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betterdeadthanred

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How not to law school gotta love NC

Post by betterdeadthanred » Tue May 07, 2019 10:37 am

Campbell Law tuition in 2011 was $33,910. For the 2019-20 school year it is $42,600.

Campbell's NC bar passage rate in 2011 was 91.94%. In 2018 (most recent) that number is 67.89% (Campbell's NC bar passage has not cracked 90% since 2012)

Campbell's employment rate for graduate in Full-time long term jobs as attorneys (Bar passage required) for the class of 2011 was 71%. For the class of 2018 the rate is 50%.

That means in less than 10 years tuition has gone up by over 25% while bar passage and employment outcomes have dropped precipitously.

This is the data...these are the outcomes...this is #Campbell

Sources:
www. abarequireddisclosures. org
law. campbell. edu

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Re: How not to law school gotta love NC

Post by LSATWiz.com » Tue May 07, 2019 12:58 pm

You mention the ability to pass the bar and practice law, but nothing of the law school experience. Maybe their library is nicer now or their dean got a new toupee. These things can contribute to the experience such that a fall in jobs and bar passage is largely irrelevant.

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Re: How not to law school gotta love NC

Post by TLSDookie » Tue May 07, 2019 3:44 pm

Campbell still has a good reputation among Raleigh attorneys, many of whom went there themselves. If you're looking for a job around Raleigh you should be OK as long as you don't have your heart set on a very prestigious midlaw/biglaw firm, e.g. are willing to do litigation/crim defense in a small office. If you had your heart set on Smith Anderson/Wyrick Robbins etc. anyone here could've advised you against going to a T4/5 school at the bottom of the totem pole in a market saturated by 5 law schools during your application process.

As for the trend, outcomes were virtually equally poor (92 long term bar passage required employed in a class of 154) for the class of 2014 when you were deciding on schools (assuming you're an unemployed 3L now). You have no one to blame but yourself for the law school you chose to matriculate at instead of retaking an LSAT score likely in the low 150s. Don't cite 2011 stats like you reasonably relied on them/are currently the victim of fraud, as opposed to not doing due diligence, while looking for sympathy.

source for the first paragraph: became intimately familiar with the Raleigh legal market while searching for a post-graduation job over the past two years.

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Re: How not to law school gotta love NC

Post by betterdeadthanred » Tue May 07, 2019 9:55 pm

TLSDookie wrote:Campbell still has a good reputation among Raleigh attorneys, many of whom went there themselves. If you're looking for a job around Raleigh you should be OK as long as you don't have your heart set on a very prestigious midlaw/biglaw firm, e.g. are willing to do litigation/crim defense in a small office. If you had your heart set on Smith Anderson/Wyrick Robbins etc. anyone here could've advised you against going to a T4/5 school at the bottom of the totem pole in a market saturated by 5 law schools during your application process.

As for the trend, outcomes were virtually equally poor (92 long term bar passage required employed in a class of 154) for the class of 2014 when you were deciding on schools (assuming you're an unemployed 3L now). You have no one to blame but yourself for the law school you chose to matriculate at instead of retaking an LSAT score likely in the low 150s. Don't cite 2011 stats like you reasonably relied on them/are currently the victim of fraud, as opposed to not doing due diligence, while looking for sympathy.

source for the first paragraph: became intimately familiar with the Raleigh legal market while searching for a post-graduation job over the past two years.
I was researching Campbell in 2007/08/09...the employment data back then was an aggregate rate meaning that their reps they sent to undergrad programs could brag about a 90% employment rate....However, back then their bar passage rate was their primary point of pride....this can no longer be said.

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Re: How not to law school gotta love NC

Post by LSATWiz.com » Wed May 08, 2019 10:40 am

TLSDookie wrote:Campbell still has a good reputation among Raleigh attorneys, many of whom went there themselves. If you're looking for a job around Raleigh you should be OK as long as you don't have your heart set on a very prestigious midlaw/biglaw firm, e.g. are willing to do litigation/crim defense in a small office. If you had your heart set on Smith Anderson/Wyrick Robbins etc. anyone here could've advised you against going to a T4/5 school at the bottom of the totem pole in a market saturated by 5 law schools during your application process.

