Golden Gate University School of Law Forum

A forum for applicants and admitted students to ask law students and graduates about law school and the practice of law.
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Nicholasnickynic

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Re: Golden Gate University School of Law

Post by Nicholasnickynic » Fri Aug 06, 2010 2:23 pm

barkathemoon wrote:I don't dispute that. It's an unfortunate reality for getting a job right out of school, for sure. I can't speak from experience, but I have heard many times that the school's rep is important for finding your first job only. Of course, it could potentially take years to find that job. I would also argue that the inferiority complex that a lot of GGU students have from being in the shadow of Hastings, Boalt and Stanford can work to our advantage bc while they (HB&S students) might be inclined to rest on their laurels, we know that we have to prove ourselves. And, for the most part, we can back it up. One other thing to think about: San Francisco retains a lot of GGU students (for obvious reasons), while given the demand for T1 grads draws a significant portion of them to other parts of the country. The competition for jobs in SF, while fierce, is not as closed off to us as you might think. A very high number of Northern CA 'Super Lawyers' are GGU alumni, and that's a great network to work with.
What do you mean first job ONLY?
You do realize taht your first job is everything?

You do realize that if an elite school grad gets biglaw right away -we'll say 130k ITE- and some one from GGU gets a 50k job right away, that teh GGU grad's salary will NEVER be as high as the starting salary of the elite school grad?

The only possible exception to this is solo practice. Good luck with that.

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nealric

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Re: Golden Gate University School of Law

Post by nealric » Fri Aug 06, 2010 2:58 pm

You do realize that if an elite school grad gets biglaw right away -we'll say 130k ITE
Biglaw is still at 160k.

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Nicholasnickynic

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Re: Golden Gate University School of Law

Post by Nicholasnickynic » Fri Aug 06, 2010 3:33 pm

http://lawshucks.com/2010/07/this-week-in-biglaw-72310/ :
Salaries

Logic doesn’t appear to be one of the strong suits for law-school applicants, at least as far as cost-benefit analysis or expected-value calculation. The next step in the logic chain from the disappearance of all those jobs is that salary numbers are plummeting. Lawyers’ salaries continue to show a bimodal curve, with an ever-shrinking peak at BigLaw salary, but a larger and growing peak at an extremely low level and moving left.
Am I missing something?
I know a lot of firms do 160k still, but I was under the impression that some were backing off a bit?

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nealric

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Re: Golden Gate University School of Law

Post by nealric » Fri Aug 06, 2010 3:43 pm

Am I missing something?
I know a lot of firms do 160k still, but I was under the impression that some were backing off a bit?
Only a small minority of the V100 cut down. Of those that did, almost all have gone back to 160k. Hiring is still way down from the peak- but not salaries.

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General Tso

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Re: Golden Gate University School of Law

Post by General Tso » Fri Aug 06, 2010 3:45 pm

barkathemoon wrote: One other thing to think about: San Francisco retains a lot of GGU students (for obvious reasons), while given the demand for T1 grads draws a significant portion of them to other parts of the country. The competition for jobs in SF, while fierce, is not as closed off to us as you might think.
Hastings CSO told us in OCI prep that there are roughly ~1100-1200 new attorney positions in SF per year. Hastings + USF + GGU + SFLS = almost 1,000 students. Now consider how many Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, T14, UCLA, UC Davis graduates are going to compete for those jobs. Then consider how many of those jobs are big firm jobs that were never open to GGU, USF, SFLS,and most of Hastings to begin with.

If GGU has 200 grads per year, I would wager that ITE less than 1/3 of them are landing desirable work in the SF city limits.

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bahari2010

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Re: Golden Gate University School of Law

Post by bahari2010 » Tue Aug 10, 2010 9:39 pm

[quote=yo!]]Honestly, I feel like 0Ls shouldn't normally do this to people who have already been through law school. However, in this situation, I'm calling bullshit. Maybe I'm biased, but you simply won't convince me that GGU prospects = UCD prospects in any ecomomy, or on any planet that I've heard of. Where are you getting this info from? Speculation among GGU students who haven't the slightest clue about where/how UCD students are finding jobs?[/quote]

To the contrary, my information comes from conversations with roughly a dozen grads of other ABA bay area law schools within the last three months. I don't mean to say GGU and UCD (King Hall) employment prospects are the same only that UCD is much like GGU in that going there in itself (without internships in your hoped-for practice area etc.) will do very little to get you a job.
Last edited by bahari2010 on Tue Aug 10, 2010 9:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Golden Gate University School of Law

Post by bahari2010 » Tue Aug 10, 2010 9:45 pm

General Tso wrote:
General Tso wrote: If GGU has 200 grads per year, I would wager that ITE less than 1/3 of them are landing desirable work in the SF city limits.
ummm...most of the people I took bar prep with were Hastings grads, who were freaking out at not having a job anywhere, never mind within the bounds of the City & County....

