Top Law Schools

What are my chances of going for top JD/MBA programs? gunning for consulting? Given my background, is it realistic to muse about this direction?

Numerical Background:
LSAT 168 (January)
LSAC GPA 3.91 (majored in Political Science at a less well known school)
GMAT - taking this June
WE - 2 years work as a paralegal at a small law firm.

My story:
1) Throughout undergrad/post undergrad, I had my eyes set on becoming a litigator (assistant district attorney, litigator at law firms). Thus, carried out numerous governmental internships related to this.
2) As I am hitting my 2nd year mark at the law firm, I decided to change my direction more towards consulting. This decision is based on numerous research, cold-calling, and networking with folks from the consulting network. Deep soul searching with my bro, who's an I-Banker.
3) You may ask why not drop JD and go for MBA: I am still interested in the law and its application/versatility. Also, I am aware of the fact that I come from a pre-law route (paralegal, legal related internships), which hardly qualifies for strong WE for business programs.
4) Why consulting? - (numerous reasons...)

Do you have two years of work experience now? Like, if you apply this coming fall for programs you'll matriculate with three years of work experience? Or will you have two years at matriculation?

I think you should wait until you have three years of work experience before you matriculate. Apply with at least two years under your belt.

And I cannot stress to you how important your GMAT score will be...especially if you don't have five years of work experience. Are you on track to crush the GMAT? Like, 720+?

If I were you, I would look at three year programs first and foremost...especially those that are in the Top 10 of both the Law School and MBA rankings. Your excellent GPA might just carry you into Columbia or Penn even though your LSAT is only at/above their 25th percentiles. Also, CBS and Wharton are just about as good as it gets for MBA programs (coveted M7 schools with the Ivy League stamp). And you'll be done a year sooner! IMO you'll need at least a 730+ GMAT to with a solid quant score to have a shot at these.

I would also think really hard about what you actually want to do. If you want MBB consulting, you really need to climb as high as you can in the top 10 B-Schools. If you don't care as much about MBB, and would be OK working as a consultant for the Big 4/Booz Allen/Accenture/etc. ...(and they still make $140k base!)...pretty much all of the schools listed below will get you there. I would follow the money in that case. JD/MBAs financed on debt will put you $300k+ in the hole. With a 720+ GMAT, you'll probably get some sweet cash at Cornell/Johnson, Michigan/Ross, (something like 50%+ off law school tuition and $20k/year off MBA tuition) and possibly full rides in the Vanderbilt/Owen and below range.

**I think you should remember, T14 means everything for Law School folks who want Big Law, but as far as B-Schools go, you can do fine from anywhere in the T30, and even get MBB from anywhere in the T20. So I wouldn't eliminate any of the schools off the bottom of the list. And this goes double for "regional" schools like UCLA and USC if you want to live in SOCAL, or UT if you want to live in Texas. Other than MBB and some Financial Services firms...MBAs don't have to quite be the prestige whores law school students must be.**

So anyway, you've probably already Excel-ed this all out, but here's a list for you anyway:
-Written in order of Law School Ranking
-Numbered by MBA Ranking
-Programs in bold have 3-year joint degrees
-Underlined are the programs I would focus on with your numbers (and assuming a 720+ LSAT)

13.* Yale
2. Harvard
1. Stanford
8. Columbia
4. Chicago
11.* NYU
3. Penn
13.* Duke
7. Berkeley
10. UVA
11.* UMich
6. Northwestern -- TLS folks bash on NU as far as Law School goes, but Kellogg is no joke.
16. Cornell
24. Georgetown
17. Texas
15. UCLA
27. Vanderbilt
19. WashU
21. Emory
25. USC

*tied MBA rankings

Full disclosure: I looked long and hard at doing a JD/MBA but ended up just going to B-School. I still make my way to TLS every so often when I want to avoid reading a case. I am now a second-year at one of the schools listed above and I wake up every morning, get on my knees, and thank the almighty I am not a law school student and don't have two more years of this to go. Though I know a few JD/MBAs that love what they're doing. They're crazy though. And so are you! (You said you didn't want to hear from detractors but I fit my $0.02 in anyway...)

Well, was that enough text? (And was enough of it in parentheses?)

Why the * for NYU and UMich?

UMich and NYU got *s because they're tied at 11.

Edit: Fixed.

teleste wrote:UMich and NYU got *s because they're tied at 11.

Edit: Fixed.

Got it, thanks!