As for the trend, outcomes were virtually equally poor (92 long term bar passage required employed in a class of 154) for the class of 2014 when you were deciding on schools (assuming you're an unemployed 3L now). You have no one to blame but yourself for the law school you chose to matriculate at instead of retaking an LSAT score likely in the low 150s. Don't cite 2011 stats like you reasonably relied on them/are currently the victim of fraud, as opposed to not doing due diligence, while looking for sympathy.

source for the first paragraph: became intimately familiar with the Raleigh legal market while searching for a post-graduation job over the past two years.
That's a little harsh. I think there is a lot of value in people like OP coming back, and saying the gamble didn't work out for them. As I've mentioned previously, the prefrontal cortex (the part of our brain that helps us make rational decisions) develops into one's late 20s and even into their 30s. Many of us did dumb things in our early 20s that we wouldn't have done in our late 20s. In addition, many people aren't able to process the career implications of going to a weaker law school, because they are so focused on starting right away. We've seen threads where people attacked those who criticized their decision to go to the very worst law schools in the country. For instance, the Rose character will very likely feel similar to OP in 4 or 5 years and blame the system and legal profession more generally.

In a way, the desire to start law school right away, job prospects be damned, is similar to a drug addict's need to get high. We don't only blame the addict for making a poor decision. We also blame the dealer. In this situation, the LS is the dealer. Obviously, the LS is not violating any law and there's no risk of killing somebody but law schools are the most profitable schools within most universities and as lawyers tend to be more prestige driven, virtually every law student would prefer to go to a better ranked school. Lower-tiered schools do profit off of an applicant's urgency to start LS at a specific time. This urgency often operates similarly to an addiction and schools profit off this addiction.

That being said, I don't blame schools for having bad bar passage rates. It's been firmly demonstrated that there is a heavy correlation between LSAT scores and bar passage rates, which is why the ABA threatens to remove accreditation from schools who admit too many sub-150 applicants. The ABA is not being elitist - they know that the odds are way below 50/50 that those law students will pass the bar. The one exception to this are test-takers with Aspergers who tend to struggle more on the LSAT as most of LR requires some ability to analyze situations from another person's subjective perspective, but the reality is that >170 scorers have a 95% pass rate while <150 scorers have a sub-50% pass rate.

Do T-14 schools really teach students anything useful for the bar exam that lower tiered schools don't? If anything the opposite is true as lower tiered schools actually teach to the bar. Most of those who fail the bar would fail the bar regardless of where they went to law school. The schools cannot really control their bar passage rates, but they can control whether they admit people they reasonably know probably will never pass the bar.

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betterdeadthanred

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Re: How not to law school gotta love NC

Post by betterdeadthanred » Wed May 08, 2019 12:07 pm

Campbell has basically "taught" the bar exam for decades. Each required course they teach has a corresponding section on the bar exam. Other schools in the state mandate the first year (maybe 1.5 years) and after that it is a free for all.

Campbell basically has 70% of their course of study as required content specifically to prep students for the NC Bar exam. This has been their methodology for a long time, the problem they are running into is a 40% reduction in applications from just a few years ago. I may amend this later, but I think they accepted close to 60% of all applicants last year.

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Re: How not to law school gotta love NC

Post by LSATWiz.com » Wed May 08, 2019 1:02 pm

betterdeadthanred wrote:Campbell has basically "taught" the bar exam for decades. Each required course they teach has a corresponding section on the bar exam. Other schools in the state mandate the first year (maybe 1.5 years) and after that it is a free for all.

