Top Law Schools

Only thread I could find via search function is http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... umbia+yale and OP is deleted so it's tough to tell the context of the advice.

Through one semester at CLS, I probably have the grades for Yale if I want. A lot of people in previous threads on this topic have said to grade onto LR and stick around...but LR here is only partially based on grades, everyone has to write on as well. They don't tell you how much grades are weighted, and maybe it would be a whole lot easier for me with my grades, but I am really not confident in my legal writing skills. So I figure if I make LR I'll definitely stick around but not sure what to do otherwise.

I have a V50 SA this summer and have no intentions of academia. But I want to give myself the best options I can going forward, and I'm also (unfortunately) quite a bit of a prestige whore. I should also note I have about a 20% scholarship here, so not too significant on that front, and that I certainly don't mind it here at the very least. But what do you all think, would it be silly to transfer from CLS to YLS if I don't make LR? And search function seems to indicate no possibility of leveraging a YLS acceptance into a higher scholarship but there's nothing conclusive...am I right in thinking this isn't possible?

Edited to give away less

If you'd be transferring entirely for employment prospects and prestige, that's not a good enough reason to leave what you have established at CLS in terms of grades/friends/etc. If you have the grades to transfer, you'll have TONS of options come OCI at whatever firm you want.

CCN-S Transfer wrote:If you'd be transferring entirely for employment prospects and prestige, that's not a good enough reason to leave what you have established at CLS in terms of grades/friends/etc. If you have the grades to transfer, you'll have TONS of options come OCI at whatever firm you want.

Appreciate this especially given the name. What would be a good enough reason, would it generally be dependent on location and/or desire for academia?

EDIT: And your response was what I assumed I would get. I'm just worried about having great grades but no LR and how that might look to the top employers.

For biglaw? Yeah, it would be beyond dumb. If you are ranked high enough at CLS that you even have the chance to transfer to Yale, that means you can essentially have your pick of the top biglaw firms in NYC. I would be shocked if you didn't get some V10 offers. Most times when people pose transfer dilemmas, its on the fence. This one is easy. If biglaw is your goal, keep your ass where it is.

I go to NYU, which is relatively equivalent in terms of hiring, and LR was in no way a prerequisite to getting an excellent firm offer. I'm on a secondary journal, and the vast majority of people on my journal are going to V20 or V10 firms. We have a solid number of SullCrom, Cravath, etc. kids also. I know kids who didn't even make any journal at all and are pretty close to median with V10 offers. Don't think for one second that not having LR at freakin' CLS will preclude you from likely having your pick of firms.

kaiser wrote:For biglaw? Yeah, it would be beyond dumb. If you are ranked high enough at CLS that you even have the chance to transfer to Yale, that means you can essentially have your pick of the top biglaw firms in NYC. I would be shocked if you didn't get some V10 offers. Most times when people pose transfer dilemmas, its on the fence. This one is easy. If biglaw is your goal, keep your ass where it is.

Thanks. Again, this was my assumption, I just don't want to rule it out without considering, and I wasn't really sure how else to do the research.

Does Yale offer anything in particular that you want? I understand prestige whoring,but just transferring for no good purpose won't help you. You probably need a good reason to convince Yale to accept you, so maybe you need to figure it out now. You could always apply, as long as it wouldn't harm you at Columbia, see what happens if you get in?

sunynp wrote:Does Yale offer anything in particular that you want? I understand prestige whoring,but just transferring for no good purpose won't help you. You probably need a good reason to convince Yale to accept you, so maybe you need to figure it out now. You could always apply, as long as it wouldn't harm you at Columbia, see what happens if you get in?

Well I don't have a "good reason" other than the name on the degree potentially looking better, not just right out of LS but for my entire career. It's also a degree that would travel slightly better than CLS, and I'm not yet sure whether I want to practice in NYC or my home market. I'm sure I could semi-fabricate a "good reason" more compelling than those if I decide to put in an application, but I don't want to bother if it wouldn't be at least reasonable to transfer in the first place.

