Law School Discussion

Unfortunately, demingh is over-trolling here. The fact is that more NYU students do go into public interest work. If you break it down by law firms/clerkships/public interest/government/other, you get:

Most recent Columbia graduating class: 79/14/4/2/1

Most recent NYU graduating class: 76/13/6/4/1

Why the disparity? Both schools have very similar public interest programs and loan repayment assistance programs. I think the best explanation is that the schools attract slightly different student bodies. Slightly more NYU students want to go into public interest work directly out of law school, in part because the school does have a reputation among the sort of people who post on this forum as being more friendly to public interest work. This self-selection bias results in the difference between the two school's placements statistics. I'm not sure if this difference extends over a full career. It would be more informative to have data about what each school's alumni are doing ten years out of law school, but unfortunately these data don't exist.

Another plausible explanation is that some of the NYU students who go into public interest jobs do so as a fall-back because they don't get the most desirable firm jobs, and that fewer Columbia students have this problem. I don't think this is the case, but it would fit the data equally well.

thanks for the info, southside.  i was also wondering if you could talk about Columbia's clinics?  most of the other schools I've been accepted to really harp on their clinical opportunities.  i don't hear as much of this from Columbia, but i would assume they have great clinics as well.  true?

all of the CLS students i've seen post here have been very helpful and positive, which is a good sign.  however, i still wonder if there is any truth to the stereotype of CLS students as cutthroat and/or concerned only with making massive amounts of money in biglaw. 

dispel my doubts?

Columbia does have very good clinics. Here's the link:
http://www.law.columbia.edu/focusareas/clinics

Two particular notes: First, Columbia's new gender and sexuality clinic is the first of its kind, and still the only one in the country, which is very cool. Also, the human rights clinic is awesome. I have a few friends on it, and they say great things about it. As a 1L, I'm not yet too familiar with all the clinics, but they seem to be very good.

Also, keep in mind that there are a number of other ways to get involved in public interest work as a 1L. I have been involved in the Courtroom Advocates Project, which represents victims of domestic violence, and it's a great experience to actually work through the courtroom process with a client as a 1L. (NYU is also involved with CAP). Columbia also has a tenant's rights group, a criminal justice action organization, a youth justice group, and a human rights group. I've known people who've done projects with each of these as 1Ls, and the experience is uniformly positive. I did some projects for the human rights group, doing actual legal research that was needed by human rights organizations for casework they are doing. Bottom line: you will have more opportunities to do real public interest/pro bono work at Columbia than you can possibly take advantage of.

It has not been my experience at all that Columbia students are cutthroat or interested only in corporate work. (You can be cutthroat and interested in public interest as well, by the way.) I have been consistently amazed by the diversity of interests here, and the general quality and experience of the students.

Oooh...can't wait until someone says something about this - the quality of the students at one equally ranked school with maybe one LSAT point difference is higher?

Discuss...

I made it clear in my earlier post that I was speaking about my own perceptions from visiting both schools. The NYU students that I know are great, but I was a little bit more impressed by the people I met at Columbia. That perception has only been strengthened sine I came here. I think anyone considering both schools should definitely visit both of them and form your own judgements.

so, just got into Columbia, and I expect my choice will come down to CLS and NYU.  I know there is a whole thread comparing these two schools, but for me the decision is all but made (Columbia) except for one thing- I think it is very likely that I will want to do public service or government type work after graduating.  i absolutely do not want to do biglaw and i don't particularly want to live in NYC. 

so i guess i have some questions about Columbia that don't usually get asked. 

-does NYU's focus on public interest/public service give it a significant advantage over Columbia for public service career prospects? 

-i know that NYU's LRAP is reputed to be better, but I'm wondering how much better.   

-how well does Columbia place outside of NYC and off the East Coast.  How about the Pacific Northwest?  The Midwest?

basically i'm concerned about CLS's reputation as being married to Wall Street, and appreciate any thoughts people have about what it would be like doing public service from there.

I'll take an admittedly biased crack at these questions.

