Top Law Schools

How hard to be at or above median at a T14? If one spends a great deal of time in the library and studying for hours on end, is it safe to assume that that person will end up at median (at the very least)?

You shouldn't assume that at all. It doesn't matter how long your study but rather how quickly you personally learn the material. I know people who studied all the time and still did poorly on exams (bottom half), and I know people who study just a normal amount and ended up top 30% or higher.

About 98% of students are doing what you are suggesting will give one an advantage.

Edit: spelling

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It's difficult, but you don't really need to be that intelligent relative to your peers to do it. It's a combination of how well you understand the concepts and how well you demonstrate your understanding on the exam.

The scary part is that almost every student at a T-14 is smart enough to hit median yet only half pull it off. You really won't know if you're one of those people until you get your grades back.

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real hard.

You should just assume that it's hard. A lot of really smart people try really hard and still end up below median. Do not assume that you have mastered the law school game until you actually get good grades for at least a year.

T14-->BigLaw wrote:How much can personal connections help to land a BigLaw SA? My father used to be a partner at a V100 and he has several friends who are partners at top firms. Can his contacts help me out, or is it unlikely?

It can help some, but my sense is that folks generally overrate the value of these kinds of connections. Most partners have a lot of friends with kids in law school. And, in general, partners don't insert themselves into a firm's standard hiring process. You should certainly try to exploit your father's connections, but I wouldn't assume they will get you anywhere.

Also, here's a crazy thought: have you considered asking, like, your father about this? He of course has a better sense than we do about how much pull he has with his friends at different firms, and he's worked as a partner at a law firm itself—so he could tell you how his own firm would respond to a former partner's kid.

I'd say there's about a 50% chance that you'll be at or above the median.

Isn't it a bell curve so most will be around median (eg have a similar mix of As and Bs)

T14-->BigLaw wrote:How much can personal connections help to land a BigLaw SA? My father used to be a partner at a V100 and he has several friends who are partners at top firms. Can his contacts help me out, or is it unlikely?

Not much at all. I have 2 very very close family friends who were top partners at a very notable NYC biglaw firm and one was even in charge of recruiting. They were literally the first firm to reject me at OCI.

But TBF, a lot of T14s, especially YHS, have grading systems that make like 60% of their class or more look like median students.

Studying hard in LS is a huge flame. Once you get a feel for how to read a case you should be able to burn through them to get the one to three lines of substance from them. Most people who are spending hours and hours studying are wasting time memorizing irrelevant facts and nuances.

As for connections, if they're good enough to help, you already should know it. It might be worth asking them to meet for "advice" though, just be prepared to listen to boomers talk about a market they no longer understand.

jingosaur wrote:

T14-->BigLaw wrote:How much can personal connections help to land a BigLaw SA? My father used to be a partner at a V100 and he has several friends who are partners at top firms. Can his contacts help me out, or is it unlikely?

Not much at all. I have 2 very very close family friends who were top partners at a very notable NYC biglaw firm and one was even in charge of recruiting. They were literally the first firm to reject me at OCI.

But TBF, a lot of T14s, especially YHS, have grading systems that make like 60% of their class or more look like median students.

Most schools make it so that most students are more or less median. And I don't think anyone will honestly tell you the difference between a 3.46 and a 3.44 has any significance even though that may be the difference between being above or below a median set at 3.45. However, there is a lot of cognitive dissonance with these sorts of things. Even though people know there a 3.44 student is virtually the exact same as a 3.46 student, many firms will not want a student who is "in the bottom half" (this cognitive dissonance is also probably present throughout all parts of the bell curve i.e. is an applicant with a 3.59 really that much worse than a 3.6 student, which become particularly relevant if a firm has a hard cut-off at 3.6....). So it is probably helpful to attend a school that doesn't actually rank its students like how Northwestern or Penn doesn't rank its students.

T14-->BigLaw wrote:How hard to be at or above median at a T14? If one spends a great deal of time in the library and studying for hours on end, is it safe to assume that that person will end up at median (at the very least)?

Yeah if you are in the top 1% of studiers your odds of being in the top 50% are pretty good.

star fox wrote:

T14-->BigLaw wrote:How hard to be at or above median at a T14? If one spends a great deal of time in the library and studying for hours on end, is it safe to assume that that person will end up at median (at the very least)?

Yeah if you are in the top 1% of studiers your odds of being in the top 50% are pretty good.

Except no one can actually know whether they're in the top 1% of studiers.

A. Nony Mouse wrote:

star fox wrote:

T14-->BigLaw wrote:How hard to be at or above median at a T14? If one spends a great deal of time in the library and studying for hours on end, is it safe to assume that that person will end up at median (at the very least)?

Yeah if you are in the top 1% of studiers your odds of being in the top 50% are pretty good.

Except no one can actually know whether they're in the top 1% of studiers.

Well yeah but I mean in terms of raw hours

Point is don't let some cocky 3L or graduate convince you to not study hard. Nothings guaranteed but the more time you spend studying the better your odds will be

Raw hours don't mean anything. Some people don't understand what they don't understand and spend hours memorizing rules that are incorrect.

Well, I shouldn't say "raw hours" don't mean anything. But it's certainly not any kind of guarantee that you'll hit a certain level.

star fox wrote:

T14-->BigLaw wrote:How hard to be at or above median at a T14? If one spends a great deal of time in the library and studying for hours on end, is it safe to assume that that person will end up at median (at the very least)?

Yeah if you are in the top 1% of studiers your odds of being in the top 50% are pretty good.

Or you could burn out and fuck up exams

Mack.Hambleton wrote:

star fox wrote:

T14-->BigLaw wrote:How hard to be at or above median at a T14? If one spends a great deal of time in the library and studying for hours on end, is it safe to assume that that person will end up at median (at the very least)?

Yeah if you are in the top 1% of studiers your odds of being in the top 50% are pretty good.

Or you could burn out and fuck up exams

Its possible, you should ramp up your studying the closer you get to exams. Spending 12 hours studying in September is not going to be very beneficial.

also frankly sleep is stupidly important to learning and retention of information so if you're fucking up your sleep to study more you're probably not helping yourself out very much

I mean being in the top 1% of studiers at my school would probably be crazy. People are mostly not insane and unhealthy about studying, but why would I want to top the people who do 4+ hours a night and 10 hours each weekend day? At some point, shit's not worth it.

You have a little less than 50% chance.