Top Law Schools

How difficult would it be to make top 5-10% at a T4? Strictly with the intentions of transferring. Assuming you treat law school as a full time job w/ overtime and devoting every minute to your studies. Would it require more than strict devotion and a thorough understanding of what law school really about? Especially at a T4, would it really be that hard?

With rare exceptions, I would say that treating law school like a full time job and working like crazy is a necessary, but definitely not sufficient, element of finishing in the top 10% of your law school class, even at a T4. No experience at a T4 though.

You need to be smart as well.

And a smart person would retake, and not go to a TTTT.

moonman157 wrote:With rare exceptions, I would say that treating law school like a full time job and working like crazy is a necessary, but definitely not sufficient, element of finishing in the top 10% of your law school class, even at a T4. No experience at a T4 though.

Thanks for your quick response. What would be sufficient? What would be required to finish top 5/10%?

Donnis wrote:

moonman157 wrote:With rare exceptions, I would say that treating law school like a full time job and working like crazy is a necessary, but definitely not sufficient, element of finishing in the top 10% of your law school class, even at a T4. No experience at a T4 though.

Thanks for your quick response. What would be sufficient? What would be required to finish top 5/10%?

Luck.

There is no way to know where you will finish in your class. Working hard isn't enough some people will just get it and end up top of the class naturally.

Donnis wrote:

moonman157 wrote:With rare exceptions, I would say that treating law school like a full time job and working like crazy is a necessary, but definitely not sufficient, element of finishing in the top 10% of your law school class, even at a T4. No experience at a T4 though.

Thanks for your quick response. What would be sufficient? What would be required to finish top 5/10%?

The problem is that there is no "sufficient" because, like others have said, there is so much luck and randomness that goes into where you fall in the class. obviously there will be a correlation between intelligent/working hard and where you finish, but there's so much more that goes into it as well. There are lots of guides on this site from what people did to finish at the top of their respective classes, but at the end of the day there is no way to know ahead of time if it will be enough for you.

I was top 5ish% at a ttt. My answer is luck. If I did it again, there is no guarantee I would finish as high as I did 1L year. The kids you are competing against wont have the highest lsats, but they will work just as hard as you will. I think that treating it as a full time job is necessary and not sufficient for peak performance. When you get into what seperates top 5-10% from the rest of class, you are talking about variables that are just hard to pinpoint. You may or may not mesh with a prof's teaching style for example.
Op, it's so much easier to just retake the LSAT and devote the proper time and resources. I ended up with a decent outcome in terms of transferring, but my employment future is far from settled. Even though I was 11/200 students at a somewhat respectable ttt (whether such a thing exists is debatable) I am having to fight for any respect I get in the legal market (and this is as someone near top 5%, you can use your imagination as to how the other 95% are doing). Don't put yourself through that man. Just please retake.

Did you make top 10% for your HS? Did you make top 10% for your undergrad? Would you think that making top 10% of college was harder than making the top 10% of HS? Does it stand to reason that making the top 10% of law school would be even harder still?

I think the prevailing wisdom that you should never apply to a school unless you're 100% ok with graduating from that school, the debt it confers, and the employment opportunities that school affords should be taken as gospel. It doesn't matter if you're Earl freakin' Warren going to Cooley, you're still ostensibly trying to defy 9:1 odds.

Worse yet is that there's little chance you're Earl Warren. You're not even Hugo Black. Your LSAT and GPA suggest as much. Unless you've purposefully sandbagged your LSAT and academic career up until now for the sole purpose of outshining the mental troglodytes around you at the T4, you're pretty much at the school you deserve. Where you fall on that bell curve is decided by a fairly thin margin.

So to sum up what others have said, if you can commit to studying 10x harder than you've ever shown the capacity to, that's a start. Then if you can somehow demonstrate to be 10x smarter than you've ever shown the capacity for, that'll be better yet. All that's left is to be 10x luckier than you've ever been and that'll be sufficient for top 10%.

I think the above post captured it in a humorous albeit correct fashion. Please don't go to a shit school to transfer. It's like taking a long, arduous, trap filled detour to your destination. I'm not saying doing well on the LSAT is easy, clearly it's not. Hell, I didn't do well on it, but I also threw in the towel after one take and no prep. My point is that it seems to be easier to improve on that test than it is to get top of class somewhere. If I could go back in time I would slap myself...and I am LUCKY to count myself among a select few students whose legal reputation is not, arguably, destroyed before I even graduate.
If you decide against counsel to take this approach, pm me for possible tips. Just know they won't be enough and most people will be doing the same things.

I just don't think you understand just how arbitrary and non-reflective of your ability law school grading can be. Here's the thing to remember: one bad day is all it takes. You can know the law, know the professor's style, what he's looking for, what's been on his exams in the past etc., and just be "off" the day of the exam.

Granted, there's a huge difference between an A exam and a B exam, but there's not too much between an A and an A-. Trying to transfer from a T4 to a decent school will require A's. A-'s won't cut it. Your margins are SOOOO thin. Don't risk it.

You have a 5% chance of getting out of that TTTT. So tell me, are you feeling lucky? Finishing in the top 5% is just as much luck as skill. On TLS you mostly see people successfully transferring; what you don't see are the hundreds that failed.