Campbell basically has 70% of their course of study as required content specifically to prep students for the NC Bar exam. This has been their methodology for a long time, the problem they are running into is a 40% reduction in applications from just a few years ago. I may amend this later, but I think they accepted close to 60% of all applicants last year.
Right, the issue is they are admitting many people who are unlikely to pass the bar exam regardless of the education they receive. This board typically speaks about the bar exam as though it's in the student's control and jobs as though they are out of the student's control, but the statistics suggest that in most instances the LSAT predicts bar passage just like how it predicts job placement (i.e. it's very unlikely someone with a t-14 score fails the bar exam and somewhat likely someone with a score that limits them to Campbell will fail). There is nothing the lower tiered schools can really do beyond not admitting people they know will probably fail, but that would hurt their business.

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Re: How not to law school gotta love NC

Post by betterdeadthanred » Wed May 08, 2019 1:59 pm

True, but Campbell was able to post very very high bar passage numbers. Typically #1 in the state in the late 2000s and prior. The difference is the class size has exploded. Some classes from the early 2001 did not break 80-90 students...their current 1L class is 183 based on the 509 data. they are adopting for-profit tactics to fill seats.

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Re: How not to law school gotta love NC

Post by QContinuum » Fri May 10, 2019 12:07 am

betterdeadthanred wrote:True, but Campbell was able to post very very high bar passage numbers. Typically #1 in the state in the late 2000s and prior. The difference is the class size has exploded. Some classes from the early 2001 did not break 80-90 students...their current 1L class is 183 based on the 509 data. they are adopting for-profit tactics to fill seats.
That's the exact thing LSATWiz was trying to get at: Campbell (presumably) was able to double its class size by admitting more students at serious risk of failing the bar (as evidenced by their LSAT score). Not surprisingly, this led to Campbell taking a hit in its graduates' bar passage rate.

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Re: How not to law school gotta love NC

Post by BlackAndOrange84 » Fri May 10, 2019 7:24 pm

Given how easy it is to get some of these numbers, I'm not sure why folks are speculating about the qualifications of Campbell's entering cohorts rather than using Google.

Looking at Campbell's entering cohorts, it's not obvious that admissions profiles are driving their pass rates. They've fallen significantly from the early 2010s but so did everyone else's numbers, and their bar passage rates are not obviously following those rates (e.g., compare the entering 2014 1L class with that of 2010): https://www.lstreports.com/schools/campbell/bar/

What's also relevant is not Campbell's absolute passage rates, but it's rate compared to other schools in NC, particularly given its lower standards compared to WF, UNC, and of course Duke.

There's some context to the falling bar passage numbers in NC that I don't think has been offered here. Bar passage rates had been dropping for some time in NC, until the adoption of the MBE for the most recent exam. Charlotte really pulled the average down, but all the schools had seen their bar passage rates drop over the last 8 years or so. NC has always had a higher than average cut score for the MBE, and the decreasing strength of entering classes is well known, but some speculate that there was a concerted effort by the examiners to get Charlotte's accreditation yanked (with some collateral damage to other schools and their law students along the way). The numbers for schools besides Charlotte dropped more than the reduction in class quality would suggest.

That's not to deny Campbell's declining applicants and increasing class sizes, but it certainly plays a significant part in the story. I'd also note that focusing on first-time test takers, Campbell was beating UNC as recently as 2016 (and maybe more recently, I can't seem to find a comparison, though I saw somewhere that overall they beat UNC in 2017 by 1%).
Here are the state-wide numbers:

Exam Date Overall NC Bar Exam Passage Rate
July 2011 74 percent
July 2012 73 percent
July 2013 63 percent
July 2014 62 percent
July 2015 58 percent
July 2016 56.5 percent
July 2017 61.75 percent (first post-Charlotte July exam).
July 2018 72.5 percent

Feb. 2019 was the first UBE administration in NC and pass rates rose sharply, even though the February exam has a disproportionate number of retakers. UNC was close to 90%, Elon apparently went up by to 70% from around 30% previously.

Now, I'm not a Campbell guy, and their's no arguing that their employment numbers are bad. It's a place to go if you want to be a small firm or government lawyer in Raleigh and doesn't provide many opportunities outside of those. But long story short, for as long as I can remember, Campbell has punched significantly above its weight in terms of bar passage compared to UNC and WF, oftentimes having comparable rates and sometimes beating those schools by significant percentages. To my mind, Campbell has a real place in the NC market and should continue to do so. Now the CLS is done, the only other school that needs to go is Elon.

