It is people like these that give law school a bad name

[Cicero]

Yeah, it does sound like CA may be very different from FL in terms of OCI and employment opportunities. I don't know anyone from FCSL that got a good associate position from 1L OCI (or any position for that matter), or anyone that has participated in 2L OCI at FCSL. The 2L OCI at FCSL consists of very infrequent e-mail saying a specific employer will be collecting resumes, rather than any sort of bidding on Symplicity. Of the few employers that do accept resumes from FCSL, it sounds like the employers are only willing to meet with the top 5 or 10% there. For me the switch to UF has already opened up a lot of doors that were closed to me while I was at FCSL, and it's worth paying a little extra to go there.

I absolutely agree that there is no guarantee that I will have a job when I graduate. UF is a T1, but it's certainly not YHS (I put it in the correct order for Morten). Employment after graduation is definitely something I worry about.

I also think you're right about taking the money over going to a T2/3 (at least not a low T2). I was not going to leave FCSL and give up law review & the big scholarship for anything less than the top 60, and even then I was hoping to break into the top 50. I have known people who gave up some scholarship money and a semester of credits to go to a much more expensive school that was like #90, and to me that didn't make any sense.

[bigs5068]

In regards to the top 5% 10% etc I would imagine that would be the case for a lot of schools. I would imagine if you finished in the bottom 25% of a tier 1 school there will not be many OCI opportunities for you.  I know people that graduated near the bottom at Hastings and have still not found work 3-4 years removed from Graduation and a pretty huge factor contributing to that is they still have yet to pass the bar. Florida is a lot different, because UF and Florida State offer in-state tuition, which is awesome. California does not have a school that has that and if it did that is where I would be regardless of rank. FCSL seems to be more overpriced than most schools and based on that transferring to a higher ranked school that has in-state tuition is the only rational choice. The losing credits part is particularly stupid there are people that have done that so they are adding to their debt a few extra thousand dollars to go to a slightly higher ranked school that will not open that many more doors than their previous school. 

[Morten Lund]

It is cool to hear about a successful GGU alum by the way.

I can't imagine that she would mind:  Ellen Bastier.

I have nothing but respect for her, and her online resume is quite understated and modest, much like she is personally.  She is one of the absolute top wind lawyers in the US.  For about a decade she probably worked on more than half of ALL the wind energy deals in the country.  She is very impressive in all regards, and does that while being a genuinely nice person.

[Morten Lund]

I absolutely agree that there is no guarantee that I will have a job when I graduate. UF is a T1, but it's certainly not YHS (I put it in the correct order for Morten). Employment after graduation is definitely something I worry about.

Why, thank you.      Gotta keep those HLS guys from getting too uppity.

As to employment, you are of course right to worry in this market.  If it is any comfort, however, whenever I work with firms in Florida (which is reasonably often), their websites consistently show a stable full of UF law graduates.  I don't how the "official" numbers pan out, but certainly from a locally visible placement perspective UF does pretty well.