T3 v CLS - Is there ever a reason not to go? Forum

[Nebby]

i'm going to continue to push back against the advice ITT

*even if you strike out* i'm not sure you're really better off transferring

I agree with this, and think that it's really up to OP to make the decision on his own whether they're better off with no debt if they strike out

[plurilingue]

And I would rather have paid an extra $100k over what I already did to have gone to HLS rather than C/N. Note that, based on the data from LSN, the overwhelming majority of decisions made by Hamilton and Rubinstein offerees is to still go to Harvard or Yale, so I'm far from alone in thinking this.

The people here are conservative in their thought processes; they're entirely neglecting the very real upside that exists from attending the [much, much] better school. Moreover, there are a lot of people in this thread who went to lesser schools, and I really think there is some degree of rationalization of one's own poor decision-making (or flat-out poor opportunities in life) going on here.

There is a world of difference in the opportunities and experience of attending CLS versus a sub-T14, to say nothing of the school you're coming from. It wouldn't be a career-ending decision to stay where you are, but it would be a huge mistake and you absolutely would regret it for your entire legal career. Also, it is genuinely difficult to end up unemployed out of CLS, and striking out at biglaw with your grades is a very unlikely (but certainly nonzero) outcome.

[jkpolk]

And I would rather have paid an extra $100k over what I already did to have gone to HLS rather than C/N. Note that, based on the data from LSN, the overwhelming majority of decisions made by Hamilton and Rubinstein offerees is to still go to Harvard or Yale, so I'm far from alone in thinking this.

The people here are conservative in their thought processes; they're entirely neglecting the very real upside that exists from attending the [much, much] better school. Moreover, there are a lot of people in this thread who went to lesser schools, and I really think there is some degree of rationalization of one's own poor decision-making (or flat-out poor opportunities in life) going on here.

There is a world of difference in the opportunities and experience of attending CLS versus a sub-T14, to say nothing of the school you're coming from. It wouldn't be a career-ending decision to stay where you are, but it would be a huge mistake and you absolutely would regret it for your entire legal career. Also, it is genuinely difficult to end up unemployed out of CLS, and striking out at biglaw with your grades is a very unlikely (but certainly nonzero) outcome.

naw homie, you just have an idiosyncratic boner for degrees. OP has crushed his school, that's more impressive than being a random NYU shithead. And the bolded is just wrong. OP, check out partner profiles from the firm you're interviewing at. You'll likely find plenty of non-t14 grads. I'm sure they are all so sad they didn't transfer up.

[smaug]

And I would rather have paid an extra $100k over what I already did to have gone to HLS rather than C/N. Note that, based on the data from LSN, the overwhelming majority of decisions made by Hamilton and Rubinstein offerees is to still go to Harvard or Yale, so I'm far from alone in thinking this.

The people here are conservative in their thought processes; they're entirely neglecting the very real upside that exists from attending the [much, much] better school. Moreover, there are a lot of people in this thread who went to lesser schools, and I really think there is some degree of rationalization of one's own poor decision-making (or flat-out poor opportunities in life) going on here.

There is a world of difference in the opportunities and experience of attending CLS versus a sub-T14, to say nothing of the school you're coming from. It wouldn't be a career-ending decision to stay where you are, but it would be a huge mistake and you absolutely would regret it for your entire legal career. Also, it is genuinely difficult to end up unemployed out of CLS, and striking out at biglaw with your grades is a very unlikely (but certainly nonzero) outcome.

that just means you're kinda dumb, to be frank. that others are dumb too doesn't justify the decision.

what do you think you would have gotten with that 100k

[jkpolk]

what do you think you would have gotten with that 100k

im pretty excited to hear how the harvard club is way better than the columbia club

[sflyr2016]

I guess this guy, despite claiming that he's part of the "in-group," still feels left out by the HYSers who are part of the really, really in-group. And he would def drop 100k (maybe more) for a membership! lol.