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Re: How not to law school gotta love NC

Post by QContinuum » Sat May 11, 2019 2:59 pm

BlackAndOrange84 wrote:What's also relevant is not Campbell's absolute passage rates, but it's rate compared to other schools in NC, particularly given its lower standards compared to WF, UNC, and of course Duke.
My thinking there is that very, very few Duke students take the NC bar. The vast majority will be off to BigLaw/fed gov in DC or NYC and will take the bar there - there's no BigLaw market of appreciable size in NC, and I just don't see most Duke students having any reason to take the NC bar. (It's kinda like Yale - I'm sure a vanishingly small percentage has taken the CT bar historically.) The very few that end up taking the NC bar are likely to be bottom-of-the-barrel students who were unable to land employment out-of-state.

Likewise, top WF/UNC students will be heading out of state and not taking the NC bar.

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Re: How not to law school gotta love NC

Post by BlackAndOrange84 » Sat May 11, 2019 7:06 pm

QContinuum wrote:
BlackAndOrange84 wrote:What's also relevant is not Campbell's absolute passage rates, but it's rate compared to other schools in NC, particularly given its lower standards compared to WF, UNC, and of course Duke.
My thinking there is that very, very few Duke students take the NC bar. The vast majority will be off to BigLaw/fed gov in DC or NYC and will take the bar there - there's no BigLaw market of appreciable size in NC, and I just don't see most Duke students having any reason to take the NC bar. (It's kinda like Yale - I'm sure a vanishingly small percentage has taken the CT bar historically.) The very few that end up taking the NC bar are likely to be bottom-of-the-barrel students who were unable to land employment out-of-state.

Likewise, top WF/UNC students will be heading out of state and not taking the NC bar.
You're right re the number of Duke students who take the NC bar: there's not a huge number who go to work in NC, about 10% of their class each year or ~20 students per LST. That said, given that even Duke's 25th percentiles are well above Campbell's 75th, it's not a meaningless comparison if Campbell's students are outperforming Duke students, even if the Duke number is likely to be "noisy" because of the relatively small sample size.

But it's a mistake to think the Duke students who stay in-state are "bottom of the barrel." There's a lot of suspicion of Duke students among local and regional firms in NC. Generally you have to be at least a decent if not a strong student AND have strong NC ties. My observation is that the Duke students who stay are strong to middling students who have strong NC ties. Being a Duke student with poor grades is not an easy sell in NC to any decent firm—you're a flight risk and why take that kid when you can get a top 5% or 10% student from UNC/Wake? Anecdotally, it's easier to get generic NYC biglaw than seats in the shops in Raleigh and Charlotte that hire a few summers every year, pay well, and have interesting work. There aren't a lot of seats with good firms in NC, and they're pretty damn competitive. This stuff has been discussed in other NC-related threads over the years. I don't think I've ever really heard of Duke students doing true shitlaw in NC, though it has probably happened. Anyway, given the relatively small % of Duke's class that is even from NC, it's more likely that the bottom-of-the-barrel students end up back in their home states than NC.

You're also mistaken re top WF/UNC students. Every year some go to NYC or DC. But many of those students had made a conscious choice to attend UNC/WF on substantial scholarships rather than attend better schools and take on more debt. They do so because they grew up in NC and want to stay there. And they end up staying there (with lower COA and debt, and attractive COL in NC, most don't need to make market-scale to service debt and get started on home ownership, etc.). Often times the students at the very top of the class end up in the top indigenous firms, places like Robinson Bradshaw in Charlotte or Smith Anderson in Raleigh (if you want an idea of how competitive these places can be, browse RB's lit associates). Anecdotally, many of the folks who head to NYC aren't even really top of the class but more like bottom of the top 10% or even in the 15-25% and who couldn't the best offices in NC to look at them. And for what it's worth, the ones that go to DC often take the NC bar because it's so easy to waive in to DC.

