Hamline or St. Thomas (MN)?

[NMUZ]

I agree that it seems like Hamline is at the bottom of the Minnesota market.  I am impressed with how well Mitchell does especially with being in the fourth tier.  I would also like to point out that I am planning to play club hockey and St. Thomas won the tournament between the four Minnesota schools.  That means that it is better than Minnesota then right?

[miller]

I have never seen such trolling for a fourth tier school. I am sure everyone can see JD33 is a student/alum at william mitchell.  There is no way anyone would ever take a school in an ENTIRE tier below another school.  I remember people who used to say that people should take Fordham over NYU because of regional reputation.  It was obvious these people were students at the school.

[OK Law]

Don't go to Hamline. The other posters here are right, you will likely have more opportunities coming out of St. Thomas.  However, I would also mention that getting any job in the Minneapolis legal market right now is really tough. I know that if you start up law school this fall, you won't be graduating until the Spring of 2012, but you will still be fighting for summer jobs over the next few years and if the economy is not improving by then (which it very well may not be), it is going to be extremely difficult out there, especially at the lower ranked schools.

[SplorkyFish]

I have never seen such trolling for a fourth tier school. I am sure everyone can see JD33 is a student/alum at william mitchell.  There is no way anyone would ever take a school in an ENTIRE tier below another school.  I remember people who used to say that people should take Fordham over NYU because of regional reputation.  It was obvious these people were students at the school.

what exactly is it about the US News' methodology that makes you think they're not utter crap?  If you're trying to figure out where to go, it makes a ton more sense to look at employment data than some random BS that the editors of a random magazine threw together.  Given such idiotic methodology, you would expect some "T3" schools to be worse than some "T4" schools.  This should really come as no surprise.

William Mitchell is thought of more highly than Hamline in the Twin Cities legal community.  That's just a fact.  You could learn that by asking people in the area, as I have.  Or, you could learn that by looking at employment statistics and noticing that legal employers (lawyers, judges, etc) tend to prefer WM grads from Hamline grads by a significant margin. 

This isn't a bunch of WM grads saying WM places better than Minnesota in the Twin Cities.  This is a bunch of posters who know of one instance where the US News is clearly wrong.  Hamline is at the bottom of the pack in the Twin Cities legal market.  UST and WM will battle it out in the next few years for #2.  I'd put my money on UST winning this battle because of their money and apparent willing to spend it, but neither school is likely to fall as far as Hamline has (my father remembers when Hamline was considered a great school in many areas.  how times change.)

[MSP1]

# of U.S. Supreme Court Justices
William Mitchell (1)
St. Thomas (0)

# of U.S. Courts of Appeal Judges
William Mitchell (1)
St. Thomas (0)

# of U.S. District Court Judges
William Mitchell (2)
St. Thomas (0)

# of state Supreme Court Justices
William Mitchell (14)
St. Thomas (0)

# of state Courts of Appeal Judges
William Mitchell (11)
St. Thomas (0)

# of state district court judges
William Mitchell (hundreds)
St. Thomas (0)

# of U.S. Senators
William Mitchell (3)
St. Thomas (0)

# of U.S. Congressmen/women
William Mitchell (5)
St. Thomas (0)

# of state governors
William Mitchell (3)
St. Thomas (0)

# of state attorneys general
William Mitchell (2)
St. Thomas (0)

# of faculty w/ J.D.’s from T-14 schools
William Mitchell (15)
St. Thomas (12)

I would respectfully submit that until these numbers equalize, arguments that UST is a better institution than William Mitchell are extremely premature.

[MSP1]

And what's more, Hamline can boast a sitting U.S. District Court judge, Donovan Frank.  Just food for thought.

[NMUZ]

First of all, of course WM is going to beat UST in all of those categories since UST's law school graduated its first class, since the great depression, five years ago.  Second, I have no desire to be a judge or work in government so to me all of those stats mean nothing.  And lastly, UST is still hiring 5 or 6 more faculty members and I bet that they tie if not beat WM after their hiring is done.

[JurisdDoctor33]

I just looked through NALP http://www.nalpdirectory.com/dledir_search_advanced.asp and didn't see anything shocking. It seemed to depend a lot on the firm, some had a lot WM, some Hamline, - UST being new, it's not surprising that there were fewer. UMN had a ton, the only thing that might be counted as shocking was the number of out-of-region schools represented. 