Donnis wrote:How difficult would it be to make top 5-10% at a T4? Strictly with the intentions of transferring. Assuming you treat law school as a full time job w/ overtime and devoting every minute to your studies. Would it require more than strict devotion and a thorough understanding of what law school really about? Especially at a T4, would it really be that hard?

This question is meaningless and impossible to answer. Nobody knows you, your classmates, your profs and their proclivities, etc.

Moved to the correct forum; 0Ls are not allowed to post questions in the Transfers forum, which is reserved for current/past law students to discuss transfer applications once the applicant has 1L grades back.

Donnis wrote:How difficult would it be to make top 5-10% at a T4? Strictly with the intentions of transferring. Assuming you treat law school as a full time job w/ overtime and devoting every minute to your studies. Would it require more than strict devotion and a thorough understanding of what law school really about? Especially at a T4, would it really be that hard?

The fact that you're even considering this despite it being an obvious bad idea leads me to believe you probably won't be in the top 10%

baal hadad wrote:

Donnis wrote:How difficult would it be to make top 5-10% at a T4? Strictly with the intentions of transferring. Assuming you treat law school as a full time job w/ overtime and devoting every minute to your studies. Would it require more than strict devotion and a thorough understanding of what law school really about? Especially at a T4, would it really be that hard?

The fact that you're even considering this despite it being an obvious bad idea leads me to believe you probably won't be in the top 10%

This is the best answer I think I've ever seen to this question.

Sometimes tls way over exaggerates. Law grading at tttt is hardly luck. The margins are way wider. If you can write decently and put in 40 hour weeks, you'll be top third. That will prolly get you out of that to shithole to somewhere else shitty.

JohannDeMann wrote:Sometimes tls way over exaggerates. Law grading at tttt is hardly luck. The margins are way wider. If you can write decently and put in 40 hour weeks, you'll be top third. That will prolly get you out of that to shithole to somewhere else shitty.

We can definitely tell whether or not OP can write an exam effectively. We can definitely tell about his classmates too. We know how much they will work. There is zero meaning in any of this.

JohannDeMann wrote:Sometimes tls way over exaggerates. Law grading at tttt is hardly luck. The margins are way wider. If you can write decently and put in 40 hour weeks, you'll be top third. That will prolly get you out of that to shithole to somewhere else shitty.

Yea but like others have said I'm sure at most of these schools you need to be in the top 5% if not better to be able to transfer to a good school. The margin for error is so slim that the stress and pressure will kill you. Just retake the LSAT instead of spending a year counting off 19 other random classmates and hoping you have them all beat.

Donnis wrote:How difficult would it be to make top 5-10% at a T4? Strictly with the intentions of transferring. Assuming you treat law school as a full time job w/ overtime and devoting every minute to your studies. Would it require more than strict devotion and a thorough understanding of what law school really about? Especially at a T4, would it really be that hard?

If you're stuck at a TTTT, what makes you think you're going to be better than 90+% of the class?

First Offense wrote:

Donnis wrote:How difficult would it be to make top 5-10% at a T4? Strictly with the intentions of transferring. Assuming you treat law school as a full time job w/ overtime and devoting every minute to your studies. Would it require more than strict devotion and a thorough understanding of what law school really about? Especially at a T4, would it really be that hard?

If you're stuck at a TTTT, what makes you think you're going to be better than 90+% of the class?

This. Despite what you may think, you're not magically better than any of your classmates. You are all equal. You are not special. And only 10% of your class will be in the top 10%.

Going in planning to transfer is idiotic. That's it. If you're that smart, retake.

It's not like you go from pondering which Tttt you're gonna deposit at to leveraging the T14s against each other for scholly money. His chances of getting t14 by LSAT retake is equally shitty as transferring. Neither are gonna happen. Spending a year retaking to get ttt prolly ain't worth shit either. His best option at this point with most realistic chances is not to go to law school or just go to the tttt while he's feeling motivated, Transfer to Florida/fsu after putting in 40 hour weeks both semester and walk out after 3 years into his unemployed, empty abyss of a life he busted his ass for

I haven't read all the responses but you're going to need to be well above top 5% to either make a meaningful transfer or be competitive for good jobs (think top 1-2%)

JohannDeMann wrote:It's not like you go from pondering which Tttt you're gonna deposit at to leveraging the T14s against each other for scholly money. His chances of getting t14 by LSAT retake is equally shitty as transferring. Neither are gonna happen. Spending a year retaking to get ttt prolly ain't worth shit either. His best option at this point with most realistic chances is not to go to law school or just go to the tttt while he's feeling motivated, Transfer to Florida/fsu after putting in 40 hour weeks both semester and walk out after 3 years into his unemployed, empty abyss of a life he busted his ass for

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 3#p7865023

2.6/145

JohannDeMann wrote:It's not like you go from pondering which Tttt you're gonna deposit at to leveraging the T14s against each other for scholly money. His chances of getting t14 by LSAT retake is equally shitty as transferring. Neither are gonna happen. Spending a year retaking to get ttt prolly ain't worth shit either. His best option at this point with most realistic chances is not to go to law school or just go to the tttt while he's feeling motivated, Transfer to Florida/fsu after putting in 40 hour weeks both semester and walk out after 3 years into his unemployed, empty abyss of a life he busted his ass for

Perhaps we should analyze the cost differences between retaking the LSAT and attending one of these law schools and then decide which decision makes more sense.