To be fair, transferring here is not a bad idea IF op can't get a half-decent shot at biglaw by staying. And though, yes, people burn out pretty quickly, the biglaw resume line should still improve his overall earning potential going forward. And, lastly, unfortunately some people really do think like this guy (^), so reality is that cls will buy op more than just a better % at a biglaw job. It's just hard to know whether that's worth 200k more.

[TFALAWL]

If I was in your shoes, I would transfer, but that is b/c I want to clerk and work in bigfed.

If you go to CLS, do research for some profs + be a Kent or even a Stone scholar, you could probably land a COA (maybe not directly out of law school, but a year or two out).

If you get a COA clerkship, then doors open for "unicorney" jobs.

But these are my goals -- if they are not yours, then I don't see the value in transferring.

[smaug]

If I was in your shoes, I would transfer, but that is b/c I want to clerk and work in bigfed.

If you go to CLS, do research for some profs + be a Kent or even a Stone scholar, you could probably land a COA (maybe not directly out of law school, but a year or two out).

If you get a COA clerkship, then doors open for "unicorney" jobs.

But these are my goals -- if they are not yours, then I don't see the value in transferring.

this is harder than you think.

[plurilingue]

OP, despite the personal attacks (again), I would again note that not a single person here has actually said, "Yes, I was admitted to C, and chose to stay at [T2/T3 school]." Substantially all the people in your position choose to transfer. My experience is that this is an industry in which it is highly inadvisable to be the outlier.

There is palpable bitterness and insecurity in this thread. The reality that the most elite law firms and their partners and associates do look down on people from bad schools and at lesser firms. Conversely, I fully acknowledge that the kids from HLS and YLS receive better consideration at all firms than the kids at CLS/NYU. But to the extent that you're interested in those firms where the median rank is a student who came from CLS/NYU, it's really a bad idea to try to be the one person who came from the T2/T3 school. It is really rare and makes those people feel out of place.

Summer Associates 2016 by school breakdown
http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 4&start=25

Cleary Gottlieb NYC (98)

24 Harvard
21 Columbia
15 NYU
4 Duke
4 Yale
4 Berkeley
4 Cornell
3 Chicago
3 UVA
2 Stanford
2 GULC
2 NYLS
2 Fordham
1 Penn
1 Michigan
1 Northwestern
1 UCLA
1 WUSTL
1 UWash
1 Brooklyn
1 Tulane

61% H/C/N. 70% T6 overall. 91% T14.

Note that Columbia alone places as much as the lower half of the T14. That is the placement power of an ultra-prestigious school like Columbia.

[TFALAWL]

Totally agree. I mean taking on 200k in order to seek an opportunity that is still unlikely to come to to fruition involves a massive amount of risk. But if that were your sole objective (it's mine at least), then I would do just about anything to give myself that opportunity.

Plus there's plenty of consolation prizes: if OP is top 1% of his class, then he can at least get Stone during 2L/3L when half the class doesn't even give a shit anymore. With that, OP could eventually swing a district clerkship, which I would value to be at least 100k.

Bottom line, this transfer would only be worth it if OP has ambitions that can't be obtained at his/her current school. IMO biglaw itself is not enough to justify the transfer, but once you consider things like govt. and clerking, the calculus becomes more complicated.

[smaug]

words.

yeah i'm not going to out myself fully but lol

because i've said this much repeatedly: i'm a CLS grad myself, and work at a ~prestigious~ firm.

even if OP were guaranteed a job at say, Cravath or DPW (not an overstatement for a top of the class transfer to CLS) it's not a trade I'd recommend.


I'd trade my CLS degree and ~prestigious~ job (that I actually like!) for 200k. 200k is a lot of fucking money, dude.

[smaug]

Plus there's plenty of consolation prizes: if OP is top 1% of his class, then he can at least get Stone during 2L/3L when half the class doesn't even give a shit anymore. With that, OP could eventually swing a district clerkship, which I would value to be at least 100k.

(1) No, lots of people struggle to get district court clerkships with Stone, unless they're willing to move to bumfuck nowhere.
(2) lmao @ the idea that a district court clerkship is worth 100k.

and also (3)

again, as a CLS grad who is actually in that position (less than 200k in debt, but...) a clerkship is an expensive proposition unless you're already debt free or have an SO to lean on

ironically it might be easier in some ways for top TTT grad to take the clerkship and go to biglaw that way...

