Top Law Schools

This site helped me a lot through the admission/job-hunting process, so I'm happy to give thoughts on anything that might be helpful as people try to make decisions.

Caveat: I have no special insight about admissions, sorry.

how do you feel about Harvard overtaking Stanford in the rankings? do you feel like your reign is almost over? how concerned are you that your Yale degree might be worthless ten years from now

patogordo wrote:how do you feel about Harvard overtaking Stanford in the rankings? do you feel like your reign is almost over? how concerned are you that your Yale degree might be worthless ten years from now

Stanford was ahead?

Elston Gunn wrote:

patogordo wrote:how do you feel about Harvard overtaking Stanford in the rankings? do you feel like your reign is almost over? how concerned are you that your Yale degree might be worthless ten years from now

Stanford was ahead?

WELL PLAYED, SIR

Elston Gunn wrote:This site helped me a lot through the admission/job-hunting process, so I'm happy to give thoughts on anything that might be helpful as people try to make decisions.

Caveat: I have no special insight about admissions, sorry.

My professors who went to Yale say that at least half of their classmates were "psychopaths" or disturbed in some other manner. Do you feel that's true? What's the student body like and should I bother to do an LLM there? Do you have any insight into the LLM programs?

are you holding off on your return to the football thread until Liverpool win the CL next year?

Dr. Filth wrote:are you holding off on your return to the football thread until Liverpool win the CL next year?

My attempt to start this thread has been almost as big a failure as Tim Sherwood's tenure.

Arpedzio wrote:

Elston Gunn wrote:This site helped me a lot through the admission/job-hunting process, so I'm happy to give thoughts on anything that might be helpful as people try to make decisions.

Caveat: I have no special insight about admissions, sorry.

My professors who went to Yale say that at least half of their classmates were "psychopaths" or disturbed in some other manner. Do you feel that's true? What's the student body like and should I bother to do an LLM there? Do you have any insight into the LLM programs?

Lol, I have no idea what they're talking about. Student body is varied, like any, but pretty great on the whole. Maybe if you gave a little more detail of what "psychopath" is supposed to mean in this context, I could answer better. There are characters, of course, but there are in any group of people.

I don't have any insight into the LLM program, except that, outside of classes that overlap, there's not too much interaction between the LLM students (who I think all have foreign JD-equivalents, right?) and the JD students.

are you in skulls and bones? and if so, any association with the illuminati or the bildeberg group?

radikal_eyes wrote:are you in skulls and bones? and if so, any association with the illuminati or the bildeberg group?

Not much of a secret society presence among the grad students.

Elston Gunn wrote:

Dr. Filth wrote:are you holding off on your return to the football thread until Liverpool win the CL next year?

My attempt to start this thread has been almost as big a failure as Tim Sherwood's tenure.

sadly you don't even have any lucky results despite a shit performance to show for the thread

how would you say yales's grading system has impacted your summer placement opportunities?

Dr. Filth wrote:

Elston Gunn wrote:

Dr. Filth wrote:are you holding off on your return to the football thread until Liverpool win the CL next year?

My attempt to start this thread has been almost as big a failure as Tim Sherwood's tenure.

sadly you don't even have any lucky results despite a shit performance to show for the thread

radikal_eyes wrote:how would you say yales's grading system has impacted your summer placement opportunities?

Hard to say. I think it's probably a net positive. The big advantage, for someone who goes into Big Law, is that there's no such thing as "not meeting the grade cutoff" at a firm, so everybody's in with a shot. In NYC, that means, regardless of grade, you almost definitely *will* get a V10 if you want it.

It's more significant in places like D.C., however, where the grade cutoffs tend to be very high at the firms that hire a lot of people. Being able to go into all your interviews with Cov/A&P/Wilmer/W&C/Hogan/whatever other D.C. firm has a decent sized class with a genuine shot at the job is a huge advantage, and I think the biggest reason it's so much easier to get D.C. out of Yale. Obviously, it's basically impossible to get such good grades that you can bank on getting, say, a W&C offer, but that's the price you pay, and I think it's easily worth it for the students.

For other things, it's even harder to say.

Elston Gunn wrote:

radikal_eyes wrote:how would you say yales's grading system has impacted your summer placement opportunities?

Hard to say. I think it's probably a net positive. The big advantage, for someone who goes into Big Law, is that there's no such thing as "not meeting the grade cutoff" at a firm, so everybody's in with a shot. In NYC, that means, regardless of grade, you almost definitely *will* get a V10 if you want it.

It's more significant in places like D.C., however, where the grade cutoffs tend to be very high at the firms that hire a lot of people. Being able to go into all your interviews with Cov/A&P/Wilmer/W&C/Hogan/whatever other D.C. firm has a decent sized class with a genuine shot at the job is a huge advantage, and I think the biggest reason it's so much easier to get D.C. out of Yale. Obviously, it's basically impossible to get such good grades that you can bank on getting, say, a W&C offer, but that's the price you pay, and I think it's easily worth it for the students.

For other things, it's even harder to say.