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Campbell Median LSAT, tuition, and previous graduating classes' FT-LT-Bar required employment percentage over 8 years

Post by betterdeadthanred » Mon May 13, 2019 12:41 pm

Campbell Median LSAT, tuition, and previous graduating classes' FT-LT-Bar required employment percentage over 8 years

2011 -- 156--$33,910--68% (no bar passage variable)
2012 -- 154--$35,340--71%
2013 -- 152--$37,060--68%
2014 -- 152--$38,645--56%
2015 -- 152--$39,475--60%
2016 -- 153--$39,300--50%
2017 -- 152--$39,900--50%
2018 -- 152--$41,130--63%
2019 -- N/A--$42,600--50%

Campbell's law school is reducing admissions expectations which is leading to poor employment outcomes. All the while raising tuition every single year (except for 2016, thanks for that $175 discount...I am sure student appreciated that 75% of a textbook). This tuition increase occurs in spite of data that does not support any increase in value of a Campbell legal education.

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Re: How not to law school gotta love NC

Post by HangingAround » Mon May 13, 2019 11:42 pm

BlackAndOrange84 wrote:
QContinuum wrote:
BlackAndOrange84 wrote:What's also relevant is not Campbell's absolute passage rates, but it's rate compared to other schools in NC, particularly given its lower standards compared to WF, UNC, and of course Duke.
My thinking there is that very, very few Duke students take the NC bar. The vast majority will be off to BigLaw/fed gov in DC or NYC and will take the bar there - there's no BigLaw market of appreciable size in NC, and I just don't see most Duke students having any reason to take the NC bar. (It's kinda like Yale - I'm sure a vanishingly small percentage has taken the CT bar historically.) The very few that end up taking the NC bar are likely to be bottom-of-the-barrel students who were unable to land employment out-of-state.

Likewise, top WF/UNC students will be heading out of state and not taking the NC bar.
You're right re the number of Duke students who take the NC bar: there's not a huge number who go to work in NC, about 10% of their class each year or ~20 students per LST. That said, given that even Duke's 25th percentiles are well above Campbell's 75th, it's not a meaningless comparison if Campbell's students are outperforming Duke students, even if the Duke number is likely to be "noisy" because of the relatively small sample size.

But it's a mistake to think the Duke students who stay in-state are "bottom of the barrel." There's a lot of suspicion of Duke students among local and regional firms in NC. Generally you have to be at least a decent if not a strong student AND have strong NC ties. My observation is that the Duke students who stay are strong to middling students who have strong NC ties. Being a Duke student with poor grades is not an easy sell in NC to any decent firm—you're a flight risk and why take that kid when you can get a top 5% or 10% student from UNC/Wake? Anecdotally, it's easier to get generic NYC biglaw than seats in the shops in Raleigh and Charlotte that hire a few summers every year, pay well, and have interesting work. There aren't a lot of seats with good firms in NC, and they're pretty damn competitive. This stuff has been discussed in other NC-related threads over the years. I don't think I've ever really heard of Duke students doing true shitlaw in NC, though it has probably happened. Anyway, given the relatively small % of Duke's class that is even from NC, it's more likely that the bottom-of-the-barrel students end up back in their home states than NC.

You're also mistaken re top WF/UNC students. Every year some go to NYC or DC. But many of those students had made a conscious choice to attend UNC/WF on substantial scholarships rather than attend better schools and take on more debt. They do so because they grew up in NC and want to stay there. And they end up staying there (with lower COA and debt, and attractive COL in NC, most don't need to make market-scale to service debt and get started on home ownership, etc.). Often times the students at the very top of the class end up in the top indigenous firms, places like Robinson Bradshaw in Charlotte or Smith Anderson in Raleigh (if you want an idea of how competitive these places can be, browse RB's lit associates). Anecdotally, many of the folks who head to NYC aren't even really top of the class but more like bottom of the top 10% or even in the 15-25% and who couldn't the best offices in NC to look at them. And for what it's worth, the ones that go to DC often take the NC bar because it's so easy to waive in to DC.
Agreed with this--this assumption re NC students seems to come up often, but is simply not true. NC is a nice place, and UNC has many students who are from NC and/or went to a NC school for undergrad. Raleigh and Charlotte are consistently ranked top places to live, start a career, etc. We aren't just chasing Vault rankings we are looking to make a life somewhere. Some leave, some stay.