First, it's safe to say that public service career prospects are similar at the two schools. You have excellent options in the public sector coming out of both. One area where Columbia has a slight advantage is if you are interested in working overseas. This is mostly because Columbia University overall is better known internationally. If you are set on doing public interest work, the issue at both schools is not so much your likelihood of getting hired as it is the environment of the two schools and what works best for you. You'll get a good sense of this when you actually visit the two schools.

Here's my take: there are more students who are interested in public interest work at NYU, so to that extent there is more of a culture of public interest work at NYU. On the other hand, the overall atmosphere at Columbia is more serious academically, and the quality of the students is higher. As someone who is myself interested in doing human rights work in my career, I valued the better academic climate at Columbia, as well as the much greater chance to take advantage of the uniformly strong other departments of the university, as being more important components of my legal education.

Second, if you want to crunch the LRAP numbers, here are the two policies.

http://www.law.columbia.edu/current_student/financial_aid/LRAP?#rtregion:main

http://www.law.nyu.edu/depts/financialaid/lrap/moreinfo.html

I remember trying to forecast a few different potential financial scenarios last year, and basically coming to the conclusion that for the most part, there isn't much difference. Maybe a few thousand dollars over the course of your career, depending on your precise salary at any given time. I would not make my decision based on that.

Third, Columbia places very well everywhere in the country. By just about every metric, it has a better placement record for desirable jobs than NYU.

Quote from: Steve.jd on January 22, 2007, 05:26:20 PM

Quote from: stjobs on January 22, 2007, 05:20:11 PM

How much $$ from NU? Definitely Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, or Columbia... did you apply to Boalt? They apparently match offers from t14. Try that with HSCC.

HYS do not have merit aid and won't match merit offers - I had success with CLS though

They do match need offers, and they might be persuaded by merit if it was presented as meeting need.  That said, the matching probably doesn't go much lower than CCN with them.

I will post here what I posted on XO, since it's relevant:

Quote

Date: January 16th, 2007 4:08 PM
Author: bassdesire

I think people are really overlooking the fact that you are likely to have loans even with $$$. The $$$, if its a full scholarship, only applies to tuition. If it's less, then you may have to cover the rest in loans. If you have loans for your living expenses and some portion of your tuition, then you're going to be paying them back when you graduate anyway. The relevant question isn't "how much is school X giving you?" but, "Given your aid package at HLS, how much more debt will you accrue over three years than at school X?"

If you don't have much money, the difference isn't likely to be too significant (especially the difference between Chicago with $$ and comparable COL). Would you be willing to have, for example 20K less in loans to go to Chicago? I wouldn't, primarily because I would be able to relax at HLS. Even at the bottom of the class, I will have tremendous opportunities. That's worth 20K.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=564758&forum_id=2#7431043)

I would quibble with the Chicago/Harvard comparison there. Students at the bottom of the class at Chicago aren't too worried about finding great jobs either. That ability to relax and focus on what interests you without worrying too much about your grades extends at least to the top 6 schools. The interesting question is how far it extends below that. My general sense from talking to a fair amount of people is that it completely depends on what your career goals are.

If you would be perfectly happy working at a big Chicago firm, then Northwestern is as good for you as any school in the country, and just about everyone at Northwestern has very good local options. But it doesn't have quite the national reputation of the schools that are a bit higher up on the pyramid. If you are going to want to work in the Bay Area or New York, or you are motivated to compete for the top clerkships, then you should go to Harvard or Chicago over Northwestern.

Also, I'm surprised that people are talking up the Harvard need-based packages on this thread. Wait until you get yours, but mine was basically nothing, despite the fact that I and my parents don't have any money and other schools with higher rankings made more generous need-based offers. Friends of mine have similar experiences to mine with Harvard, so it must be fairly random.

Final point - I totally agree that you need to compare the overall debt picture at every school you get into. Don't just concentrate on the "sticker price" of the scholarship they offer you. I would assume that everyone does that, but if it needed to be said, then I'm glad someone said it.

Anyway, citing Wachtell alone is pretty useless.  Go down a couple ranks in the V10 and they're recruiting from 30+ schools.

I agree. I was using that as an extreme case, and even they interview at 8 schools. I haven't seen another firm go below 15 to 20, and most are a lot more than that.