CLSoxfan wrote:

CCN-S Transfer wrote:If you'd be transferring entirely for employment prospects and prestige, that's not a good enough reason to leave what you have established at CLS in terms of grades/friends/etc. If you have the grades to transfer, you'll have TONS of options come OCI at whatever firm you want.

Appreciate this especially given the name. What would be a good enough reason, would it generally be dependent on location and/or desire for academia?

EDIT: And your response was what I assumed I would get. I'm just worried about having great grades but no LR and how that might look to the top employers.

Great grades speak for themselves. Employers at OCI won't really care that you didn't do well on one random LR writing competition when you have an entire 1L year worth of top grades.

In my experience, transfers are judged more on their old school/grades at Fall 2L OCI than where they transferred to. For people who are at lower-ranked schools that employers may not normally consider, having the new school on the resume helps quite a bit. For people like you who will be considered by any firm anyway, they'll just judge you essentially entirely based on how they'd view someone at CLS with your grades/resume. Arguably you'd be doing yourself a potential disservice for biglaw placement by giving up the inside track you'd have to LR at CLS.

And yeah, good reasons to transfer would be location/maybe academia (I don't have any experience, but from what I understand, faculty connections/recs are really important for the academic job market, and you lose out on relationships when you transfer).

ETA- I think you might need to take a step back for a second. You're going to graduate from one of the top law schools in the country, and your degree will be highly regarded wherever you go. Tons of top lawyers in the profession graduated from CLS and you'll have every opportunity to become one of them. Outside of legal academia, I don't think YLS means all that much more (if any more) than CLS. Especially if you keep your grades up and graduate with some kind of honors, I'd take that over a YLS degree any day.

CCN-S Transfer wrote:

CLSoxfan wrote:

CCN-S Transfer wrote:If you'd be transferring entirely for employment prospects and prestige, that's not a good enough reason to leave what you have established at CLS in terms of grades/friends/etc. If you have the grades to transfer, you'll have TONS of options come OCI at whatever firm you want.

Appreciate this especially given the name. What would be a good enough reason, would it generally be dependent on location and/or desire for academia?

EDIT: And your response was what I assumed I would get. I'm just worried about having great grades but no LR and how that might look to the top employers.

Great grades speak for themselves. Employers at OCI won't really care that you didn't do well on one random LR writing competition when you have an entire 1L year worth of top grades.

In my experience, transfers are judged more on their old school/grades at Fall 2L OCI than where they transferred to. For people who are at lower-ranked schools that employers may not normally consider, having the new school on the resume helps quite a bit. For people like you who will be considered by any firm anyway, they'll just judge you essentially entirely based on how they'd view someone at CLS with your grades/resume. Arguably you'd be doing yourself a potential disservice for biglaw placement by giving up the inside track you'd have to LR at CLS.

And yeah, good reasons to transfer would be location/maybe academia (I don't have any experience, but from what I understand, faculty connections/recs are really important for the academic job market, and you lose out on relationships when you transfer).

ETA- I think you might need to take a step back for a second. You're going to graduate from one of the top law schools in the country, and your degree will be highly regarded wherever you go. Tons of top lawyers in the profession graduated from CLS and you'll have every opportunity to become one of them. Outside of legal academia, I don't think YLS means all that much more (if any more) than CLS. Especially if you keep your grades up and graduate with some kind of honors, I'd take that over a YLS degree any day.

Says the person who transferred from CCN to SLS! Haha thanks, though. I think my perspective is in the right place, just wanted to keep my options open and make sure I'm considering all the angles.

kaiser wrote:For biglaw? Yeah, it would be beyond dumb. If you are ranked high enough at CLS that you even have the chance to transfer to Yale, that means you can essentially have your pick of the top biglaw firms in NYC. I would be shocked if you didn't get some V10 offers. Most times when people pose transfer dilemmas, its on the fence. This one is easy. If biglaw is your goal, keep your ass where it is.

