I totally agree with the "keep your professors" thing, if you can pull it off. Its just a lot easier to "keep your professors" when they see you in the hallways for 3 years, and you take like 2-3 classes with them or something. I'm working on my connections at Northwestern by doing summer work for two profs, hopefully that pans out.dbt wrote: Hmm. The way I see it, you can keep your professors to recommend you (which is at least the case in my situation/at my school), and Law Review is only so valuable. If 10% of the class is on Law Review but only 3-4% if placing into really competitive COAs, you might be better off trying your hand at Harvard. Nor do I think all of the competitive clerkships at Harvard are restricted to people on LR.
I don't really agree with your statement of "Law review is only so valuable" from a school like MVPB. Getting through the "admissions office" at Harvard is a pretty neat accomplishment, grading/writing on to law review, and engaging in that whole law review process for two years, at a top 10 law school - is a very different proposition. Arguably, if you transfer to Harvard or wherever, and graduate with great grades in your 2L and 3L years at Harvard (which is very unlikely to predict even if you're top of the class at Michigan, because - its Harvard, people are crazy there) - then your grades, despite no HLR, may be good enough for a COA clerkship. But its a huge gamble, you don't have any guarantee of doing well at HARVARD - compared to MVPB, why give up law review in HAND??!?!