There is nothing wrong with Tier 3 law schools

[strongmace]

Actually, there is one type of student in a tier 3 (beyond the top 5-10%) who have a good shot in biglaw, and those are the ones who have one of the "hot" technical degrees and are going into IP law. They still have to do fairly well, but the big firms dip down a good bit farther for those types of people. Less than 1% of law students fall into this category though, at any school.

yay engineering!

[queencruella]

Actually, there is one type of student in a tier 3 (beyond the top 5-10%) who have a good shot in biglaw, and those are the ones who have one of the "hot" technical degrees and are going into IP law. They still have to do fairly well, but the big firms dip down a good bit farther for those types of people. Less than 1% of law students fall into this category though, at any school.

yay engineering!

Lot of those jobs actually ask for both undergrad AND LS transcripts though. So isn't a cakewalk by any means.

[strongmace]

Actually, there is one type of student in a tier 3 (beyond the top 5-10%) who have a good shot in biglaw, and those are the ones who have one of the "hot" technical degrees and are going into IP law. They still have to do fairly well, but the big firms dip down a good bit farther for those types of people. Less than 1% of law students fall into this category though, at any school.

yay engineering!

Lot of those jobs actually ask for both undergrad AND LS transcripts though. So isn't a cakewalk by any means.

yay for my gpa being pretty solid

[Tulane1L]

Methinks the importance of rankings is blown out of proportions on these boards.

Obviously there is a difference in job opportunities between Harvard and East Boise Law School.  But surely very few people are chooing between Yale and Southern University....If you get into a top school, great, milk it, you will have lots of amazing oportunities.

If you don't, or you have to go to a lower ranked school for family or money reasons or whatever, great, go, you will still have some great job oportunities.  Yes, there are people who regret going to a lower ranked law school.  There are people that went to top schools that regret going to law school at all.  And there are people that do borrow $150k to go to tier 4 schools, and they handle it and end up just fine, just like there are people that wish they had made other choices.

So stop all the hate between the top schools and "bottom" schools - be happy that everyone is getting to pursue the career/degree that they want, whether it be from Cooley or Stanford.  There is no reason to try to make someone feel bad about the school that they are attending, and moreover, there is no reason to "open someone's eyes" to the debt or lack of job opportunites that they might have.  Especially when you haven't been to a single day of law school yet, and seen that it is *not* exactly like 0Ls on a message board would have you believe.

[nealric]

I agree that there is nothing wrong with a t2/3/4 school.

However, I think those designations represent a huge "buyer beware" stamp.
There are some t3/t4 that are actually good, well respected local schools (many of the smaller state schools). There are some that are a terrible idea for almost anybody (cooley, ave maria, etc.).

I think mostly you have to approach them soberly if anything and understand the possibility that the debt could be crippling (which is a possibility from any school frankly)

[«ě»]

Especially when you haven't been to a single day of law school yet, and seen that it is *not* exactly like 0Ls on a message board would have you believe.

My friends at a middling Tier 1 school have basically confirmed that what is said on message boards is by and large true. 

The ones with median GPAs have nothing even 2L summer, ones in top 20% have local biglaw lined up.

Your posts are so dumb I can feel my braincells getting suicidal.

[Thistle]

Especially when you haven't been to a single day of law school yet, and seen that it is *not* exactly like 0Ls on a message board would have you believe.

My friends at a middling Tier 1 school have basically confirmed that what is said on message boards is by and large true. 

The ones with median GPAs have nothing even 2L summer, ones in top 20% have local biglaw lined up.

t3.  state school.  top 50%.  summer clerkship as a 1L.

[Swibbles]

fyi: there's something wrong with every school.

[«ě»]

If you can't get a summer job at the median of a T1 school, you are the problem, not the school.

[Tulane1L]

Especially when you haven't been to a single day of law school yet, and seen that it is *not* exactly like 0Ls on a message board would have you believe.

My friends at a middling Tier 1 school have basically confirmed that what is said on message boards is by and large true. 

The ones with median GPAs have nothing even 2L summer, ones in top 20% have local biglaw lined up.

t3.  state school.  top 50%.  summer clerkship as a 1L.

Yeah...there are plenty of 1Ls at my school that are not in the top of the class, or even in the top half, that have good summer gigs lined up.  I am not in the top 10%, or even close, and got plenty of interviews, and am doing exactly what I want to do this summer.

Grades are important.  So is personality.  And so is who you know.  Really, at any given school, there will be top students that don't get the jobs they want, and bottom students who do.  And it will seem like a mystery as to why if you think that *all* that matters is school ranking and grades.