Just because NALP says that these firms recruit at St. Thomas, doesn't mean that they hire from there.  You need to actually look at the websites, the class of 2008 is already employed, and if they were working at these firms, they would be listed, and some are, but very very few...

I did, I went to the firm websites and I looked at where the attorneys went. And guess what? Nothing shocking. Notice how I make reference to 'out-of-region schools' represented in the law offices in Minnesota.

This is a breakdown of several of the largest MPLS firms and the # of attorneys currently working there:

Dorsey = 35 WM 7 UST 6 Hamline
Faegre = 36 WM 6 UST 15 Hamline
Robins = 26 WM 6 UST 9 Hamline
Lindquist =  11WM 0 UST 2 Hamline
Oppenheimer = 29 WM 1 UST 2 Hamline
Leonard = 36 WM 2 UST 12 Hamline
Fredrikson = 32 WM 1 UST 8 Hamline
Zelle Hoffman = 8 WM 1 UST 2 Hamline
Maslon = 15 WM 2 UST 2 Hamline

Totals = 228 WM 58 Hamline 26 UST.

Despite what you may think, I find these #s shocking.  The fact that (T4)Mitchell grads outnumber (T3)Hamline grads 4-1 and (T3)UST grads 8-1 should say something to you.  This is only a small sampling of firms, but it does include 7 out of the 10 largest in the state.  These are the numbers that you need to pay attention to, not whether one school is a tier 3 or tier 4.  This is a case where the US NEWS rankings are clearly off base. As great as UST is, or may be someday, not all firms agree, including Fredrikson (third largest in the state) Leonard (fourth largest) Lindquist (fifth largest) and Oppenheimer (ninth largest) who combined currently employ 4 UST graduates as compared to 108 WM graduates. In any case, best of luck to all in your upcoming decisions.

[SplorkyFish]

Now we are getting deep into trolling territory. MSP1 and JurisDoctor33 combine for 10 posts on this site, and all 10 of them 10 either explicitly state or imply that WM beats Hamline or UST hands down.  MSP has one post that claims that Hamline can boast sitting judge Donovan Frank as an alum, but Donovan Frank went to WM so I'll just supply that meaning.

It'll be interesting to see whether UST or WM comes out on top in the next 20-30 years.  Why not just settle on that? Alternatively, you could do any number of things to actually advance the argument for your school.  You could say informative things about the value of an alumni network or an established brand name, or expressed doubts that UST will be able to keep it up.   

Simply reciting from the long list of places that WM has more alumni at than UST, not taking into account the fact that UST is new to the game, I hope, isn't that convincing to OLs.

[JurisdDoctor33]

Simply reciting from the long list of places that WM has more alumni at than UST, not taking into account the fact that UST is new to the game, I hope, isn't that convincing to OLs.

The only reason that I jumped into this thread, was that I found it amazing that yet another 0L was conflicted between Hamline and UST, and Mitchell seemingly received no consideration.  I find it simply amazing that the US NEWS rankings can have such a profound impact.  The numbers that I provided suggest that at 4 of the 10 largest firms in Mpls, the hiring partners are not looking at UST grads.  If you finished at the top of your class after 1L, wouldn't you find it comforting to know that ALL 10 of the largest firms would be interested in you?  I realize that these are just numbers, and there are many intangible factors. 

With respect to alumni networks, I think these numbers speak volumes.  The fact that four of the ten largest firms have only hired 4 UST grads COMBINED in the past 5 years, compared with over 30 from Mitchell strongly implies that the WM hiring partners at these firms are very loyal.

Furthermore, it does not matter what your school's reputation is 20-30 years down the road, your student loans are typically only deferred for 6 mos. 

I'm not trolling for Mitchell, I don't care what anyone thinks about them, their numbers speak for themselves.   The intention of my posts is not to bash Hamline or UST, I truly think that these are both good schools.  I am just trying to raise some awareness with respect to those 0L's who think that their decision should only be between Hamline and UST because they are tier 3 schools.  These students deserve to know the true nature of the MSP legal market, and the impact that their decision to attend any law school will have on their future employment prospects.  Ultimately students should attend whatever school they are most comfortable at.  I however would hate to make it through law school only to find out that some tier 4 school down the road was placing their graduates at all of the downtown firms at much higher percentages than my tier 3 school. For what it is worth, the most recent career placement statistics from these three schools has Mitchell's average starting salary at 62K and Hamline and UST at 50K.