In this year's graduating class, based on being in it and checking out the graduation program, it was a roughly even mix between those with high honors (top 10%) staying in NC (including Smith Anderson, RBH, Brooks Pierce) vs. leaving (moreso to K&S and Alston Bird, etc. in Atlanta than NY, but some NY and DC), as well as those with honors (top 33%) staying in NC vs. leaving (largely to NY and DC).

It was extremely hard to get a NC top firm interview without being from NC and/or going to NC undergrad. There are just too many options that check those boxes for too few seats at those firms and across too many solid law schools inside and outside of NC with students from here or who want to be here.

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Re: How not to law school gotta love NC

Post by HangingAround » Tue May 14, 2019 7:44 am

HangingAround wrote:
BlackAndOrange84 wrote:
QContinuum wrote:
BlackAndOrange84 wrote:What's also relevant is not Campbell's absolute passage rates, but it's rate compared to other schools in NC, particularly given its lower standards compared to WF, UNC, and of course Duke.
My thinking there is that very, very few Duke students take the NC bar. The vast majority will be off to BigLaw/fed gov in DC or NYC and will take the bar there - there's no BigLaw market of appreciable size in NC, and I just don't see most Duke students having any reason to take the NC bar. (It's kinda like Yale - I'm sure a vanishingly small percentage has taken the CT bar historically.) The very few that end up taking the NC bar are likely to be bottom-of-the-barrel students who were unable to land employment out-of-state.

Likewise, top WF/UNC students will be heading out of state and not taking the NC bar.
You're right re the number of Duke students who take the NC bar: there's not a huge number who go to work in NC, about 10% of their class each year or ~20 students per LST. That said, given that even Duke's 25th percentiles are well above Campbell's 75th, it's not a meaningless comparison if Campbell's students are outperforming Duke students, even if the Duke number is likely to be "noisy" because of the relatively small sample size.

But it's a mistake to think the Duke students who stay in-state are "bottom of the barrel." There's a lot of suspicion of Duke students among local and regional firms in NC. Generally you have to be at least a decent if not a strong student AND have strong NC ties. My observation is that the Duke students who stay are strong to middling students who have strong NC ties. Being a Duke student with poor grades is not an easy sell in NC to any decent firm—you're a flight risk and why take that kid when you can get a top 5% or 10% student from UNC/Wake? Anecdotally, it's easier to get generic NYC biglaw than seats in the shops in Raleigh and Charlotte that hire a few summers every year, pay well, and have interesting work. There aren't a lot of seats with good firms in NC, and they're pretty damn competitive. This stuff has been discussed in other NC-related threads over the years. I don't think I've ever really heard of Duke students doing true shitlaw in NC, though it has probably happened. Anyway, given the relatively small % of Duke's class that is even from NC, it's more likely that the bottom-of-the-barrel students end up back in their home states than NC.

You're also mistaken re top WF/UNC students. Every year some go to NYC or DC. But many of those students had made a conscious choice to attend UNC/WF on substantial scholarships rather than attend better schools and take on more debt. They do so because they grew up in NC and want to stay there. And they end up staying there (with lower COA and debt, and attractive COL in NC, most don't need to make market-scale to service debt and get started on home ownership, etc.). Often times the students at the very top of the class end up in the top indigenous firms, places like Robinson Bradshaw in Charlotte or Smith Anderson in Raleigh (if you want an idea of how competitive these places can be, browse RB's lit associates). Anecdotally, many of the folks who head to NYC aren't even really top of the class but more like bottom of the top 10% or even in the 15-25% and who couldn't the best offices in NC to look at them. And for what it's worth, the ones that go to DC often take the NC bar because it's so easy to waive in to DC.
Agreed with this--this assumption re NC students seems to come up often, but is simply not true. NC is a nice place, and UNC has many students who are from NC and/or went to a NC school for undergrad. Raleigh and Charlotte are consistently ranked top places to live, start a career, etc. We aren't just chasing Vault rankings we are looking to make a life somewhere. Some leave, some stay.

