UChi Students & Alumni Taking Questions Forum

[03282016]

[Robb]

Both Shoreland and Regents allow dogs on some floors. Some of the grad housing buildings allow dogs, too. No idea about anywhere else, though.

[Mal Reynolds]

Shoreland or Regents?

You don't get to answer questions

[IPmaybe]

Awesome news! Thanks for the responses.

[Dany]

You might also want to look at stuff on like 60th, just south of the law school. I had a friend with two big dogs who lived there in a nice, big apartment, and it would be really convenient for letting your dog out during lunchtime.

[03282016]

[Rahviveh]

Shoreland is nicer but regents is going to be two blocks from whole foods by next summer. If you dont have a car, That puts it over anything else IMO. Also we get free cable in regents now including all the 24/7 sports channels like mlb network. Regents is becoming a decent place to live

[everything_bagel]

Any advice for housing cheaper than Regents/Shoreland?

[Mal Reynolds]

Scholar's Corner or pad mapper are good bets.

[beepboopbeep]

Shoreland is nicer but regents is going to be two blocks from whole foods by next summer. If you dont have a car, That puts it over anything else IMO. Also we get free cable in regents now including all the 24/7 sports channels like mlb network. Regents is becoming a decent place to live

I would not count on the Whole Foods being built by any given date. Heard the other day that they pushed the estimate back to summer 2016.

I live in scholar's as do a few 2L classmates, some of whom were here already and some of whom I dragged into living here. Have posted pictures a few times; can do so again if wanted.

Best part is rent to space ratio. I'm at about $940/mo for a pretty big 1 bedroom. The other TLC buildings in the area can also be somewhat cheap, but are of... variable quality.

[Crowing]

This open memo makes me want to shoot myself.

You should definitely do a journal next year!

If we are pretty confident that we are leaning transactional is there any real benefit from doing a journal?

Just curious.

I wouldn't bother.

You (or anyone in the same boat) can PM me if you want more details.

[03282016]

[everything_bagel]

Scholar's Corner or pad mapper are good bets.

Ty Mal & beepboop!

[wsag826]

Hey - wondering what current Chicago students think about placement in DC firms? I've read that DC placement is much harder than Chicago and NYC, but I still would like to work in DC out of law school and wanted to know what you think. Particularly in comparison to a school like UVA.

Additionally, if anyone could shed any light on how they feel about clerkship placement from Chicago, I'd love to hear what you think.

[LawBron James]

Hey - wondering what current Chicago students think about placement in DC firms? I've read that DC placement is much harder than Chicago and NYC, but I still would like to work in DC out of law school and wanted to know what you think. Particularly in comparison to a school like UVA.

Additionally, if anyone could shed any light on how they feel about clerkship placement from Chicago, I'd love to hear what you think.

Adding onto the question about secondary markets, does anybody here know people who bid heavily for Miami or Houston and how they ended up doing? I know it's just going to be anecdotal stuff, but it'd still be interesting to hear.

[Crowing]

DC is a tough market from any school.

The people I know who bid secondary markets did very well, but as you say, it's anecdotal stuff.

[beepboopbeep]

Hey - wondering what current Chicago students think about placement in DC firms? I've read that DC placement is much harder than Chicago and NYC, but I still would like to work in DC out of law school and wanted to know what you think. Particularly in comparison to a school like UVA.

Additionally, if anyone could shed any light on how they feel about clerkship placement from Chicago, I'd love to hear what you think.

It's very hard here, but it's very hard everywhere. Nothing is out of reach - we get people into W&C/Covington/etc every year. Just keep in mind that the summer classes and offices in DC are fairly small compared to NYC, and the top students from every school everywhere are trying to get there.

For some purely anecdotal numbers: I was K&E (top 5%) and didn't even get callbacks at 2/3rds of the DC firms I did screeners with. Did well in every other market so I don't think it was just me sucking (though I certainly don't rule that out as a possibility). Ended up with an offer from one of the places I most wanted to go to, luckily, but just got butchered there overall.

Honestly, if DC is where you're absolutely sure you want to work, I think I'd take one of the DC schools with $$$ over here with not much money (if that's the situation. Maybe even if the money's similar? depends on strength of preference for DC). People get to DC from UofC, but at least in our class it's primarily been people with great grades. I dunno, that's just my experience as a 2L. If upperclassmen/alums know of people who swapped to DC firms after doing gov honors or clerkships or whatever, that might extend the range a little bit. But those things also require good grades, so I'm not sure it's any less of a crapshoot.