[lavarman84]

Totally agree. I mean taking on 200k in order to seek an opportunity that is still unlikely to come to to fruition involves a massive amount of risk. But if that were your sole objective (it's mine at least), then I would do just about anything to give myself that opportunity.

Plus there's plenty of consolation prizes: if OP is top 1% of his class, then he can at least get Stone during 2L/3L when half the class doesn't even give a shit anymore. With that, OP could eventually swing a district clerkship, which I would value to be at least 100k.

Bottom line, this transfer would only be worth it if OP has ambitions that can't be obtained at his/her current school. IMO biglaw itself is not enough to justify the transfer, but once you consider things like govt. and clerking, the calculus becomes more complicated.

A district court clerkship is attainable from where OP is currently at.(not easy but that's the nature of Federal clerkships) And OP likely will have the faculty behind him if he expresses interest, so he won't have to wait to build new relationships at his transfer school.

[smaug]

and because this has me ranting:

I work with Harvard grads, CLS grads, people who transferred from lower ranked schools to T6 schools, and people who stayed there.

I don't know anyone who looks down on the people from lower-ranked schools who managed to get the biglaw job. If they're there they were often the top student (or in the top 5 students) in the class and are both smart and have a good work ethic.

i'm not saying it's never noticed. i'm not saying some clients don't care. but, i think all it ever takes is someone to say "she's very good" and then the person is taken seriously. i have peers from lower ranked schools who i am absolutely certain are/will be better lawyers than i am, even if i have 'better' credentials.

[Anonymous User]

OP here. While I can't quantify my chances of attaining BigLaw from my current school, typically, people in my position have ended up with offers post-OCI. However, my school probably doesn't have better than a 7-8% placement rate into BigLaw. Also, I know of at least a few occasions where top students at my school struck out in the past, but from what I've heard there always seemed to be an obvious reason, e.g.: poor interviewer, arrogant, etc.

While I struck out on a few 1l SA's during my spring semester, I was able to get some experience with the callback interview format and have a few mock interviews lined up with some partners at top firms, so hopefully my interview skills won't be a problem.

I already have a few opportunities, I also have a few more connections to push on, and career services seems to think (not sure what this is worth) I shouldn't have a problem landing an offer--of course, nothing is a certainty.

I am one of the top 3 students at my current school.

Clerking is something I would consider, but isn't necessarily my goal. My ultimate goal is to grind BigLaw 4-5 years and then exit.

[Pomeranian]

Getting big law on a full scholarship is a pretty sweet position to be in IMO...

Also, as others have pointed out 200k is a lot of money. If you were to invest that 200k in a diversified portfolio/reinvest dividends, you should have several million by the time you are 65.

[jbagelboy]

If I was in your shoes, I would transfer, but that is b/c I want to clerk and work in bigfed.

If you go to CLS, do research for some profs + be a Kent or even a Stone scholar, you could probably land a COA (maybe not directly out of law school, but a year or two out).

If you get a COA clerkship, then doors open for "unicorney" jobs.

But these are my goals -- if they are not yours, then I don't see the value in transferring.

I see what you're getting at, but I'm not sure this holds for transfers. Besides, the clerkship conversation seems out of place.

[smaug]

If I was in your shoes, I would transfer, but that is b/c I want to clerk and work in bigfed.

If you go to CLS, do research for some profs + be a Kent or even a Stone scholar, you could probably land a COA (maybe not directly out of law school, but a year or two out).

If you get a COA clerkship, then doors open for "unicorney" jobs.

But these are my goals -- if they are not yours, then I don't see the value in transferring.

I see what you're getting at, but I'm not sure this holds for transfers. Besides, the clerkship conversation seems out of place.

Do you actually think it's that easy to get COA? I've never applied but have older friends with credentials closer to yours than to mine, and although they all got fed clerkships, COA remains pretty rare...