I go to NYU, which is relatively equivalent in terms of hiring, and LR was in no way a prerequisite to getting an excellent firm offer. I'm on a secondary journal, and the vast majority of people on my journal are going to V20 or V10 firms. We have a solid number of SullCrom, Cravath, etc. kids also. I know kids who didn't even make any journal at all and are pretty close to median with V10 offers. Don't think for one second that not having LR at freakin' CLS will preclude you from likely having your pick of firms.

If this is true, a lot must have changed over the past couple of years.

CLSoxfan wrote:

CCN-S Transfer wrote:

CLSoxfan wrote:

CCN-S Transfer wrote:If you'd be transferring entirely for employment prospects and prestige, that's not a good enough reason to leave what you have established at CLS in terms of grades/friends/etc. If you have the grades to transfer, you'll have TONS of options come OCI at whatever firm you want.

Appreciate this especially given the name. What would be a good enough reason, would it generally be dependent on location and/or desire for academia?

EDIT: And your response was what I assumed I would get. I'm just worried about having great grades but no LR and how that might look to the top employers.

Great grades speak for themselves. Employers at OCI won't really care that you didn't do well on one random LR writing competition when you have an entire 1L year worth of top grades.

In my experience, transfers are judged more on their old school/grades at Fall 2L OCI than where they transferred to. For people who are at lower-ranked schools that employers may not normally consider, having the new school on the resume helps quite a bit. For people like you who will be considered by any firm anyway, they'll just judge you essentially entirely based on how they'd view someone at CLS with your grades/resume. Arguably you'd be doing yourself a potential disservice for biglaw placement by giving up the inside track you'd have to LR at CLS.

And yeah, good reasons to transfer would be location/maybe academia (I don't have any experience, but from what I understand, faculty connections/recs are really important for the academic job market, and you lose out on relationships when you transfer).

ETA- I think you might need to take a step back for a second. You're going to graduate from one of the top law schools in the country, and your degree will be highly regarded wherever you go. Tons of top lawyers in the profession graduated from CLS and you'll have every opportunity to become one of them. Outside of legal academia, I don't think YLS means all that much more (if any more) than CLS. Especially if you keep your grades up and graduate with some kind of honors, I'd take that over a YLS degree any day.

Says the person who transferred from CCN to SLS! Haha thanks, though. I think my perspective is in the right place, just wanted to keep my options open and make sure I'm considering all the angles.

Ha, fair. Although I had completely non-employment related reasons to transfer, and when making my decision I assumed that if anything I'd hurt my employment prospects.

woeisme wrote:

kaiser wrote:For biglaw? Yeah, it would be beyond dumb. If you are ranked high enough at CLS that you even have the chance to transfer to Yale, that means you can essentially have your pick of the top biglaw firms in NYC. I would be shocked if you didn't get some V10 offers. Most times when people pose transfer dilemmas, its on the fence. This one is easy. If biglaw is your goal, keep your ass where it is.

I go to NYU, which is relatively equivalent in terms of hiring, and LR was in no way a prerequisite to getting an excellent firm offer. I'm on a secondary journal, and the vast majority of people on my journal are going to V20 or V10 firms. We have a solid number of SullCrom, Cravath, etc. kids also. I know kids who didn't even make any journal at all and are pretty close to median with V10 offers. Don't think for one second that not having LR at freakin' CLS will preclude you from likely having your pick of firms.

If this is true, a lot must have changed over the past couple of years.

Yep, I'd say so. NYC was the first city to really start recovering, so it sort of makes sense that the best schools in the city with the strongest market would reap the most immediate benefits of that recovery.

Might as well apply and try to use a transfer acceptance as a bargaining chip for some more scholarship money. Transfering into Yale might give you some leg up on elite clerkships (particularly because getting on to LR at Yale as a transfer is easy--or that's the common refrain), if you care about that. But just for biglaw? Giving up the scholarship money would be silly. (Though I'm not sure... does a 20% scholarship cover the COL difference?)

ToTransferOrNot wrote:Might as well apply and try to use a transfer acceptance as a bargaining chip for some more scholarship money. Transfering into Yale might give you some leg up on elite clerkships (particularly because getting on to LR at Yale as a transfer is easy--or that's the common refrain), if you care about that. But just for biglaw? Giving up the scholarship money would be silly. (Though I'm not sure... does a 20% scholarship cover the COL difference?)