I've also heard that last year, DC firms reached further down in the class than they did in our year. Pretty much all the K&Es from my year bid DC, so a lot of us got slaughtered. That's something that's going to vary a ton year-to-year. I'd imagine DC schools have more of a pipeline.

As for clerkships: people in our class seem to be killing it. I can't personally speak to it because I'm a lazy fuck who doesn't send out enough applications, but I've had mostly good experiences w/r/t stuff like professors going to bat for you, OCS giving at least facially-decent advice, etc. Again, nothing's really out of reach.

[Emma.]

If your goal is just to be in DC, but you aren't set on working for W&C or something, that makes things a lot easier. DC is still a tough market, but folks from median regularly land at DC offices of biglaw firms that aren't W&C-level selective.

[wsag826]

Thanks for the heads up. I guess I should've said that I want to do political law so DC is really the market for me, but I don't know if that makes a difference.

I really want to do a federal clerkship immediately after law school, and then go to a DC firm, which is one of the reasons I would pick Chicago over UVA. I've read that UVA has great placement, but I've also heard that their clerkship #s are boosted because of the number of students matched to conservative judges (and I'm not conservative). Chicago seems to have excellent clerkship placement. Of course, because clerkships are so hard to get, I wanted to gauge how yall feel about DC placement. If the clerkship thing doesn't work out, I would have no problem staying in Chicago or doing NYC.

But all of this sounds very encouraging! Just excited to have these choices to begin with.

[Emma.]

What's "political law"?

[wsag826]

What's "political law"?

Regulatory law related to campaign finance, ethics, lobbying, etc. such as compliance with federal and state election laws. In private practice, id assume big firms are representing clients like SuperPACs, candidates, and political parties who want to make sure they're in compliance with existing election laws or ethics laws.

Edit: so far as I know, it is mostly DC firms or big firms with DC shops like Skadden, WilmerHale, Perkins Coie and Covington that have political law practices.

[Canof09]

Hey - wondering what current Chicago students think about placement in DC firms? I've read that DC placement is much harder than Chicago and NYC, but I still would like to work in DC out of law school and wanted to know what you think. Particularly in comparison to a school like UVA.

Additionally, if anyone could shed any light on how they feel about clerkship placement from Chicago, I'd love to hear what you think.

Adding onto the question about secondary markets, does anybody here know people who bid heavily for Miami or Houston and how they ended up doing? I know it's just going to be anecdotal stuff, but it'd still be interesting to hear.

No clue about Miami, but we kill in Texas. The Texas Law Society here is a machine. You will probably need pretty strong ties to the state to land a 1L SA there, but we do very, very with Texas at OCI. This was the primary reason I picked UChicago over other peer schools. Feel free to message me about it.

[Canof09]

Thanks for the heads up. I guess I should've said that I want to do political law so DC is really the market for me, but I don't know if that makes a difference.

I really want to do a federal clerkship immediately after law school, and then go to a DC firm, which is one of the reasons I would pick Chicago over UVA. I've read that UVA has great placement, but I've also heard that their clerkship #s are boosted because of the number of students matched to conservative judges (and I'm not conservative). Chicago seems to have excellent clerkship placement. Of course, because clerkships are so hard to get, I wanted to gauge how yall feel about DC placement. If the clerkship thing doesn't work out, I would have no problem staying in Chicago or doing NYC.

But all of this sounds very encouraging! Just excited to have these choices to begin with.

Don't assume the "conservative boost" thing isn't true here as well. A ridiculous proportion of the "conservative" students here have clerkships lined up.

[beepboopbeep]

Thanks for the heads up. I guess I should've said that I want to do political law so DC is really the market for me, but I don't know if that makes a difference.

I really want to do a federal clerkship immediately after law school, and then go to a DC firm, which is one of the reasons I would pick Chicago over UVA. I've read that UVA has great placement, but I've also heard that their clerkship #s are boosted because of the number of students matched to conservative judges (and I'm not conservative). Chicago seems to have excellent clerkship placement. Of course, because clerkships are so hard to get, I wanted to gauge how yall feel about DC placement. If the clerkship thing doesn't work out, I would have no problem staying in Chicago or doing NYC.

But all of this sounds very encouraging! Just excited to have these choices to begin with.

Don't assume the "conservative boost" thing isn't true here as well. A ridiculous proportion of the "conservative" students here have clerkships lined up.

Yea, I was just going to say that. I mean other people definitely get them too, and get them in good places. But FedSoc has a big pipeline running through here.

[middlebear]

Random q: for ASW, do most admits stay with current students? On the one hand - not paying for a hotel, on the other - sounds really awkward. Or maybe that's just me.