have maybe another month to futz around trying to get 180K/160K biglaw jobs, and you should definitely mass mail and do all that stuff. But you also need to be applying for everything you can - regional midlaw, fedgov, boutiques, etc. etc. You also need to keep your grades high for federal and state clerkships.

[dixiecupdrinking]

Your goals are highly unrealistic, BUT you are in a much better position at your new school to accomplish a more realistic positive outcome.

[Anonymous User]

The reality is that top 15% outside the T14 isn't good enough.

This is not a reality. Several non-T14 have BL rates of 25-35%. While I get what you meant, I just wanted to keep the light on that you don't have to be that high up at T1 schools. Obviously it helps, but not necessary.

If OP's position is that a 160K is "settling"....top 15% is not enough and he is being unrealistic.

Also, I would love to know how those people are scoring BL jobs. Is it something through the school? Or is through the students' own personal connections/efforts? For example, let's say school X, ranked 23 has 25% BL rate. What percentage of those people got their BL jobs through the school and what percentage got their job through outside efforts? Isn't it possible that schools just outside the T14 get applicants and students who can't take standardized tests or didn't do super well in college but have the social networking abilities and hustle to land jobs that way? Or maybe they're picking up kids from prominent, well-connected families that can't quite get into the T14 but are still going to be able to land something through no effort of their own. Without more information, we can't know.

To speak for the T1 school I know best, about 33% of people who wanted Big Law got it, and did so through OCI, not through connections or through extraordinary personal hustle. This is not true for most T1s, but the data is a little more complicated than you let on. While someone at median at NYU may have a better shot than someone in the top 25% at the T1 school, your view is a gross exaggeration of reality.