As a lurking 1L I can say that no grades gave me a big advantage for 1L summer associate callbacks.

Do people look down on you at YLS if you pick Biglaw? I know the school tends to look down on it in general.

Theopliske8711 wrote:Do people look down on you at YLS if you pick Biglaw? I know the school tends to look down on it in general.

No, not at all. I mean something like 60-70% of us do big law as our first non-clerkship job, so it'd be pretty insane.

There is maybe the slightest bit of embarrassment you feel the first few times you tell acquaintances you know are PI people that you're doing FIP--so I guess I shouldn't say there's *no* looking down on it--but it quickly goes away. And every group of friends has a mix. I'm a little unusual among my group of friends that I'm going to a firm, but no one cares.

Also, I don't think "the school" (by which I guess you mean the administration) looks down on it either. Or at least it doesn't look down on it anymore than it looks down on the whole plebeian notion of being a lawyer at all rather than an academic.

Do a significant number of people at Yale go into pedestrian, non-prestigious PI? (PD work, specifically?) Yale has a reputation for not actually training students to practice even more than other schools do; do you find that that's true?

midwest17 wrote:Do a significant number of people at Yale go into pedestrian, non-prestigious PI? (PD work, specifically?) Yale has a reputation for not actually training students to practice even more than other schools do; do you find that that's true?

There are definitely people who do PD work and similar direct services, although I can't give you anything other than anecdote. Obviously, the median-student is more interested in doing something more visible/impact/policy oriented, but there are lots who are passionate about direct service.

The second thing is really what you make it. It's definitely true that a lot of the black letter classes are excessively theory focused, and that the administration (read: our dean) doesn't much care for actually preparing students to practice. However, probably the single best thing about attending Yale (other than job opportunities, obviously) is the ability to take 5 semesters of clinics. There's been a huge blowup this semester about a few 1Ls not getting into clinics, which I think speaks for itself. I'm in my 3rd semester of clinic now (I'll end up doing 5, for sure), and I've done things like file a brief and take a deposition. Hopefully that's relatively useful training!

i've heard from some yls students that, ironically, it's often hard to get good faculty mentorship because of the size of the faculty for some subspecialties of the law. where do you think it's the hardest and the easiest to build relationships with faculty?

sonyvaio18 wrote:i've heard from some yls students that, ironically, it's often hard to get good faculty mentorship because of the size of the faculty for some subspecialties of the law. where do you think it's the hardest and the easiest to build relationships with faculty?

Hmm. Well, there are a couple of layers to that answer. It's definitely true that it's a relatively small faculty, and the faculty maddeningly refuses to consider where there are particular needs when making hiring decisions. (I.e., they say the hire purely based on the quality of the professor's scholarship, with literally zero attention paid to teaching skills or areas of need pedagogically.) So, if you really want to do writing on general procedure or, e.g., FDA law or something like that, you may struggle to find a good mentor for that topic (or at least one that's not a visiting professor).

That said, my experience here is that mentorship and particular academic interests aren't necessarily that intertwined. I'd say, though people definitely form close relationships with professors, they mostly just come out of taking a class/seminar with the person, and, I hate to say it, but a lot of them start as very instrumental exercises. The most ambitious among us quickly realize that there are roughly 5-7 professors that sort of control the keys to the kingdom with the fanciest clerkships, and do what they can to make those professors their mentors, regardless of the person's academic interest. (E.g., I doubt most of Amy Chua's RAs are super passionate about international business transactions.) Even outside of the instrumental motivations, though, I don't think students here really struggle to find mentors.

I will say that mentors make a very, very big difference in access to the most selective opportunities, which is exacerbated by the grading system. This is IMO a big flaw in how the school works, since for a lot of reasons that can entrench race, gender and cultural stratification. (Though gender not so much in our case, since several of the most valuable mentors are women who explicitly try to put deserving women in the best clerkships.)

This questions is not particularly useful for people who are considering yale as a potential school so forgive me for my curiosity, but I've always wondered, now that you mention her name, how is Amy Chua seen as a professor? Considering the backlash that she's received for her books, I'm wondering if it's tarnished her reputation or credibility in any way.

milkandcheerios wrote:This questions is not particularly useful for people who are considering yale as a potential school so forgive me for my curiosity, but I've always wondered, now that you mention her name, how is Amy Chua seen as a professor? Considering the backlash that she's received for her books, I'm wondering if it's tarnished her reputation or credibility in any way.

There's a small amount of controversy around her books etc (apparently there was a giant flame war on our school-wide email thing back when Tiger Mother came out, though nothing happened with the Triple Threat), but she's mostly very well-liked. I've never actually spoken to her. She has a reputation, though, for being very kind to students, being a very easy grader and going to bat for the students she's close to in clerkship apps. There's maybe some sense she plays favorites a bit, and maybe is a bit too familiar with students, but she's got a generally positive reputation.

Do you think the student body is different at Yale Law than Harvard Law? Were you deciding between the two?

What do you know about the clinics? Ever done one? Heard reviews?