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I'm a 1L at a T6 and really want to do litigation at Debevoise. I got all B's my first semester. Assuming I get a B+ average this semester, what are my odds at Debevoise and Plimpton?

There is nothing special about Debevoise (in comparison to its peer firms); I highly recommend against romanticizing particular firms as your "dream firm." Straight B's at a T6 isn't fantastic, so bid broadly and make active use of pre-oci. Beyond that, I would look at all the other posts on here about having low grades at a highly-ranked school and how to still get biglaw. Best of luck!

P.S. Debevoise is moving into a beautiful office that I am very jealous of, but that should probably not be a reason to pick a firm

Is Debevoise grade-selective? Or will I be fine with mostly Bs and B+s?

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 21, 2023 10:16 am

Is Debevoise grade-selective? Or will I be fine with mostly Bs and B+s?

You'd be fine at Columbia. I know multiple students who have received offers with mostly Bs and B+s.

CLS2023A wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 21, 2023 3:52 pm

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 21, 2023 10:16 am

Is Debevoise grade-selective? Or will I be fine with mostly Bs and B+s?

You'd be fine at Columbia. I know multiple students who have received offers with mostly Bs and B+s.

I would amend this to say “you’d have a good shot.” Debevoise regularly hires from at/below median from CLS (and gives lots of offers overall), but I also know plenty of people in this grade range who wanted an offer but didn’t get one.

I agree with the poster above that the fixation on Debevoise is kind of weird.

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 21, 2023 4:35 pm

CLS2023A wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 21, 2023 3:52 pm

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 21, 2023 10:16 am

Is Debevoise grade-selective? Or will I be fine with mostly Bs and B+s?

You'd be fine at Columbia. I know multiple students who have received offers with mostly Bs and B+s.

I would amend this to say “you’d have a good shot.” Debevoise regularly hires from at/below median from CLS (and gives lots of offers overall), but I also know plenty of people in this grade range who wanted an offer but didn’t get one.

I agree with the poster above that the fixation on Debevoise is kind of weird.

Yeah for sure. Highly recommend doing pre-OCI/EIP, bidding wisely on them during EIP if early interviewing doesn't work out, taking the time to network and learn more about the firm, and doing mock interviews! The 2Ls/3Ls I know below median going to Debevoise are good interviewers and pass the "airport layover test."

Columbia must be something special. Median or below median at NYU does not get you Debevoise. V20 at best, and it's probably Jones Day, Ropes, or Hogan, etc. All of which are good firms, granted, but none of which compare to Debevoise for lit.

Now that I think of it, median or slightly below at CLS might get Debevoise, but they'd likely be asked to do corporate, with little to no chance of transferring to lit.

At my V50, everyone who was asked to join lit had very good grades and/or was on law review. Don't know whether it's the same elsewhere.

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 22, 2023 12:49 am

Columbia must be something special. Median or below median at NYU does not get you Debevoise. V20 at best, and it's probably Jones Day, Ropes, or Hogan, etc. All of which are good firms, granted, but none of which compare to Debevoise for lit.

Now that I think of it, median or slightly below at CLS might get Debevoise, but they'd likely be asked to do corporate, with little to no chance of transferring to lit.

At my V50, everyone who was asked to join lit had very good grades and/or was on law review. Don't know whether it's the same elsewhere.

Re bolded: this describes Debevoise? They’re a peer firm of lots of V20s, albeit with a more NY-centric presence.

I agree that lit is generally more selective than corporate, but think it’s strange to extrapolate from your firm’s “very good grades” requirement. I know below median folks doing lit at Deb.

If OP is Debevoise or bust (again, weird), it makes sense to be open to corporate, but I’d still say they have a plausible shot at lit.

It has been a long time since I went through EIP, but anecdotal experience and the historical data I have seen suggest that around half of the offers made by Deb are below Stone (which is the only threshold measured by high quality data CLS reports directly), meaning that the CLS contingent of the summer class is likely composed largely of median and below median students. A few people pick Debevoise over places like Cravath/DPW/ect., but it’s not that common.

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 22, 2023 9:14 am

Re bolded: this describes Debevoise? They’re a peer firm of lots of V20s, albeit with a more NY-centric presence.

I agree that lit is generally more selective than corporate, but think it’s strange to extrapolate from your firm’s “very good grades” requirement. I know below median folks doing lit at Deb.

If OP is Debevoise or bust (again, weird), it makes sense to be open to corporate, but I’d still say they have a plausible shot at lit.

Don't be deliberately obtuse. I gave examples to describe what I meant by V20. Deb is closer to Weil, Quinn, Williams & Connolly than it is to Jones Day or Paul Hastings.

I know a CLS grad with a 2.9 1L GPA doing lit at Deb, but the rules that applied to that student do not apply generally, obviously. Let's be serious.

Finally, responding to the poster immediately above, IIRC, Stone is 3.4 and represents top 40%. For all you know, the remaining hires were all in the 3.33-3.39 range, which is still comfortably above median.

Again, at NYU, the median is high 3.2, which means half the damn class has a GPA 3.2 or below.

Assuming OP does slightly better this semester and gets a B+ and A-, that's still a 3.1, which is worlds away from a 3.3. Again, we're speaking generally. I'm sure if OP is a Yale College grad who worked at McKinsey for two years, Deb would be glad to make him an offer.

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 22, 2023 1:14 pm

...

Finally, responding to the poster immediately above, IIRC, Stone is 3.4 and represents top 40%. For all you know, the remaining hires were all in the 3.33-3.39 range, which is still comfortably above median.

...

Again, anecdotal, but I do know for a fact that is not true: some of Deb's hires certainly were below median. Nor is the "3.33-3.39 range" "comfortably above median" at Columbia. We're talking about small movement in one, maybe two grades here.

Moreover, what is the above post trying to prove? No one could dispute that Debevoise is very prestigious within the legal community. It just isn't that difficult to get a job there from some of the best law schools in the country. Is OP going to get an offer with straight Bs? No. But it's certainly within reason that the second semester could recover to the point where Deb would offer.

All this splitting hairs about T6 grade cutoffs is always what TLS devolves into so I can’t say I’m surprised.

But it really is annoying when all these what I assume to be practicing attorneys come in and start waxing poetic about Debevoise grade cutoffs at NYU or whatever, when the real point should be that being this fixated on any given firm as 1L is not the way to go about things.

I was top third at a t14 and didnt even get a debevoie offer. I went to a better ranked firm but the folks there seemed chill enough