Top Law Schools

Greetings TLS'ers having reached the end of my cycle I now am put in a dilemma between BU Law and UT law.

Please disregard price of tuition as a factor in your decision, location preference should be disregarded as well.

The only factor i would like you to consider is which school will put me in a better position to make more money in the future.
Also consider that BU has fallen 2 rankings and is now 22 and UT has remained a steady 15...


Thanks for your input

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Iseethelight wrote: Please disregard price of tuition as a factor in your decision, location preference should be disregarded as well.

0L DISCLAIMER
Considering they are both out of the T14, I think it is unwise to disregard either of these factors.

Edit: OP you obviously already know this by the way you phrased your question, but I just posted anyway to remind you that only considering the money may result in a very misleading analysis of your expected utility from attending each school.

174 wrote:

Iseethelight wrote: Please disregard price of tuition as a factor in your decision, location preference should be disregarded as well.

0L DISCLAIMER
Considering they are both out of the T14, I think it is unwise to disregard either of these factors.

+1.

If you want to live and work in Boston (which I hear is an over-saturated market; you may want to look into this), then obviously BU. If you want to work in Texas, then UT is the answer. UT might have decent mobility nationwide, BU maybe more so in the Northeast... but really those schools feed primarily into Boston and Austin.

I noticed some changes in the specialty rankings at schools I am interested in. DePaul, while losing ground overall, held pretty steady in the IP and Health law rankings. C-K plummeted from I think 4th to 23rd in IP, and Chapman, while moving up from T3 to 93rd, dropped out of the top tax programs. I am confused.

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I have to make this same decision today. I applied late so there are higher ranked schools that I haven't heard from yet BU and UT are highest ranked schools that I've gotten into already.

Honestly, I don't know how to make the decision. I've lived in both Austin and in Boston and both cities are very nice places to live.

But what really matters to me is that I have lots of choices when I go on the job market in three years. Someone said that BU is better if you want to work in New England and Texas is better if you want to work in TX. I've heard that TX is slightly better nationally but it'd be really nice to have some hard data to verify these sorts of claims.

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... assessment

and

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 1&t=108528

UT has a reputation that puts it in the same league as the lower T14, then there is a slight drop off to Vandy/UCLA, and then a large chasm before you get to everything ranked after

Wow. That's really helpful. I guess I know where I'm putting my deposit down today. Thanks.

This is a very difficult question to answer with any consideration given to where you want to work in the long run. With the exception of the Northeast, I'd say UT.

My real consideration here is which degree would put me in a better position to get into biglaw. I also has a hunch that future rankings will be more friendly towards UT than the downwards trending BU.

I would rather live in Texas if that means a +XX% chance that the degree will help me get into a 250 biglaw firm.

I'm making a big decision between BC and TX but that's just because I liked it better than BU. The impression I get is that they are both regional schools with some national prestige but TX has a much bigger region in terms of area, population, and legal markets that it doesn't really have anything else to compete with. I might end up taking BC just because I like Boston better but I threw first deposits on both of them and I wrestle with it daily. I am curious about how this poll turns out.

Iseethelight wrote:My real consideration here is which degree would put me in a better position to get into biglaw. I also has a hunch that future rankings will be more friendly towards UT than the downwards trending BU.

I would rather live in Texas if that means a +XX% chance that the degree will help me get into a 250 biglaw firm.

one thing to remember is that nlj250 =/= biglaw

there are some market paying firms that aren't in the nlj250 and some firms within the nlj250 that aren't market paying

i don't have the list handy, but there are several Texas / southern firms in the former category, while for the northeast, the nlj250 encompasses them all. So the % reported for UT is probably higher if you're looking for a market paying gig. Not as good as it was in boom times, but UT has always been and will probably always be > BU

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Disregard location and tuition in deciding between two relatively regional schools?

wtf..?

Umm, I think UT has better big law placement, but you probably could have looked that up...

UT's career services focuses almost wholly on getting their students into big law. Also, as far as markets, Texas has remained the most stable over the past few years of the recession and actually continues to grow. You should go UT.

disregarding tuition and location, I say flip a coin.

f0bolous wrote:http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... assessment

and

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 1&t=108528

UT has a reputation that puts it in the same league as the lower T14, then there is a slight drop off to Vandy/UCLA, and then a large chasm before you get to everything ranked after

As an increasingly committed Vandy troll, I think this is incorrect. By every measure I've seen (except for a small difference in Art III clerkships), Vandy outperforms UT.

About BU and UT, they both seem about a wash as far as big law placement is concerned. See latest numbers: http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNL ... hbxlogin=1

I think you'll have a better chance at getting into V100 firms from UT due to the an expanding legal market in Texas. But according to Leiter's latest ranking, BU performs better.http://www.leiterrankings.com/jobs/2008job_biglaw.shtml

I think the general consensus is that UT has the better faculty. See: http://www.leiterrankings.com/new/2010_ ... pact.shtml However, BU is famous for student's access to faculty.

