Yeah I mean I think under normal economic circumstances this is true, but almost all my friends from Suffolk are living with their parents right now, and not many have jobs, and even fewer have lawyer jobs. I'd say about half that have law jobs are clerking for firms in the same position they had during law school. I'd say in the last month or so I've heard of more of them starting to get jobs, especially after finding out they passed the bar, but they're still settling for basically the first thing that comes along. The ones that do have law jobs and were hired before bar results are making a lot less than the average graduating salary from Suffolk (ie supposed to be mid 70s, actually mid 50s with 55-60 hr weeks), and they're ok with their firms or whatever but they pretty much settled for the first offer that came along. They're not necessarily doing what they want to be doing.

I decided to take a risk and leave, although I knew that I wanted to leave Boston before I started law school. In retrospect I made a mistake by choosing Suffolk due to no one knowing of it outside of Boston, since I knew I wanted to go south of NJ. I loved my time there and my friends, and I think I got a great education there, but the network outside Boston sucks and career services are practically non existent, especially outside Boston.

There are a bunch of reasons I chose Baltimore, but the big one was that my 2L summer I interned for the Public Defender's office here. When I was looking for 2L stuff, I was looking for anything south of NJ, and I saw something that was in Baltimore. Some of my best friends from HS are here and in DC, so all that lined up well too. I had a great experience with the PD's office, but unfortunately the state and the PD's office is kind of a mess right now, so they're not hiring (even if I had passed the bar). It's just going to be a lot of waiting, but my hope is that I get some kind of preferential treatment, having worked in the PD's office already. I also wouldn't mind being in the prosecutor's office. Also, the PD's office starts at ~$53k (this is confirmed, they gave me a salary schedule during my interview), whereas MA starts at $37k, and 53k is a lot more when you consider the huge difference in cost of living. 10 year loan repayment is also huge for me, and makes 53k turn into the mid 80s (if a firm paid me, ie before taxes).

To answer your question, yes I definitely think my job situation is hurt by the Suffolk name not being known around here. Generally I think Suffolk does well in Boston as around 20% of the lawyers in that town went to Suffolk (most people who go to Suffolk grew up in the area so they don't leave). The good news is that the second biggest concentration of Suffolk grads is in the DC area, so that was part of my choice too.

Oh yeah, and Baltimore's proximity to AC was like reason #8 or so on the list. I was always much better at live play than online, especially at the Borgata versus Foxwoods (and generally hate foxwoods).

this visual made me lol for some reason

Finally got all my grades after what seems like forever.
Torts A, Contracts A-, Legal Writing A-, Civ Pro B for 3.6 GPA.
I'm at a 80-90 ranked (U.S. News) school, but I'm still pretty satisfied.

Nice job man. Assuming your school curves to a 2.7 or 3.0, that should be in or just on the border of top 10 %.

Pretty informative post. Thanks for your answer. I wish you luck... as soon as a lot of the hiring freezes thaw, you might start to see some movement?

yeah I should amend that post, I thought about it and I'd say most of my law school friends have jobs of some kind. Of the ones that do have jobs, about 1/3 have jobs in retail/waitressing etc and other non law fields that don't pay well. Another 1/3 have decent jobs but in non law areas (like working for the federal government in a non law capacity), and the other 1/3 is probably about half people with doc review/paralegal/law clerk jobs and 1/3 have legit attorney jobs. As far as I know exactly one of my friends (I'm thinking of around 20 people total here) has a job she is basically 100% satisfied with, works for the federal government, is getting a salary way above what they normally start you at because it's a specialized position, and she likes the work. She had a clerkship with this agency as a 2L that she just happened to fall into (ie applied to a million things, this one took her without pay), and they happened to call her during our 3L year being like we need you to come back as a full on attorney. Ie it was basically all dumb luck.

In general it's kind of hard to put a finger on a lot of this stuff because it's very gossipy/word of mouth/nebulous, but that's my feeling right now. These numbers were all different back in mid December.

I'm of course not counting those people who got deferred by big firms and such.

how do most schools announce CALIs? indvidual contact or just send the full CALI list out to all students?

I was individually contacted on the one that I got, but I can't speak for most schools.

I wish I got a grade for Legal Writing, I sucked up so much in that class and all I got was a lousy pass.

I did as little as possible in LRW and got a low pass. However, on my transcript it will always just say S for satisfactory, same as everyone else. It's hard to get motivated to not just settle for another low pass this semester.

was doing my usual legal blog reading in class this morning:

http://lawshucks.com/2010/01/poker-p...ar-biglaw-foe/

lol

I might have read about this in NVG or somewhere else, there was a huge official thread on it somewhere that was started by Mason I think. It's kinda funny to see all the comments in that thread that are like "yeah, domainsquatting happens, whatever, he had it first" etc ie people not understanding that if you have a valid trademark you can claim a domain name from someone else. They changed the rules on all that maybe 7 years ago? Dutch also commented in the thread.

I took internet law my last semester, and read a fair amount through that thread. At first I was like Dutch is up to no good and being dumb. Then I saw some of his comments and the counterclaim and was like he actually has some good points and might actually be right. Especially the laches/dillution/notice arguments. It was hard to find ways that he was wrong. What I'm most impressed about is that Dutch actually knows all this stuff and still retains any law skills, having not done any law stuff for probably at least a decade. I mean a lot of the internet law related stuff is very new, especially with respect to the trademark protection stuff. Maybe he went and read a practice guide or something, but even those are very new and still being written.

