Top Law Schools

I used to be 100% certain I wanted to transfer, but now I'm leaning toward staying. Let's discuss the realistic odds of landing major-market biglaw as a transfer.

At my current school I should be able to land regional biglaw (100k in this market, ouch). Always tempting to go for the $160k for the same amount of work. But if I transfer, take on the debt, and don't get the job to pay it back, FML. Thoughts?

I think it would depend on:

-where your current school is ranked
-where you are ranked in your class
-where you are considering transferring to

Without that information, it's difficult to say what the right move is.

If you are top 10% at most of the schools in the top 100 (and some of the tier 3/4 schools), you should not transfer unless you don't want to work in the market you school feeds into. And even then, it may not be a good bet.

i.e. top 10% brooklyn/dozo > median NYU. Easily.

i.e. top 10% fordham< HYS. Is top 10% Fordham better than median at Columbia? Possibly.

Aberzombie1892 wrote:If you are top 10% at most of the schools in the top 100 (and some of the tier 3/4 schools), you should not transfer unless you don't want to work in the market you school feeds into. And even then, it may not be a good bet.

i.e. top 10% brooklyn/dozo > median NYU. Easily.

i.e. top 10% fordham< HYS. Is top 10% Fordham better than median at Columbia? Possibly.

You think top 10% at Brooklyn and Cardozo are easily placing better into NYC biglaw than median at NYU?? Median at NYU still has a good shot at some less-prestigious NYC biglaw firms and is still in the running for some very respectable NYC Vault 100 firms. I HIGHLY doubt anything other than top 5% and LR at both of those schools has a realistic shot, especially with the flight to quality that many of these firms have embraced. Many firms have suggested that they will permanently stop hiring outside of the top 20 or 25 schools going forward as the biglaw model shrinks (Fordham in NYC will be the exception, but hiring even there is down significantly).

I would take median at NYU every single day of the week.

I'm wondering the same things. However, it sounds like not too many people really know what they are talking about, especially with this economy. Almost no one landed BigLaw at my T2 flagship regional school last year. I believe that only the top 5% had a shot at OCI last year, and only a few got call backs, but virtually no offers. For example, number one in last year's class had 5-7 call backs at major firms, and those firms instead chose to higher students from T14 schools.

I'm top 2%, and I feel that my odds will be greatly increased by going to a T14. However, I do want to know by how much those odds will increase. If anyone has any first hand experience, please share! We would greatly appreciate it. It seems like this market is unpredictable for transfers right now.

Journeybound wrote:I'm wondering the same things. However, it sounds like not too many people really know what they are talking about, especially with this economy.

Welcome to top-law-schools.com, where everybody has all the answers and nobody has a source.

One of my newer concerns is that my current degree might hold me back from the higher promotions down the road. At the same time, I'm inclined to think nothing is more important than how well you work later in your career.

BTW I'm top 10% at a T2.

I'm top 2% at a t30 and my career services told me I had no shot at oci (midwestern big 10 school, and I'm out of state) because I'm a "walking flight risk." What does that even mean? How can you walk and fly at the same time?

solidsnake wrote:I'm top 2% at a t30 and my career services told me I had no shot at oci (midwestern big 10 school) because I'm a "walking flight risk." What does that even mean? How can you walk and fly at the same time?

Sounds familiar!

The reason I initially thought about transferring is because I took a lot of crap in my 1L SA interviews for being out-of-state. As if they thought I would leave. I'm afraid that if I stay I won't be hired (because I'm not from this city), and if I leave I won't be hired (because I have no grades at transfer school).

chitown825 wrote:

solidsnake wrote:I'm top 2% at a t30 and my career services told me I had no shot at oci (midwestern big 10 school) because I'm a "walking flight risk." What does that even mean? How can you walk and fly at the same time?

Sounds familiar!

The reason I initially thought about transferring is because I took a lot of crap in my 1L SA interviews for being out-of-state. As if they thought I would leave. I'm afraid that if I stay I won't be hired (because I'm not from this city), and if I leave I won't be hired (because I have no grades at transfer school).

