LoL. I'm not defensive. I have plenty of friends that attend lower tiered schools. However, students should be armed with the reality of their job prospects out of them if they aren't top of the class.
Sure, some will succeed, but the majority will have an uphill battle getting to where they want to. If you just want a law degree for yourself, fine go to a lower ranked school. However, if you want to practice at a firm or go to one of the more selective public interest programs, you are going to have to be top of your class.
That isn't an opinion. That is reality. Sure, there are exceptions as Matthies has stated, but that doesn't change the fact that there are too many people in law school, the economy sucks, and lower tiered schools are going to be in a tougher position to find jobs.
I think the thing is, as is often the case, people make opinions on this board about things they have never done or experienced themselves. I just don’t see this doom and gloom around me at my school, everyone I know has a job. I won’t talk about other schools, because well I don’t know what they are like, but it seems other people are experts in the job situation from schools they have never been to in markets they never applied in. I think that’s the general gist of what Tasha is saying.
Times are tough no doubt, and if the extent of your job search is OCI and mass mailing, well expect to be disappointed as those paths are becoming more limited as the market tightens, worse the lower down the rank pool you go but that’s not the case at every school for every student everywhere ranked 30 or below. Some folks are just better at finding opportunities for themselves, others need it handed to them by the school. If you’re the later, and many law students are, then you should go to the best school you can get into or don’t go, otherwise if left to your own devices you will likely be unemployed or underemployed.
I just don’t buy into the its my schools fault mentality. I never went to law school with the idea that it was my schools job to find me a job. It was the schools job to teach me the law, finding a job was something I had to take some personal responsibility in. I started looking on my own as soon as I got here. Do most students do that, no. But that’s not the schools fault. It is undeniably a fact that lower on the ranking you go the less opportunities you will have for school provided jobs (like OCI) but that is not preventing you from going out and looking on your own. I have yet to get any job from my school, I found them all my own. The problem as I see it is not so much with
schools ranking as much with
students expectations of what their school is supposed to provide them. If you think it’s the schools job to find you a job than you should go to a school where that has the highest probability of that happening or don't go. If your school is not normally the conduit for finding employment for the magority of its graduates than you should take proactive steps to make that happen for yourself not wiat for the school to do it for you. its simply a diffrent stratgey, but one that too many students don't get, they think what works at Yale should work down here, then get disspointed when it does not turn out that way.
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