What the blog post fails to mention is that Dutch doesn't even own the domain anymore, he let it lapse because he claims it didn't give him any money, but they sued him anyway. It will be interesting to see how all that plays out, but I actually think Dutch has a very good chance of winning.

God damn I suck so hard at these writing classes. I get awesome marks on writing/analysis but suck at ordering, formatting, page numbering and everything else I'll never need to do.

So stupid.

Ummm....I have some not so good news for you.

I forget if I posted this already. Our legal memos were max. 16 pages double spaced, I wrote 8 single spaced pages and double spaced it at the last minute, unfortunately I only had 12.5 pages, because it actually started in 1.1 space or something. I figured this out ten minutes before it was due after spending all day cutting, shortening details and condensing to get in under the max... I sped-wrote another paragraph for the Facts section and submitted it with 2 minutes spare.

Got a C. Thursday I glanced at my profs comments.

Why did you include this detail? Umm, to provide evidence?

Did you even proofread this? Well, this paragraph was kinda thrown in...

secretary + paralegal assistant = i don't know why the hell i'd need to spend my time ****ing around with microsoft word to get the margins and page numbers correct. not to mention all motions are built around the forms we had in the office.

I do not understand the point of your post. Are you actually complaining because you got a C when you turned in sloppy work at the last minute?

I've been rethinking my initial decision to not do Chicago ED transfer. It's binding, remember.

Considerations:

-Even if I do stay top 5%, my odds at HYS/Columbia are still not good at all.
-If you do get in Chicago ED, you can still take a drop to top 10-15 maybe even 20 % of the class and they won't revoke. However, that would not be good enough to get me in RD.
-I think I'd be deferred anyways, and applying ED is going to give me a boost in RD. I don't think top 5 % again would be an auto-in at RD. If I drop to 10 %, I might still have a shot since I applied ED.
-Economics and specifically public choice theory/austrianism (aka Chicago School of Economics) are my passion. I incorporate economic theory into everything, whether it be politics or my property exam. Obviously Chicago is the foremost economics school in the world and econ is heavily incorporated into their program.
-Chicago is a new city in a different part of the country. I've been in the mid-atlantic region my whole life. A change wouldn't be terrible.
-I want to go into politics, working on the conservative side of things. I don't want to be an elected politician, but I want to work for conservative and economics oriented think tanks, firms, lobbyists, whatever. I don't want to do this out the gate, but it's my ultimate goal. I can't think of a better school to get into conservative economic work, can you?

Possible remaining cons:

-Taking myself out of any shot for columbia+
-If I'm accepted my grades massively drop, I'm SOL and won't have GULC EA in my pocket to fall back on (and I assume if I get accepted to Chicago ED, I'd be accepted to GULC EA).
-Leaving my now established group of friends here. I'm social and make friends easily, but it's still a concern. I know no one in or around Chicago. I've never even been there.
-My family is important to me, and this will put me out of easy range to visit with them. This would not be a concern if I attended GULC, UVA or even Columbia or NYU.
-I might change my mind and decide not to transfer. However, I can't really see a set of circumstances where I turn down a T6 to stay. Maybe if they gave me a full ride and/or I fell in love with someone here or something haha. Both are unlikely.
-Debt. Obviously UC will put me in much more debt than I'd be at at my T2. At least 50k, probably a lot more when you consider living expenses. Maybe 60-70k at most. (obviously the counter-argument to this is it will be easier to find a firm job)

Thoughts?

I'm not complaining, just reminiscing. I though my logic was fine. She didn't agree.

Wait, you can transfer from a crap school ranked somewhere in the 80s to a top 6 after a single semester of good grades? WTF?

That makes no sense. People at T80 schools obviously didnt have the grades or LSAT to sniff the T6 or even T14, but after beating up on their fellow inferior classmates, they can vault to a good school?

A prof of mine (T25 school) said that he has experienced schools from the bottom end all the way up to Yale, and said that the very top students at schools are largely the same...it's just that there are less and less of them the further down the rankings you go. Sounded like a reasonable assessment from a guy who has seen the landscape of law schools up close.

Yes, you can. The higher you go, the higher in your class you have to be. As LKJ pointed out, the top students tend to be relatively the same. Most transfers, even from very low schools, graduate with honors from their new schools.

Also the second part of your post is not true. There are some of us in T80 schools who had decent enough #s to go higher, but either liked a regional area or took $$ at the lower ranked school. My school I currently attend is the lowest ranked school I was accepted to. I was accepted to several schools in the T50, including one in the T25. I took the $$. I don't regret it.

it looks like you are conflating two questions here:

a) do i want to transfer

and, if a) is "yes"

b) do i want to ED chicago

i understand they're related / there's some overlap, but they are still distinct. looks like the first "considerations" clump is oriented toward question B, the second more toward A. i think it's important to sort out A first.

fwiw, given a yes to A, i think (yes, i am a 0L) that your considerations make ED chicago look like a great option

Unless you're going to biglaw, I pretty much lost your future yearly salary in about 6 days. Fml.

So then why are you considering transferring?

If I were at HYS, I'd be annoyed that people snuck in after the first year, after crushing state-school stoolies at some T100 law mill.