Top Law Schools

Background: I just finished first semester at a school in the T20-30 range and finished right around the top 8%. My school is in the market where I want to work, and I have significant ties to the area as well (grew up here, long-term GF, family). I ultimately want to end up back here, but I want to put myself in position for the best opportunities possible (ideally I want to work big law). I am just starting to look into transferring and don't know too much about the process, so I would love to hear people's thoughts.

tl;dr version: I have 2 main questions about transferring after finishing top 8% at a T20-30

(1) Would transferring to a T14 school out of market be better than staying at my school in the market and (hopefully) staying in the top 5-10% (and possibly getting LR) for big law options?
(2) If so, what schools in the T14 would I realistically have at my current rank? At top 5%?

Thank you for all of the help, I definitely would not even be in this position to begin with if it wasn't for all of you awesome people on TLS

criticialmass wrote:Background: I just finished first semester at a school in the T20-30 range and finished right around the top 8%. My school is in the market where I want to work, and I have significant ties to the area as well (grew up here, long-term GF, family). I ultimately want to end up back here, but I want to put myself in position for the best opportunities possible (ideally I want to work big law). I am just starting to look into transferring and don't know too much about the process, so I would love to hear people's thoughts.

tl;dr version: I have 2 main questions about transferring after finishing top 8% at a T20-30

(1) Would transferring to a T14 school out of market be better than staying at my school in the market and (hopefully) staying in the top 5-10% (and possibly getting LR) for big law options?
(2) If so, what schools in the T14 would I realistically have at my current rank? At top 5%?

Thank you for all of the help, I definitely would not even be in this position to begin with if it wasn't for all of you awesome people on TLS

If you want to stay in Atlanta, definitely do not transfer, especially if you have a scholarship. But, I would still apply to transfer and see if you can leverage an acceptance to increase your current scholarship.

Does top 10% at Emory get you where you want to go ? If so, then keep your scholarship & enjoy Atlanta; if not, apply to Columbia, NYU, Penn, Duke, Chicago, Northwestern and/or Michigan to determine your options.

CanadianWolf wrote:Does top 10% at Emory get you where you want to go ? If so, then keep your scholarship & enjoy Atlanta; if not, apply to Columbia, NYU, Penn, Duke, Chicago, Northwestern and/or Michigan to determine your options.

Well that's the thing I wasn't too sure about...I don't know how top 10% at Emory would fare against, say, top half or top third from NYU/Duke/Michigan etc.

What would be necessary to have a shot at HLS? Top 5%? Top 2-3%?

criticialmass wrote:

CanadianWolf wrote:Does top 10% at Emory get you where you want to go ? If so, then keep your scholarship & enjoy Atlanta; if not, apply to Columbia, NYU, Penn, Duke, Chicago, Northwestern and/or Michigan to determine your options.

Well that's the thing I wasn't too sure about...I don't know how top 10% at Emory would fare against, say, top half or top third from NYU/Duke/Michigan etc.

What would be necessary to have a shot at HLS? Top 5%? Top 2-3%?

You'll do OCI before you ever see a class rank at the new school. It's going to be up in the air unless you know for sure that people with your GPA always have offers. So the "top 10% vs top 1/2-1/3" isn't really pertinent unless you are on a career path that won't get you a job offer until graduation or after (which I think is the case for some government jobs).

My advice in these situations is generally to transfer. My experience has been that transfers do well in OCI. However, if you don't do well during OCI you'll at least have the name of the new school.

The only circumstances I'd suggest others to not transfer is where they are on a significant/full scholarship and are pretty sure that they are going to have the options for work from their current school. If you are looking at COL debt versus $80k-100k + COL, it may not be worth the new school.

Those are my $0.02.

criticialmass wrote:

CanadianWolf wrote:Does top 10% at Emory get you where you want to go ? If so, then keep your scholarship & enjoy Atlanta; if not, apply to Columbia, NYU, Penn, Duke, Chicago, Northwestern and/or Michigan to determine your options.

Well that's the thing I wasn't too sure about...I don't know how top 10% at Emory would fare against, say, top half or top third from NYU/Duke/Michigan etc.

What would be necessary to have a shot at HLS? Top 5%? Top 2-3%?

You would do well to read this article. It's the best article on transfering on TLS and tells you what your grades need to be like to transfer into each tier. http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 27&t=82937

If you are set on working in Atlanta, transferring into the T14 is not going to help you out that much since Emory does very well in Atlanta as is. The exception might be HYS, but as it stands, your chances aren't get at any of those three.

If you are interested big law in NYC, DC, etc. then transferring is probably worth it.