[sflyr2016]

[M]y school probably doesn't have better than a 7-8% placement rate into BigLaw. . . , I am one of the top 3 students at my current school. . . , [c]lerking is something I would consider, but isn't necessarily my goal [and my] ultimate goal is to grind BigLaw 4-5 years and then exit.

Those are the relevant considerations. Doubt any softs should come into play since you'd stay in the same city. So it's basically whether 200k is worth a significantly better shot at biglaw and the added preftige. Fwiw, since the poster earlier seemed to want to know what our situations were, I declined a t10 (admittedly not cls, but I only applied to Duke and UVA since they placed well in the mkt I wanted to work in and had a relatively low cost of living) to avoid the added debt, but my school (a regional t1) gave me better odds than 7-8%. That said, I think I'd probably transfer. But before making a decision, I'd try to find out how the top 3 students at your school have fared over the last 5 years or so. Call career services and see if they somehow have that data, or reach out to your law review as they might keep track of that stuff (at least anecdotally). If top-3 students from our school have consistently landed biglaw over the last 5 years, then I'd stay. But I have a feeling it may be more of a crapshoot and that's why I'd transfer.

[jbagelboy]

And I would rather have paid an extra $100k over what I already did to have gone to HLS rather than C/N. Note that, based on the data from LSN, the overwhelming majority of decisions made by Hamilton and Rubinstein offerees is to still go to Harvard or Yale, so I'm far from alone in thinking this.

The people here are conservative in their thought processes; they're entirely neglecting the very real upside that exists from attending the [much, much] better school. Moreover, there are a lot of people in this thread who went to lesser schools, and I really think there is some degree of rationalization of one's own poor decision-making (or flat-out poor opportunities in life) going on here.

I agreed with some of your earlier points but this is really dumb. This isn't about micro-distinctions between top schools that are largely interchangeable. This is about getting a law degree from a highly respected national program with a massive alumni base in prominent positions throughout the legal world--which you get at CLS, HLS, YLS, other T14s--and a local school with a relatively minor footprint in the legal world and little value add besides bar eligibility and your first job. comparing a decision like this to a decision between top programs as 0Ls makes us seem silly

[plurilingue]

I agreed with some of your earlier points but this is really dumb. This isn't about micro-distinctions between top schools that are largely interchangeable. This is about getting a law degree from a highly respected national program with a massive alumni base in prominent positions throughout the legal world--which you get at CLS, HLS, YLS, other T14s--and a local school with a relatively minor footprint in the legal world and little value add besides bar eligibility and your first job. comparing a decision like this to a decision between top programs as 0Ls makes us seem silly

This was in response to two inane comments preceding mine about the perceived dollar value associated with a top law school degree. My point was simply that the relative value of each degree is a highly subjective matter. However, objectively, the data indicates that my view is by far the more common one amongst strong admits to top programs.

I still think an argument could be made the biggest overall gap within the T14 is between H and C. It's not one I stand by, but I have heard it enough times that I don't think it's wrong.

[smaug]

I agreed with some of your earlier points but this is really dumb. This isn't about micro-distinctions between top schools that are largely interchangeable. This is about getting a law degree from a highly respected national program with a massive alumni base in prominent positions throughout the legal world--which you get at CLS, HLS, YLS, other T14s--and a local school with a relatively minor footprint in the legal world and little value add besides bar eligibility and your first job. comparing a decision like this to a decision between top programs as 0Ls makes us seem silly

This was in response to two inane comments preceding mine about the perceived dollar value associated with a top law school degree. My point was simply that the relative value of each degree is a highly subjective matter. However, objectively, the data indicates that my view is by far the more common one amongst strong admits to top programs.

I still think an argument could be made the biggest overall gap within the T14 is between H and C. It's not one I stand by, but I have heard it enough times that I don't think it's wrong.

lmao

where do you think Harvard people end up that Columbia people don't?