Useful summary for someone also considering a JD/MBA.

teleste wrote:Do you have two years of work experience now? Like, if you apply this coming fall for programs you'll matriculate with three years of work experience? Or will you have two years at matriculation?

I think you should wait until you have three years of work experience before you matriculate. Apply with at least two years under your belt.

And I cannot stress to you how important your GMAT score will be...especially if you don't have five years of work experience. Are you on track to crush the GMAT? Like, 720+?

If I were you, I would look at three year programs first and foremost...especially those that are in the Top 10 of both the Law School and MBA rankings. Your excellent GPA might just carry you into Columbia or Penn even though your LSAT is only at/above their 25th percentiles. Also, CBS and Wharton are just about as good as it gets for MBA programs (coveted M7 schools with the Ivy League stamp). And you'll be done a year sooner! IMO you'll need at least a 730+ GMAT to with a solid quant score to have a shot at these.

I would also think really hard about what you actually want to do. If you want MBB consulting, you really need to climb as high as you can in the top 10 B-Schools. If you don't care as much about MBB, and would be OK working as a consultant for the Big 4/Booz Allen/Accenture/etc. ...(and they still make $140k base!)...pretty much all of the schools listed below will get you there. I would follow the money in that case. JD/MBAs financed on debt will put you $300k+ in the hole. With a 720+ GMAT, you'll probably get some sweet cash at Cornell/Johnson, Michigan/Ross, (something like 50%+ off law school tuition and $20k/year off MBA tuition) and possibly full rides in the Vanderbilt/Owen and below range.

**I think you should remember, T14 means everything for Law School folks who want Big Law, but as far as B-Schools go, you can do fine from anywhere in the T30, and even get MBB from anywhere in the T20. So I wouldn't eliminate any of the schools off the bottom of the list. And this goes double for "regional" schools like UCLA and USC if you want to live in SOCAL, or UT if you want to live in Texas. Other than MBB and some Financial Services firms...MBAs don't have to quite be the prestige whores law school students must be.**

So anyway, you've probably already Excel-ed this all out, but here's a list for you anyway:
-Written in order of Law School Ranking
-Numbered by MBA Ranking
-Programs in bold have 3-year joint degrees
-Underlined are the programs I would focus on with your numbers (and assuming a 720+ LSAT)

13.* Yale
2. Harvard
1. Stanford
8. Columbia
4. Chicago
11.* NYU
3. Penn
13.* Duke
7. Berkeley
10. UVA
11.* UMich
6. Northwestern -- TLS folks bash on NU as far as Law School goes, but Kellogg is no joke.
16. Cornell
24. Georgetown
17. Texas
15. UCLA
27. Vanderbilt
19. WashU
21. Emory
25. USC

*tied MBA rankings

Full disclosure: I looked long and hard at doing a JD/MBA but ended up just going to B-School. I still make my way to TLS every so often when I want to avoid reading a case. I am now a second-year at one of the schools listed above and I wake up every morning, get on my knees, and thank the almighty I am not a law school student and don't have two more years of this to go. Though I know a few JD/MBAs that love what they're doing. They're crazy though. And so are you! (You said you didn't want to hear from detractors but I fit my $0.02 in anyway...)

Well, was that enough text? (And was enough of it in parentheses?)

I have a question- they don't release your GMAT exam so you can't review the questions you miss and it seems the test prep companies like to charge extraordinarily high prices. Any thoughts on why the price of their service hasn't been driven down given they provide a service that really just provides information and where there are supposedly no barriers to entry?

teleste wrote:
If I were you, I would look at three year programs first and foremost...especially those that are in the Top 10 of both the Law School and MBA rankings. Your excellent GPA might just carry you into Columbia or Penn even though your LSAT is only at/above their 25th percentiles. Also, CBS and Wharton are just about as good as it gets for MBA programs (coveted M7 schools with the Ivy League stamp). And you'll be done a year sooner! IMO you'll need at least a 730+ GMAT to with a solid quant score to have a shot at these.

**I think you should remember, T14 means everything for Law School folks who want Big Law, but as far as B-Schools go, you can do fine from anywhere in the T30, and even get MBB from anywhere in the T20. So I wouldn't eliminate any of the schools off the bottom of the list. And this goes double for "regional" schools like UCLA and USC if you want to live in SOCAL, or UT if you want to live in Texas. Other than MBB and some Financial Services firms...MBAs don't have to quite be the prestige whores law school students must be.**

M7 MBA holder and MBB alum here.

1. Telese, thank you so much for taking so much time to write this extensively about the world of the MBA and JD/MBA. This definitely took some time to put together.