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Re: Golden Gate University School of Law

Post by bahari2010 » Tue Aug 10, 2010 10:10 pm

Nicholasnickynic wrote:I've gone ahead and put a strike through all the irrelevant things in your post.
I've bolded the things that really matter [. . .] Btw: Am I a snarky asshole? Yes.
I'll actually defend the practice of accepting people only to kick them out after 1L (to a point) schools like GGU provide lawyers for the needs of everyday people (unlike the mostly corporate intrests handled by biglaw) allowing in people with marginal records allows a wider degree of background in the profession; some will make it and some won't. I'm simply not convinced that being more selective creates "better" attorneys' when the school's objective from its founding was to give a place to study law to people who weren't likely to end up at white-shoe law firms.

A lot of things will change in three years...I wouldn't trade great friends, professors, and experiences (not to mention debt that is 25% of what many of my classmates have) for anything.

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General Tso

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Re: Golden Gate University School of Law

Post by General Tso » Tue Aug 10, 2010 11:36 pm

bahari2010 wrote:
General Tso wrote:
General Tso wrote: If GGU has 200 grads per year, I would wager that ITE less than 1/3 of them are landing desirable work in the SF city limits.
ummm...most of the people I took bar prep with were Hastings grads, who were freaking out at not having a job anywhere, never mind within the bounds of the City & County....
what, are you trying to crush my dreams or something? :lol:

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General Tso

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Re: Golden Gate University School of Law

Post by General Tso » Tue Aug 10, 2010 11:40 pm

Hastings people seem to be obsessed with working in SF. Two days before OCI bidding closed, our CSO sent out a frantic email imploring people to apply to firms outside SF. Most LA, Sac, and out of state firms received less than half the number of bids as SF firms, while the number of interviews per firm was roughly the same for all. To me, that largely explains the 69% employed at graduation figure.

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Kurt Cobain

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Re: Avoid Golden Gate University School of Law

Post by Kurt Cobain » Wed Aug 11, 2010 3:40 pm

windsofchange wrote:Golden Gate University School of Law is probably the worst law school there is today. The morale of the staff is very low translating to poor relations and services to the student body. The school policies toward grading and disqualifications are unjust. GGU admits students knowing that they are going to fail at least 1/3 of them in the first year and more in the latter years. At this time, GGU is on probation with the American Bar Association. GGU only wants to graduate students who they think will pass the bar. The catch though is that they also want to generate revenue which means admitting a huge body of students to pay their expensive tuition of $1,030 per unit plus the fees. So, GGU place the onus of its bar passage rate on the students instead of its inability to design programs that will help prepare the students prepare for the bar exam. There is no doubt that the bar exam in California is probably the most difficult exams in the country. Majority of law schools have instituted classes that train students starting their first year to prepare for exams, especially the bar exam -- GGU does not do this, however. Instead, it imposes an exam curve that is designed to fail 1/3 of the class. So that while it may start off with 250 students for first year by the time this particular class graduates, there would only be 60 to take the bar exam and maybe 45 will pass. GGU does not see itself as the source of the faiure. It sees and treats students as the source of their failure. This result in financial disasters, broken dreams and broken ambitions for a vast amount of students.

There was a time when GGU Law School was a good one -- not at this time, however. It is best that students looking for a good law school steer clear of GGU Law School until it finds its way.
Whenever I read this I think of a reading comp LSAT question for some reason.

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Re: Golden Gate University School of Law

Post by newyork45 » Sun May 29, 2011 5:48 am

I am a graduate of GGU School of Law from Spring starting class of 1995. GGU SOL has been deeply troubled for many years. It dropped two tiers in the rankings before I graduated. I paid for an education from a "middle of the pack" law school, and wound up graduating from one at the very bottom. Hence, my law degree lost tremendous value.

The fact of the matter (based on my experience there) is that the students in my entering class were every bit as bright and capable as my classmates at UC Berkeley. It was not---by any means---the failure of the students that were flunked out. You could start with a class of 100% geniuses and exceptional students and one third of the students would still be flunked out. GGU's requirement that one third of the students be flunked out would guarantee that.

The problem is not inferior students, it is dysfunctional policies and practices, with greed for money (instead of preparing students for the Bar) that is the top priority for GGU SOL. Nontheless, even before taking the Bar, I was working for BigLaw doing Corporate Law and earning excellent money, even though I was in that 90% range. Why? Humility and luck: I had other skills (medical) from cross-training. I volunteered for legal jobs just to get experience. *I was willing to start at the "bottom" and do filing.* I worked endlessly to establish a good reputation.

So, if you're stuck at GGU SOL, try to get cross-training (even just becoming a medical asst.), volunteer for extra experience, study constantly, and be willing to start humbly by doing whatever just so you can get your foot in the door. If your good, you'll be promoted. Start the Bar Review studying in year one. Your success depends greatly upon your attitude and what you do with what you have to work with.

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