Also according to Leiter's rankings, if you're trying to get into Academia, it's basically even, perhaps with UT performing slightly better. http://www.leiterrankings.com/jobs/2009 ... hing.shtml

UT has a better student quality, with 'student quality' being defined by admission numbers.

In the end, I agree with some of the above posters; this really should come down to location preference.

Rawlsian wrote: As an increasingly committed Vandy troll, I think this is incorrect. By every measure I've seen (except for a small difference in Art III clerkships), Vandy outperforms UT.

About BU and UT, they both seem about a wash as far as big law placement is concerned. See latest numbers: http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNL ... hbxlogin=1

I think you'll have a better chance at getting into V100 firms from UT due to the an expanding legal market in Texas. But according to Leiter's latest ranking, BU performs better.http://www.leiterrankings.com/jobs/2008job_biglaw.shtml

I think the general consensus is that UT has the better faculty. See: http://www.leiterrankings.com/new/2010_ ... pact.shtml However, BU is famous for student's access to faculty.

Also according to Leiter's rankings, if you're trying to get into Academia, it's basically even, perhaps with UT performing slightly better. http://www.leiterrankings.com/jobs/2009 ... hing.shtml

UT has a better student quality, with 'student quality' being defined by admission numbers.

In the end, I agree with some of the above posters; this really should come down to location preference.

The Vandy vs UT comparison is based solely off USNWR reputation scores, of which UT has always had higher scores than Vandy and some T14s. I do agree, though, that Vandy's smaller class size has been advantageous in recent years in helping secure employment.

As for the NLJ comparison, that's been addressed already. The NLJ250 is extremely NYC-centric, and even then, there is a slight advantage for UT when compared with BU. Take that for what it's worth. And Leiter's latest rankings only looks at the top 24 firms within the V100, again, almost entirely NYC-based. Although this is a few years old, it still gives insight as to the placement ability of the schools:
http://lawfirmaddict.blogspot.com/2006/ ... ement.html

GULC 34.4%
UT 28.7%
Vandy 19%
BU 11.6%

So while not everything is answered by these statistics, it does lend some credibility that UT has the placement ability that at least rivals GULC/Vandy and definitely surpasses BU.

f0bolous wrote: The Vandy vs UT comparison is based solely off USNWR reputation scores,

Ah, I see. Thanks for the heads up on Leiter's rankings; I've misquoted that twice today.

So from the information I have gathered thus far it seems that at least some people are under the impression that a degree from UT Austin top 5% of the class doesn't preclude you from working on the East coast for BIGlaw.

It seems some numbers even suggest that UT places better with BIGlaw on the east coast than BU, still according to the poll 20% of TLSERS seem to think a BU degree is more valuable/prestigious and more likely to get you a spot in a high paying big firm.

I have a strong preference for the northeast, and I was accepted to BU with half-tuition. However, I will be attending Texas in the fall, because their clerkship placements are amazing, and their starting salaries for those who don't go into clerkships are great as well. W/ a federal circuit court clerkship, you are looking at a BigLaw job + clerkship bonus, and great mobility. Even without one, you are looking at good employment prospects nationally, and fantastic ones in the state of Texas (a growing economic powerhouse). Unless you are on Law Review at BU, you probably won't make BigLaw. Take Texas.[/quote]

Is this true? I was under the impression from the NLJ250 stats that 1/3 got BigLaw...

What percent of the student body is on law review?

Iseethelight wrote:So from the information I have gathered thus far it seems that at least some people are under the impression that a degree from UT Austin top 5% of the class doesn't preclude you from working on the East coast for BIGlaw.

It seems some numbers even suggest that UT places better with BIGlaw on the east coast than BU, still according to the poll 20% of TLSERS seem to think a BU degree is more valuable/prestigious and more likely to get you a spot in a high paying big firm.

i'm starting to wonder if this is a flame post

top 5% at UT is portable anywhere and can get you almost anything. save for the Boston / New England market, UT will likely either place just as well or exceed BU in placement ability. even the coveted nlj250, which already heavily favors BU, slightly tips in UT's favor, which indicates that placement ability on the east coast are comparable. i know you mentioned that cost isn't an issue, but if you want to be in NYC, save some money and go with BU. Don't waste your parents' money.

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Not a flame post I have to decide between the two schools and am trying to gather info about prospects coming out from either one of them. Not only that but there are others who have expressed their interest in this thread/poll.

I also wanted to get TLS opinion on the prospects of transferring to a higher ranked law school after the first year. Is it possible? and is it safe to assume holding rank constant that I would have an easier time transferring from UT than from BU?

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