2. I think you've put CBS and Wharton a little too close together. Within the M7, it is HSW...CKM..C and CKM really are sorta jumbled usually driven by how quant you are. And, forgive me, my MBA has a little dust on it, so I don't know if folks are commonly calling Chicago Booth or just Chicago these days.

3. Is it really true you can get MBB from anywhere in the T20?? How good do your Econ and stats grades have to be to get MBB from outside the M7? Though I agree in the general sense that your life is hardly over if you don't get MBB in the same way your life could be in some peril if you strike out on BigLaw, I still think the best advice is that if you want MBB, you should absolutely go to the best M7 you can get into.

4. OP, I see absolutely no reason for you to waste time and money on law school. A JD will not help you be a better consultant even if you end up specializing in consulting for law firms (if such a thing exists). The reason for this is that the knife's edge of the consultant's work is a general analytical approach and acumen that can be applied broadly across many industries. As a Consultant at McK, you will work on airlines, liquor companies, CPG companies, commercial chicken feed companies, media companies, school districts, and so on... Your value is in your analytical skills, not in your background knowledge. Partners do tend to specialize, but that is because building a book of business is relationship driven. That's a long way to say, drop the JD. Instead, you can take your best shot at b-school right now (does your current job require you to confront and solve business problems, take initiative, and work with teams? If not, you need more work experience.) or get that sort of job and wait 2-3 more years to apply.

teleste wrote:6. Northwestern -- TLS folks bash on NU as far as Law School goes, but Kellogg is no joke.

Who bashes NU law? I'm pretty sure they're no joke either, lol. Also is U.S. News the leading authority over forbes and business week in regards to b-school rankings?

Also, I was wondering if anyone could give an idea of how useful an MBA would be for someone who wants to be a litigator. I've been toying with the JD/MBA idea, but don't see any utility the MBA brings besides extra credentials.

fliptrip wrote:M7 MBA holder and MBB alum here.

Hey fliptrip, any thoughts on a person going from law school to b-school instead of b-school to law school? Like if somehow the MBA would be a stronger asset for them later in their career, maybe even after their law career, would this be difficult to do?

Thanks peeps!

luckenmeister wrote:

teleste wrote:6. Northwestern -- TLS folks bash on NU as far as Law School goes, but Kellogg is no joke.

Who bashes NU law? I'm pretty sure they're no joke either, lol. Also is U.S. News the leading authority over forbes and business week in regards to b-school rankings?

Also, I was wondering if anyone could give an idea of how useful an MBA would be for someone who wants to be a litigator. I've been toying with the JD/MBA idea, but don't see any utility the MBA brings besides extra credentials.

fliptrip wrote:M7 MBA holder and MBB alum here.

Hey fliptrip, any thoughts on a person going from law school to b-school instead of b-school to law school? Like if somehow the MBA would be a stronger asset for them later in their career, maybe even after their law career, would this be difficult to do?

Thanks peeps!

There's no leading authority in business school rankings. Thankfully, b-school world operates a bit more rationally. I see it like this...there are seven elite schools, some set of additional schools around them that are high quality and will give you a very solid education in business fundamentals, and then there is a massive chunk of pretty low quality online and for-profit schools that will not be worth the paper their degrees are printed on. There are 633 accredited b-schools in the US, so the number of schools in the latter two categories is quite a bit larger than the number of schools which fall into the various tiers we know so well from law school.

In terms of going JD to MBA, despite rumors to the contrary, one does actually learn things in b-school, so it can be helpful to anyone who wants to learn how to run a business or enterprise more effectively. Or perhaps you run your own law firm and don't like not knowing accounting, which is the language of business. If you are talking about someone who is in law school now and has a change of heart and would rather work 100-hour weeks flying around the world helping massive corporations make even more money working for MBB, they don't have to get the MBA. MBB recruits at top law schools and are happy to take a JD--if you can do math, the analytical skills required to do well in law school are perfect for consulting.

fliptrip wrote:I think you've put CBS and Wharton a little too close together. Within the M7, it is HSW...CKM..C and CKM really are sorta jumbled usually driven by how quant you are.

I grouped Penn and Columbia together because they both offer three year degrees Which is where I would start looking at JD/MBAs. I said, "If I were you, I would look at three year programs first and foremost...especially those that are in the Top 10 of both the Law School and MBA rankings. Your excellent GPA might just carry you into Columbia or Penn even though your LSAT is only at/above their 25th percentiles. Also, CBS and Wharton are just about as good as it gets for MBA programs (coveted M7 schools with the Ivy League stamp)."