The midwest is so insular and protectionist, I (we) have nothing to lose by transferring. Very confident that will get the same grades at transfer school, and even though I wont have new grades by the time of oci, old grades have to mean something. And even if they don't, I'm screwed job-wise if I stay, so, again, nothing to lose. I'm also not a very risk-averse person, however.

The midwest thing is blowing my mind. I'm from Chicago and go to school in a non-Chicago midwest city.

Each employer asked me why I don't want to stay in Chicago, and then continued questioning along that line. I was dinged by each large firm despite smooth interviews/callbacks.

chitown825 wrote:The midwest thing is blowing my mind. I'm from Chicago and go to school in a non-Chicago midwest city.

Each employer asked me why I don't want to stay in Chicago, and then continued questioning along that line. I was dinged by each large firm despite smooth interviews/callbacks.

You didn't get an 1L SA in a battered market like Chicago and you think it is because of the flight risk concern? Couldn't it just as easily be a result of the horrible economy and the fact that 1L SAs are ultra-competitive right now?

Aberzombie1892 wrote:If you are top 10% at most of the schools in the top 100 (and some of the tier 3/4 schools), you should not transfer unless you don't want to work in the market you school feeds into. And even then, it may not be a good bet.

i.e. top 10% brooklyn/dozo > median NYU. Easily.

i.e. top 10% fordham< HYS. Is top 10% Fordham better than median at Columbia? Possibly.

What are you basing this off of?

romothesavior wrote:

chitown825 wrote:The midwest thing is blowing my mind. I'm from Chicago and go to school in a non-Chicago midwest city.

Each employer asked me why I don't want to stay in Chicago, and then continued questioning along that line. I was dinged by each large firm despite smooth interviews/callbacks.

You didn't get an 1L SA in a battered market like Chicago and you think it is because of the flight risk concern? Couldn't it just as easily be a result of the horrible economy and the fact that 1L SAs are ultra-competitive right now?

Uh, I'm not interviewing in Chicago. I grew up there.

Are you gunning for NU/UChi?

Living here in the midwest this last year has made me so apprehensive about the prevalence of regional favoritism that I might choose the transfer school in the market in which I want to work (and to which I have reasonable ties) rather than a slightly higher-ranked school in an unfavored market.

chitown825 wrote:

romothesavior wrote:

chitown825 wrote:The midwest thing is blowing my mind. I'm from Chicago and go to school in a non-Chicago midwest city.

Each employer asked me why I don't want to stay in Chicago, and then continued questioning along that line. I was dinged by each large firm despite smooth interviews/callbacks.

You didn't get an 1L SA in a battered market like Chicago and you think it is because of the flight risk concern? Couldn't it just as easily be a result of the horrible economy and the fact that 1L SAs are ultra-competitive right now?

Uh, I'm not interviewing in Chicago. I grew up there.

Oh my apologies, I misunderstood that. But still, I wouldn't let your 1L SA woes get you down. The fact that you even got callbacks is impressive.

Stringer Bell wrote:

Aberzombie1892 wrote:If you are top 10% at most of the schools in the top 100 (and some of the tier 3/4 schools), you should not transfer unless you don't want to work in the market you school feeds into. And even then, it may not be a good bet.

i.e. top 10% brooklyn/dozo > median NYU. Easily.

i.e. top 10% fordham< HYS. Is top 10% Fordham better than median at Columbia? Possibly.

What are you basing this off of?

If absolutely nothing else, 2009 big law outcomes. Brooklyn/Dozo both placed around 20% (presumably the top 10% would be safe) in big law. NYU was what, 50%?

True it will get better for all of the schools over time. However if the goal of a student is "biglaw in NYC," top 10% a Brooklyn/Dozo is a safer bet than median at NYU. Let me repeat, it will likely get better for NYU - However you are basically safe at the top 10% and in my opinion, you would be out of your mind to give up a pretty much guaranteed win to gamble to get a similar win just for more "prestige."