I haven't decided yet between corporate and litigation (though I think I'm leaning toward the former), but if I chose litigation I'd want to do a clerkship and having a leg up on prestigious ones would be nice.

Also, FWIW I realized my scholarship is cut in half 3L year so total for 2L and 3L year is more like 15% scholarship. I don't think that changes anything but figured I'd mention it. And my impression is that I can't use a YLS acceptance to bargain for a higher scholarship, but looking for input as to whether I'm wrong from anyone that might know...I'd prefer not to go around asking classmates questions like that IRL.

I have no hard data to back this up, but anecdotal evidence indicates if you have a 3.7+ after 1L and make a good faith effort on the writing competition, you will make law review.

Nice Work! As for your 1L summer work...what is a V20? never knew it existed....is this something new like the T6? Which only exists for people who want to feel better about themselves then say a V50 or T14 but have not been given that key to the V10 or HYS? Good luck in the prestige game kid...one day you will realize there is much more to life....

Go to Yale.

If you have a hold on the large firm thing, then it doesn't matter. Why not graduate from the best law school in the country if you can?

At the least, it'll make you different from everyone else that didn't go to Yale.

handsonthewheel wrote:Go to Yale.

If you have a hold on the large firm thing, then it doesn't matter. Why not graduate from the best law school in the country if you can?

At the least, it'll make you different from everyone else that didn't go to Yale.

Terrible reasoning....what about alumni network in BigLaw...absolutely 100% no doubt that the NYC Big Law alumni network for Columbia is at least 3x that of Yale...if you do not want academia...and even then its iffy...but if you want NYC Big Law this would be a very very very stupid idea....you asked if it was a stupid idea...which if you were really a 4.0 IL you shouldn't have to...but YES...VERY STUPID! Also, for NYC Big Law Yale adds nothing more...except, you now have to live in New Haven for 2 years....further, you always have to answer the question from Columbia alum about if you are serious about working for a firm and why you transferred out of a top spot at NYC's top school?

ToTransferOrNot wrote: Transfering into Yale might give you some leg up on elite clerkships

With all respect to ToTransferOrNot, this is one of the biggest fictions on TLS. Take it from someone who did a (fairly) lateral transfer within the T6 and has been going through the clerkship process. The way you get the top clerkships is by having an in with a top faculty member. You need to have that in very early in the process to have a chance (some top feeders have already hired), and nearly no transfer can build the necessary relationship in that time. Recs are crucial in the clerkship process, and it's hard to get those recs as a transfer. There might be some small boost for some district court judges, but you'd need to gun hard to forge relationships with professors very quickly. While the "transferring improves your clerkship chances" advice is true for most transfers on TLS (because the schools they're coming from don't really place into clerkships very often), if you're coming from CLS, you're likely better off staying put (unless you aren't making good faculty connections now), and transferring basically never improves your chances of top CoA/SCOTUS clerking.

Go to Yale.

If you have a hold on the large firm thing, then it doesn't matter. Why not graduate from the best law school in the country if you can?

At the least, it'll make you different from everyone else that didn't go to Yale.

TLS-logic at its best! This is what I'm here to rail against. Ridiculous...

Snape wrote:Nice Work! As for your 1L summer work...what is a V20? never knew it existed....is this something new like the T6? Which only exists for people who want to feel better about themselves then say a V50 or T14 but have not been given that key to the V10 or HYS? Good luck in the prestige game kid...one day you will realize there is much more to life....

douche

oh, and congrats Soxfan!

.

