Desert Fox wrote:TrialLawyer16 wrote:Desert Fox wrote:TrialLawyer16 wrote:
Again. Look at the attorney profiles for big law firms in DC and tell me again that DC isn't GULC's home market. Your anecdotal evidence is just that, these are facts.
http://lawfirmaddict.blogspot.com/2006/ ... on-dc.html
http://lawfirmaddict.blogspot.com/2006/ ... egion.html
Here, this a long fucking time ago, so the numbers aren't accurate, but the overall picture should be similar. Gtown has no advantage. And that isn't even accounting for self selection. How many people at Gtown want DC? Most. And only 10% get it. Yikes.
DC is a shitty town for big law unless you are HYS.
How does being ranked 5th in those links = no advantage? Even when accounting for self-selection. You guys are being wayyy too pessimistic. Let's keep some perspective here... the schools ranked above Gtown were HYS and Duke. No one is disputing the superiority of those schools over Gtown. The point being made here is that Gtown outperforms its 14 ranking in DC.
Go look at how NYC schools do in NYC or how Chicago schools do in Chicago. Georgetown placing 10% into their homemark during boom times is atrociously bad.
Self selection is a huge factor and you can't simply "account for it" without really accounting for it. People who want to go to DC go to Georgetown because it's in DC.
I'd imagine Georgetown is probably just as good as any lower T14 for DC. But DC as a market sucks. It's fairly small, and it's very grade selective.
Now you're comparing apples to oranges. You yourself said how tough and small of a market DC is, yet you attempt to compare DC placement to NYC/CHI placement?? I'm not sure if you remember what was even being debated here - whether or not DC is truly GULC's home market. We can even put this in perspective with numbers.. DC is the 24th largest city in the US with a population of about 600,000. Chicago is the 3rd largest city in the US with a pop of about 2.6 million (more than 4x the size of DC), and NYC is the largest city in the US (more than 12.5x the size of DC) with a pop of about 8 million. Looking at that same website you posted you can see that the highest percentage of the class placed (mind you that link you posted above was for 2006
summer associate placement) in NYC is Columbia (56.1%) and CHI is Northwestern (29.6). Gtown is 5th in DC (9.9%) behind Yale, Stanford, Harvard, and Duke. Now here's the whopper, Yale placed the most in DC with a mere
17.1% - yes,
Yale. Therefore, if you compare the NYC schools placement in NY with GULC's 10% in DC keeping in mind the immense disparity in the availability of big law jobs/size of the market, it makes that 10% look a heck of a lot better doesn't it? As I'm sure you'd now admit, your attempt to compare Georgetown's 10% with NYC/CHI statistics is exponentially flawed. Also, considering that DC is the most difficult big law market to break, them placing 5th behind the caliber of schools it is is very indicative of their "home field advantage".
Also, if you look at the link posted by top30man earlier you'll notice that 29% of Gtown's grads last year went Government/Public Interest, with a total of 42% of their grads being employed in DC (including BigLaw) - students don't just go to Gtown for BigLaw like they may for other schools. Also, just as a further example - look at the associates at Williams & Connolly. As you know W&C was ranked as the most selective firm in the nation in 2011 by Vault. GULC has 17 associates at W&C, the only school with more associates at W&C is Harvard. Why? Might have something to do with the founder of W&C being a GULC grad and having the GULC library named after him. If you do well at GULC and take advantage of the opportunities surrounding you - you can succeed in DC. Gtown has ties in DC, other people in positions of power in DC graduated from GULC. You have to look at the entire picture, not just segments.