In terms of B-School, there's no question that Wharton is a few steps ahead of CBS. If you look a little more holistically about the JD/MBA programs at both schools though, the fact that Columbia Law is better than Penn Law makes me think that for a JD/MBA would be a bit of a trade off (though excellent from either institution). A student just has to decide to they value the higher ranked law school (Columbia) or the higher ranked MBA (Penn).

fliptrip wrote:And, forgive me, my MBA has a little dust on it, so I don't know if folks are commonly calling Chicago Booth or just Chicago these days.

Same difference. You're forgiven. On a TLS forum I called it "Chicago" because I figured the readers on this website might not know all of the B-School names. In my list I did not use any B-School names. I tried to only use the B-School names when I paired them with their parent universities (like Cornell/Johnson, Michigan/Ross, Northwestern/Kellogg, etc). Were you a Boothie? (Just wondering since you didn't worry too much about Stern, Wharton, Fuqua, Haas, Darden, Ross Kellogg, McDonough, Anderson, Owen, Olin, Goizueta, or Marshall not being called out by name... )

fliptrip wrote:Is it really true you can get MBB from anywhere in the T20?? How good do your Econ and stats grades have to be to get MBB from outside the M7? Though I agree in the general sense that your life is hardly over if you don't get MBB in the same way your life could be in some peril if you strike out on BigLaw, I still think the best advice is that if you want MBB, you should absolutely go to the best M7 you can get into.

Yes it is true. It is not easy, but it is still very much a possibility from the Top 20/Top 25. A P&Q article spells out the numbers here: http://poetsandquants.com/2014/01/17/wh ... onsulting/ I apologize if I made it sound *easy, I just meant it is possible. Also, I assume that breaking into Bain or BCG from a school ranked 10-20 is probably even easier than getting McKinsey. In any case, all three recruit from Top 20 schools. There's no doubt about that. Also, IMO, taking a big scholarship at a place like Virginia/Michigan/Duke/Texas would likely be a better move than paying sticker at an M7. If it is MBB or bust, then maybe take on the debt, but that's not the advice I would give to OP or anyone thinking about B-School.

fliptrip wrote:OP, I see absolutely no reason for you to waste time and money on law school.

If MBB is the main goal, then I agree with this 100%, just go for the MBA.

luckenmeister wrote:

teleste wrote:6. Northwestern -- TLS folks bash on NU as far as Law School goes, but Kellogg is no joke.

Who bashes NU law? I'm pretty sure they're no joke either, lol. Also is U.S. News the leading authority over forbes and business week in regards to b-school rankings?

Let me take another crack at that. Here goes:

"Sometimes I see disparaging remarks on TLS about the 'bottom' four law schools in the T14 (Michigan, Northwestern, Cornell, and particularly Georgetown) when they are compared to the T10 law schools. Northwestern's JD might be a notch below UVA's JD, but Northwestern's MBA (Kellogg) is definitely better than UVA's (Darden)."

So the implication being that a JD/MBA from Northwestern would still be awesome, particularly if OP really wants MBB consulting. They just shouldn't get too hung up on the hard-and-fast law school rankings. (Both because it isn't as important for MBAs AND it isn't as clearly defined for MBA programs.)

Anyhow. Apologies for not being more clear.

Edit: In this thread http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 5&t=259999 people are calling Northwestern overrated. This kind of thing is what I was referring to.

teleste wrote:
Same difference. You're forgiven. On a TLS forum I called it "Chicago" because I figured the readers on this website might not know all of the B-School names. In my list I did not use any B-School names. I tried to only use the B-School names when I paired them with their parent universities (like Cornell/Johnson, Michigan/Ross, Northwestern/Kellogg, etc). Were you a Boothie? (Just wondering since you didn't worry too much about Stern, Wharton, Fuqua, Haas, Darden, Ross Kellogg, McDonough, Anderson, Owen, Olin, Goizueta, or Marshall not being called out by name... )

teleste, friend, I am an insufferable jackass and snob, so I only bothered to remember the names of the b-schools in the M7, so you see, Wharton, Kellogg, Sloan, and Booth get their respect, and the others...uhh, what others? lol. I am not a Boothie at all, but as you know, a Boothie always gets a ton of respect because those folks gotta work for their paper. It's not tea and conversations with the profs that happen at some other very well known b-schools.

fliptrip wrote:It's not tea and conversations with the profs that happen at some other very well known b-schools.

Maybe the others are the real winners in all of this though. After all, two years sipping teas--leads to a salary of $100Gs!