lol no

i'll admit that harvard grads prob have an edge for the high-end DC stuff. if OP is trying to become POTUS or some uber-prestigious law scholar, than harvard might be worth it but for the other 98% of people i just don't see it.

if you look at the links i posted on the last page, you'll see that they have very similar placement for even the moderately prestigious positions (v10 firms and good clerkships).

in case anyone cares - just finalized the decision. withdrew from chicago, and will be sending the HLS deposit check shortly. chicago gets to keep my $500 deposit

i could not bring myself to walk away from the opportunity, is what it came down to. HLS will give me better access to the kinds of career possibilities that, IMO, aren't easily quantifiable in dollar amounts. $120k+ (after interest and cost of living differences) is a ****ton of money no doubt, and maybe i'll be kicking myself in 3 years over it, but i'd much rather have a monetary regret than a regret that i missed an opportunity to set myself up as well as possible for a great career (and by "great" i mean rewarding/fulfilling NOT necessarily in the financial sense).

first meal in boston: legal sea foods. loooove that place.

somehow missed this by the way. congrats man! see you in the fall. you better insta-out yourself as a 2p2er, i'd much rather meet a 2p2er than a TLS tard

I ended up being next door neighbors with a girl I had met through TLS, just as complete happenstance. One of my best friends throughout law school. Another one of my best friends throughout law school, I later discovered to be someone I had communicated with on lawschoolnumbers. It was pretty funny to look back and see that we had written on each other's "walls" on there when we discovered it at some point during 2L.

i once asked out some TLS luminary before i figured out she was a TLS luminary and who she was

woops

emmyd !

dunno who that is

she said no anyways. granted i didnt go about it the best way.

edit - but i met some good friends in the transfer class coming in who i knew from TLS. i also met some not so good friends on TLS.

I posted on TLS under my real first and last name which racked up a total of zero recognitions at school. Although, I posted mostly in the Oregon thread and never announced in the school I went to.

a real uppity tranny who got me banned

I may have amassed a **** ton of posts on TLS in the last 6 months while studying for the LSAT , and I'm sure that number will increase significantly during the actual application process in the next year. There are some weirdos over there, but I've met quite a few really nice and cool people who have been super helpful as well. It might be more addicting for me than 2p2 ever was though, which is really saying something. At least it gives me something to do during this agonizing time where I'm waiting for my LSAT score to come back.

Probably a little late in the game since I've graduated, but what is TLS?

www.top-law-schools.com is forum/resource for 0Ls (although law students seem to post from time to time also)

forum made up of 80% insufferable future gunners

yeah okay, job interview:

"whered you go to school?"
"hls"
"hired"

Maybe this isn't true at the lawfirm of Ascot, Caviar, and Ferrari, but I think it's true at pretty much every other normal place in the country. But it's cool to be a contrarian, so whatevers.

as someone who works for a relatively unselective bigfirm (i.e., v50) and is familiar with the hiring grid, i'm telling you that harvard grads do not have an edge over chicago grads.

if you're lumping all bigfirms into your caviar & ferrari group, then you might have a point but if OP is not going to work for a bigfirm then is that not even more of a reason why needs to take the $$$ at chicago?

edit: and im not sure if you clicked the link i provided a few pages back, but chicago actually has better placement at the super elite (basically v10) firms. http://www.leiterrankings.com/jobs/2008job_biglaw.shtml

disko,

there's some pretty obvious problems with the data you linked. i do respect leiter rankings, but there's a lot of variables to account for. to say chicago is actually better for placement at an elite east coast firm is obviously incorrect.

it doesnt account for: overall regional placement elsewhere, entry into government, entry into politics, clerkships (!!!! the big one), class size (another pretty big one), etc.

I saw recently, for example, that Georgetown placed a higher # of graduates into xyz rankings of firms in abc area than any other law school except Harvard. That is, obviously, because Georgetown has one of the largest graduating T14 classes... comparable only to Harvard, of course

it does account for class size and regional placement.

clerkships is huge obv but i think harvard is only better at the margins and i don't know of anyone who would pay 90k for a marginally better clerkship with the exception of SCOTUS.

im sure OP will turn out fine either way but i think the main problem here (and most 0Ls are guilty of this) is that the money does not seem real. at the end of the day this is ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS. let that sink in for a minute. he could go to chicago and use the money he saved to drive to school in this:



most of us are like 100k-200k in the hole from LS. imagine not having that debt and being in the same position. how much happier would you be? OP will almost certainly end up in the same position, so i dont see how anyone could suggest paying for harvard.

Exactly.

I mean you're basically talking about extremely marginal differences in placement which well could have based on luck/interview skill/family connections/penis size etc. I mean when we're talking about such small sample sizes, it's entirely possible that all the Harvard kids were more diverse or better at interviewing or whatever and all the Chicago kids threw up at the interview.

Also, consider that IMO law school rankings/placement etc are becoming much more flat. I mean AFAIK practically no one had a shot at biglaw from a TTT 20 years ago and more, and even the kid last in his class at Harvard had no issues getting a good job. Now Clarance Thomas makes it a point to take people from random schools. Yes Harvard people are way ahead of TTTs still, but at the top there's increasingly less and less difference IMO.

Again, he has to be really really deadset on a very specific type of thing he has to do that only Harvard specializes in post law school for it to be worth the 90k. Otherwise his future job placements (especially after his first job) are going to be almost entirely based on his drive/ambition/social skills/work and not his degree.

But the clients might think otherwise. Somewhere there are still people getting enthusiastic about telling their housekeeper that the Havahd lawyerist is on the phone.

Yeah, should be great if your clients are idiots.

the vast majority of clients are idiots. the smart ones more so.

Also the Harvard/Chicago argument is pretty dumb. Harvard sounds more badass, but you get more $ at Chicago. So just pick which city you'd rather live in for 3 years, decide whether it's worth 100k to sound more badass or not. I'd say if you like CHI better than BOS, you should probably pick Chicago, unless sounding badass is super duper important. It's not like you can really make a wrong decision here.

Yeah I mean can't really make a bad choice... if you hate money.

Yeah, I'm sure all those idiot corporate clients will only hire the Harvard grads.

If I start law school around age 26, is that being considered a "late bloomer"?