Who Pwns D.C.

[marcusbarnes30]

In your eyes who really owns D.C. in terms of firm placement. UVa is ahead of Gtown in the rankings, but does the fact that it is not in DC offset Gtowns lower ranking and larger class size? Additionialy, with UPenn being a haircut and a shave away from DC all things being equal if a JD only sought firm placement in DC which school would he/she be better off with? Feel free to make sweeping generalization and/or comment in absolutes.

[thedudebro]

lawfirmaddict2007.blogspot.com

[marcusbarnes30]

bump

[BikePilot]

I don't know really - the T3 certainly do really well. A friend who graduated from GULC was of the opinion that GULC students in the top quarter or so placed really well, but that many outside the top quarter or so had difficulties finding jobs they liked at graduation. My impression is that all else equal UVA>GULC for DC placement and in IP law GW would rival both of them.

[vap]

And UVa's rep is better.

Only among USNWR subscribers.

And readers, which includes most attorneys.

  Very doubtful that most attorneys check the school rankings regularly.

Even the attorney recruiters I've known would not be able to list the T14 schools.  If you ask a DC attorney recruiter to name some schools in the top 10, they'll likely include Georgetown.  They're not glued to US News like people on these boards.  They look at schools in groups.

[big - fat - box]

http://www.autoadmit.com/studies/ciolli/ciolli.final.pdf

Check out this placement study. I think UVA does a little better than GULC despite it's location.

If you want to know more about each school's placement, call their career offices and request their employment books. The books will show you the OCI grade guidelines for different firms. If the grade guidelines are lower at UVA, you have your answer.

DC is a pretty competitive market from what I've heard. If what I've heard is true, and you're interested in the top DC firms, you might be in competition with students from Y, H, and S.

[big - fat - box]

Any law firm partner glancing at this list will bring to it his/her own informal ranking system, and certain old standbys always appear on such lists: schools such as Harvard, Yale, the University of Chicago, Stanford, Columbia, Michigan, and Virginia. These seven law schools may move one or two places up or down, but they are always ranked in the top ten. Other schools, such as NYU, Duke, Georgetown, Northwestern, and Pennsylvania are, for whatever reason, seldom accorded the same respect. This may be the point of the U.S. News & World Report rankings—to show skeptics that when certain objective criteria are applied—such as LSAT scores, college cumulative GPA, and other criteria—other schools deserve a fresh look.

From a law firm recruiter guide:

http://www.bcgsearch.com/crc/book2005/painstaking.html

[big - fat - box]

Boalt, yeah, probably.

An anecdote:

A name parter at a large regional firm in my area (who went to law school in the 70s), who went to Michigan Law, and an Ivy for Ugrad and Grad school said they he badly wanted to go to Boalt, but they wouldn't give him enough grant money, so he chose Michigan instead.

[Kirk Lazarus]

everyone in the legal profession pretty much agrees that UVA>Georgetown. Of course, Georgetown students think otherwise and are helped by the massive prestige it gains because of the UG basketball team.

[Vapid Unicorn]

An anecdote:

A name parter at a large regional firm in my area (who went to law school in the 70s), who went to Michigan Law, and an Ivy for Ugrad and Grad school said they he badly wanted to go to Boalt, but they wouldn't give him enough grant money, so he chose Michigan instead.

Another anecdote:

When I was applying to law schools last fall, a fairly young professor at my school (who got his J.D. from NYU) was so impressed by my Michigan acceptance that he was confused that I would still be considering Stanford (I was still waiting on them at that point). 

No point to that story really, I just like sharing anecdotes.