Many people will throw out V100 chances are higher at NYU.
This raises two issues:
1) you aren't guranteed V-anything at median at NYU
2) most students never heard of the vault rankings until they were 0Ls (basically people would have been happy with high pay, but now they want V-distinction).

Aberzombie1892 wrote:

Stringer Bell wrote:

Aberzombie1892 wrote:If you are top 10% at most of the schools in the top 100 (and some of the tier 3/4 schools), you should not transfer unless you don't want to work in the market you school feeds into. And even then, it may not be a good bet.

i.e. top 10% brooklyn/dozo > median NYU. Easily.

i.e. top 10% fordham< HYS. Is top 10% Fordham better than median at Columbia? Possibly.

What are you basing this off of?

If absolutely nothing else, 2009 big law outcomes. Brooklyn/Dozo both placed around 20% (presumably the top 10% would be safe) in big law. NYU was what, 50%?

True it will get better for all of the schools over time. However if the goal of a student is "biglaw in NYC," top 10% a Brooklyn/Dozo is a safer bet than median at NYU. Let me repeat, it will likely get better for NYU - However you are basically safe at the top 10% and in my opinion, you would be out of your mind to give up a pretty much guaranteed win to gamble to get a similar win just for more "prestige."

Many people will throw out V100 chances are higher at NYU.
This raises two issues:
1) you aren't guranteed V-anything at median at NYU
2) most students never heard of the vault rankings until they were 0Ls (basically people would have been happy with high pay, but now they want V-distinction).

This is a bad inference to make. I'm not sure what the percentage was as to how many students NYU placed into biglaw. But 70% got offers through EIW.

Moreover, even if it is safe to assume that 50% of NYU students placed into biglaw (which sounds a bit low given the above figure), it is not safe to assume that a median or even top 1/3 student at NYU is "safe" for biglaw. And in the same sense, nor is it safe to assume that because Brooklyn or Cardozo placed 20% of their students into biglaw, top 10% is safe. It doesn't work that way ITE.

If we're unwilling to speak with such certainty here, I would be cautious of speaking with such certainty at schools like Brooklyn or Cardozo, even for top 10%.

Aberzombie1892 wrote:

Stringer Bell wrote:

Aberzombie1892 wrote:If you are top 10% at most of the schools in the top 100 (and some of the tier 3/4 schools), you should not transfer unless you don't want to work in the market you school feeds into. And even then, it may not be a good bet.

i.e. top 10% brooklyn/dozo > median NYU. Easily.

i.e. top 10% fordham< HYS. Is top 10% Fordham better than median at Columbia? Possibly.

What are you basing this off of?

If absolutely nothing else, 2009 big law outcomes. Brooklyn/Dozo both placed around 20% (presumably the top 10% would be safe) in big law. NYU was what, 50%?

True it will get better for all of the schools over time. However if the goal of a student is "biglaw in NYC," top 10% a Brooklyn/Dozo is a safer bet than median at NYU. Let me repeat, it will likely get better for NYU - However you are basically safe at the top 10% and in my opinion, you would be out of your mind to give up a pretty much guaranteed win to gamble to get a similar win just for more "prestige."

Many people will throw out V100 chances are higher at NYU.
This raises two issues:
1) you aren't guranteed V-anything at median at NYU
2) most students never heard of the vault rankings until they were 0Ls (basically people would have been happy with high pay, but now they want V-distinction).

Top 10% at Cardozo and Brooklyn Easily beats NYU Median, but top 10% of Fordham doesn't beat median at Columbia? While I would say that top 10% at all three are better than median at NYU and Columbia in terms of probability of getting a job in biglaw, I dont think it is that easily quantifiable, and it seems like you pulled this stuff out of your ass.

I wish it were possible to poll the top 10% at Dozo/Brooklyn and compare them to the 45%-55% at NYU/Columbia. We all know that is impossible, however.

The major problem is that we do not know the rank of the people that got big law from any of the schools. As everyone knows, the individuals who receive big law can vary dramatically in rank.