In this year's graduating class, based on being in it and checking out the graduation program, it was a roughly even mix between those with high honors (top 10%) staying in NC (including Smith Anderson, RBH, Brooks Pierce) vs. leaving (moreso to K&S and Alston Bird, etc. in Atlanta than NY, but some NY and DC), as well as those with honors (top 33%) staying in NC vs. leaving (largely to NY and DC).

It was extremely hard to get a NC top firm interview without being from NC and/or going to NC undergrad. There are just too many options that check those boxes for too few seats at those firms and across too many solid law schools inside and outside of NC with students from here or who want to be here.
Also I forgot to note, again agreeing with the above poster, 2 of the 4 from this graduating with the school's highest scholarship are going to NC firms (Smith Anderson and Moore Van Allen), with 1 of the other 2 doing Army JAG and the other doing public interest.

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Re: How not to law school gotta love NC

Post by HangingAround » Tue May 14, 2019 3:39 pm

TLSDookie wrote:Campbell still has a good reputation among Raleigh attorneys, many of whom went there themselves. If you're looking for a job around Raleigh you should be OK as long as you don't have your heart set on a very prestigious midlaw/biglaw firm, e.g. are willing to do litigation/crim defense in a small office. If you had your heart set on Smith Anderson/Wyrick Robbins etc. anyone here could've advised you against going to a T4/5 school at the bottom of the totem pole in a market saturated by 5 law schools during your application process.

.
I didn't have time to post this earlier and sadly can't edit my posts, but for anyone reading this post considering Campbell I would highly caution you from thinking that you are "OK" at Campbell if you are good with a Raleigh litigation/crim defense (or government as mentioned later) as either your first choice or your backup plan. I find it very hard to believe that any substantial portion of the 49.6% of Campbell grads not in long-term, bar-passage required jobs would not happily take one of those jobs. I imagine the 15% or so of the class unemployed at UNC would happily take one of those jobs--Campbell does not have the reputation of UNC in Raleigh (granted, some lawyers may prefer Campbell grads because of school ties or whatever, but on balance, it isn't even close). Unfortunately, even in a place like Raleigh, there are only so many small firms that need a new associate in any given year--how often do you hear about a small firm summer associate program that consistently hires even one summer? I don't think I ever have. It's also a competitive market for legal jobs in general given people want to live in Raleigh and the number of law schools still in NC.

91.3% of the employed portion of the Campbell class of 2018 reported being in NC, and that means Raleigh or smaller areas of the state (I really doubt there is a significant Campbell inroad to Charlotte). If the idea is that half the Campbell class wants to leave NC and is foregoing those Raleigh jobs in favor of an unemployed job search, I don't buy it. Sure, people might not do their research and realize Campbell's placement is almost strictly in NC. But at the end of the law school process, when they have hopefully (certainly?) realized that limitation, surely they would take these Raleigh jobs, even if temporarily.

It is absolutely true that Campbell has outcomes in those things, and since 26.4% are heading into firms of 2-10 (with another 1.6% solo), it is a substantial part of the outcomes. It does not, however, seem right to think of it as something that "should" happen. It is also absolutely true that Campbell has a solid reputation in the state generally, with plenty of talented judges and lawyers coming from it, as well as historically a strong bar passage rate. I also believe it has a place here.

What I don't believe is you can go to Campbell and feel confident that whatever happens you are good for a small firm/crim defense job in Raleigh. I'd say, based on the employment numbers, that you're looking at a coin flip chance at best, and I bet that a decent chunk of the employed portion (who, absent ties to another area, would probably love to be in Raleigh) are in smaller areas in the state.

betterdeadthanred

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Re: How not to law school gotta love NC

Post by betterdeadthanred » Wed May 15, 2019 8:43 am

"coin flip"....a 42k per year coin flip That is the only thing that Campbell is at this point.

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