[sflyr2016]

I agreed with some of your earlier points but this is really dumb. This isn't about micro-distinctions between top schools that are largely interchangeable. This is about getting a law degree from a highly respected national program with a massive alumni base in prominent positions throughout the legal world--which you get at CLS, HLS, YLS, other T14s--and a local school with a relatively minor footprint in the legal world and little value add besides bar eligibility and your first job. comparing a decision like this to a decision between top programs as 0Ls makes us seem silly

This was in response to two inane comments preceding mine about the perceived dollar value associated with a top law school degree. My point was simply that the relative value of each degree is a highly subjective matter. However, objectively, the data indicates that my view is by far the more common one amongst strong admits to top programs.

I still think an argument could be made the biggest overall gap within the T14 is between H and C. It's not one I stand by, but I have heard it enough times that I don't think it's wrong.

lmao

where do you think Harvard people end up that Columbia people don't?

Pierson, Spector, Litt

Wait, I think they let in this one girl, Rachel Zane, who's a cls grad. WTF were they thinking!?

[jbagelboy]

If I was in your shoes, I would transfer, but that is b/c I want to clerk and work in bigfed.

If you go to CLS, do research for some profs + be a Kent or even a Stone scholar, you could probably land a COA (maybe not directly out of law school, but a year or two out).

If you get a COA clerkship, then doors open for "unicorney" jobs.

But these are my goals -- if they are not yours, then I don't see the value in transferring.

I see what you're getting at, but I'm not sure this holds for transfers. Besides, the clerkship conversation seems out of place.

Do you actually think it's that easy to get COA? I've never applied but have older friends with credentials closer to yours than to mine, and although they all got fed clerkships, COA remains pretty rare...

Its not easy at all. I didn't mean to suggest it was. But it's fair to say that it's a relatively reasonable expectation to get a good clerkship with top grades 1L & 2L and a couple faculty that like you. I don't think the same assumption holds for someone who transfers from e.g. St johns and gets kent as a 2L (one reason being that there are judges who consistently hire from the same 5-7 schools and only those schools and they don't treat a transfer the same way). Sure transfers clerk but probably not on the DC circuit. I'm also going to put out there that the "COA" versus "district" distinction is messy and sometimes unworkable. There are DDC and SDNY judges that are more competitive than lots of COA judges. Interviews are chaotic and people interview with both and might click with the appellate judge and not the district ones. Lots of COA judges, especially in desirable locations like the 2nd circuit, expect a district court clerkship first and like to hire from the pool of persons who already have that experience or that clerkship lined up, so people who graduated as recently as us might not be on their last clerkship. There are lots of reasons that aren't strictly credentials driven; the general truths I know at CLS (which you already know as well) are that 1) many more people end up clerking than the general understanding on TLS, and 2) many more people could clerk if they wanted to, but as you said upthread, clerking isn't useful or a financially prudent choice for everyone and everyone has their own set of reasons: its not like "you have these grades" --> "you must be clerking" and if you aren't clerking then you aren't qualified.

[jkpolk]

I agreed with some of your earlier points but this is really dumb. This isn't about micro-distinctions between top schools that are largely interchangeable. This is about getting a law degree from a highly respected national program with a massive alumni base in prominent positions throughout the legal world--which you get at CLS, HLS, YLS, other T14s--and a local school with a relatively minor footprint in the legal world and little value add besides bar eligibility and your first job. comparing a decision like this to a decision between top programs as 0Ls makes us seem silly

This was in response to two inane comments preceding mine about the perceived dollar value associated with a top law school degree. My point was simply that the relative value of each degree is a highly subjective matter. However, objectively, the data indicates that my view is by far the more common one amongst strong admits to top programs.

I still think an argument could be made the biggest overall gap within the T14 is between H and C. It's not one I stand by, but I have heard it enough times that I don't think it's wrong.

And practicing attorneys at "prestigious" law firms with "elite" degrees are telling you that "strong admits to top programs" are idiots. Law school is a means to an end. This dude has accomplished the end. He wants big law, he's going to get big law. Why fuck with that? In concrete terms, what will this person gain from Columbia? If he's a bag of shit at his job, in 5 years he'll be fucked either way. If he's a stud, he'll have options either way. Why pay the money?