However I, and many others, would agree that generally only the top few students at Brooklyn/Dozo could get big law and that it is more likely that the top 20% of those schools were the individuals that received big law (as opposed to NYU and Columbia, where it could vary more due the rank of those schools).

The class of 2009 data is the only data available. True, the class of 2010 will/do have it worse. But we won't have any data on them until probably spring of next year. So we resort to 2009.

Brooklyn/Dozo=20%, NYU/Columbia=50% (basically). My question is, are some of you really willing to give up top 10% at Brooklyn/Dozo (where it is pretty much guranteed as long as you are not special or have social problems) for median at NYU/Columbia where it isn't?

Let's fastfoward to the class of 2010 and speculate. Assuming hiring from BD goes down, the top 10% will likely still get big law if they want it. Assuming hiring from NC goes down, median without connections won't get it. Of course there are other law firms. I'm just only discussing the NLJ250.

Maybe I'm missing some mythical data that 0L's use as their bibles. However, I don't think I am.

Ultimately giving up a pretty much sure shot for a gamble seems risky, even for 0L's.

I'm also curious about how often secondary-market associates/partners are able to laterally transfer to other markets, or even to in-house positions in other markets.

edit: n/m

WTF are you talking about? People lateral to different states all the time. It is not, by any measure, uncommon. If you're a good lawyer, those skills translate jurisdictions. Once you get a book, things change, but for Joe Blow Associate laterals happen ALL THE TIME. Especially major market to smaller market. NYC to Cleveland? Yes. DC to Austin? Yes. Niche matters far more than geography. Don't expect to practice entertainment law in Lexington.

I think transferring up is fine. If you're top 10% at Fordham, nothing changes at Columbia OCI except access to MORE employers. They will see your grades from your original school and will look at you accordingly. The big problem is if you are taking a huge increase in debt.

thesealocust wrote: Not an issue. Not even slightly. Not even a tiny little bit. Once you have a job, how well you do in that job determines your trajectory. The mythical 'zOMG must be from YLS to attract clients' mentality is TLS baloney.

This is not true. While the impact of your schools name will be subsumed by work experience over time, it will continue to matter for certain types of jobs. If you are trying to jump ship from state to federal govt. it can matter a lot.

Same thing with dealing with the headhunter/lateral game if you are working in Biglaw. And PK is right that people lateral to different states all the time. It's not unusual for a large regional firm in a secondary market to get a bunch of laterals from bigger firms in major markets.

As far as how employers evaluate a transfer during OCI that can depend on a lot of things. Just before the economy totally tanked, I know that transfers at my t14 who came from no-name tier 2/3/4 schools were able to get jobs that they would have not even gotten interviews for from their old school regardless of rank. While I doubt that would be the case for the majority of those types ITE since OCI is such a crapshoot right now, transferring up does give you access to more employers.

Bottom line is that deciding whether or not to switch schools is a personal decision that you have to make for yourself.

Brooklyn/Dozo didnt place 20% biglaw in 2010 OCI. The latest NLJ data includes a ton of no-offers, which disproportionately effect higher-ranked schools (which have more people in biglaw). Also, 10-15% of NYU got federal clerkships on top of that 50%, that number at Brooklyn/Dozo is negligable.

Say 90% of NYU got SAs and 25% at BLS/Dozo. Say 25% get no-offered. That leaves NYU with 67.5% and BLS/Dozo with 20%. Say 15% of NYU gets federal clerkships, leaving just over 50% starting NLJ250 jobs at NYU and 20% at BLS/Dozo.

No-offers hit all schools equally, while hiring hit lower-ranked schools first. That makes the 2010 NLJ250 placemet data misleading, showing lower ranked schools closer to highly ranked schools.

One more thought: If employment is the only reason to transfer (and for me it wasn't) than the the only real benefit to transferring is that you in front of people you wouldn't get in front of at your prior school. Transferring does no other work than that. You still have to be able to talk the talk in the interview. Some people can do that, some people can't.