CCN-S Transfer wrote:

ToTransferOrNot wrote: Transfering into Yale might give you some leg up on elite clerkships

With all respect to ToTransferOrNot, this is one of the biggest fictions on TLS. Take it from someone who did a (fairly) lateral transfer within the T6 and has been going through the clerkship process. The way you get the top clerkships is by having an in with a top faculty member. You need to have that in very early in the process to have a chance (some top feeders have already hired), and nearly no transfer can build the necessary relationship in that time. Recs are crucial in the clerkship process, and it's hard to get those recs as a transfer. There might be some small boost for some district court judges, but you'd need to gun hard to forge relationships with professors very quickly. While the "transferring improves your clerkship chances" advice is true for most transfers on TLS (because the schools they're coming from don't really place into clerkships very often), if you're coming from CLS, you're likely better off staying put (unless you aren't making good faculty connections now), and transferring basically never improves your chances of top CoA/SCOTUS clerking.

I think this is a little overstated. I developed close enough relationships with some of my 2L and 3L professors that my LOR-writers will be at my wedding; I passed on two feeder opportunities (as second clerkships) that were a result of personal connections at my transfer school. It's certainly true that I was not in the running for the judges that hire before April/May, though, and that's something to consider if your dream is to clerk for Kozinski.

That said, I was a T1 -> CCN transfer. I'm sure the benefits are reduced for Columbia -> Yale; I didn't mean to imply that this was a slam-dunk reason to pack up and leave. But I also know that the feeder clerkship placement of my C has been rather "meh," and that in the year I transfered in, someone transfered out to Yale and subsequently landed a feeder.

ToTransferOrNot wrote:

CCN-S Transfer wrote:

ToTransferOrNot wrote: Transfering into Yale might give you some leg up on elite clerkships

With all respect to ToTransferOrNot, this is one of the biggest fictions on TLS. Take it from someone who did a (fairly) lateral transfer within the T6 and has been going through the clerkship process. The way you get the top clerkships is by having an in with a top faculty member. You need to have that in very early in the process to have a chance (some top feeders have already hired), and nearly no transfer can build the necessary relationship in that time. Recs are crucial in the clerkship process, and it's hard to get those recs as a transfer. There might be some small boost for some district court judges, but you'd need to gun hard to forge relationships with professors very quickly. While the "transferring improves your clerkship chances" advice is true for most transfers on TLS (because the schools they're coming from don't really place into clerkships very often), if you're coming from CLS, you're likely better off staying put (unless you aren't making good faculty connections now), and transferring basically never improves your chances of top CoA/SCOTUS clerking.

I think this is a little overstated. I developed close enough relationships with some of my 2L and 3L professors that my LOR-writers will be at my wedding; I passed on two feeder opportunities (as second clerkships) that were a result of personal connections at my transfer school. It's certainly true that I was not in the running for the judges that hire before April/May, though, and that's something to consider if your dream is to clerk for Kozinski.

That said, I was a T1 -> CCN transfer. I'm sure the benefits are reduced for Columbia -> Yale; I didn't mean to imply that this was a slam-dunk reason to pack up and leave. But I also know that the feeder clerkship placement of my C has been rather "meh," and that in the year I transfered in, someone transfered out to Yale and subsequently landed a feeder.

That's fair- I can see the transfer having benefits for nabbing a feeder clerkship as a second clerkship.

And even in the last year or two the hiring plan has fallen apart even more, so tons of judges are going early, and previously early judges are going even earlier. I'm not trying to say that you can't develop great relationships with professors at your new school. To get a top clerkship (this year), you need to be identified as a top candidate probably by January, have profs pulling for you in February, and somehow have 3 recommenders by Feb/Mar. That gives you a few months to develop a strong enough relationship with a couple top profs that they're willing to use their personal connection with a judge (and hence look bad if they're wrong and you suck) to hook you up. That's incredibly hard to do, especially while adjusting to a new school. It's definitely possible to develop those relationships in time to get a great second clerkship (and sometimes having a first, "less prestigious" clerkship can cause a second to fall into your lap).

A transfer to YLS or SLS could definitely improve your clerkship chances more generally, as those schools seem to be especially aggressive in pushing their applicants (and especially supportive in the process), just don't expect to improve your chances at a super top feeder/SCOTUS clerkship. CCN opens up all clerkship doors, and transferring makes it nearly impossible to develop the necessary relationships in time.