CPAlawHopefu wrote:SmokeytheBear wrote:CPAlawHopefu wrote:First of all, I'm not a"kid". I'm a 30 year old CPA with more full-time big corporate work experience than most 0Ls. I am open to civil discussions. Just because I hold a contrasting view does not mean I deserve the kind of disrespect that is clearly evident in this thread. So shame on you.
Secondly, this is what you said:
It's "we're shooting for a class of approximately 10-12. These are the schools we are targeting." Then it becomes "let's try to get yield from each of these schools." Then once the first round of offers go out and 'respectfully declines' come back, we start ticking through students who we want the most regardless of which school they went to.
Perhaps it came out the wrong way, but any person would take your statement and interpret it the way I did. Based on your statement, there are no differences in school names as long as they are part of the collective groups that make up the "target schools". Perhaps SoCal hirings are distinct from those of any other region, I don't know. If it is, then so be it. Maybe I should've applied to Pepperdine - I could've easily gotten full-ride and, according to you, have the same chance of getting into BigLaw as UCLA/USC grads. But I won't take that risk because I am skeptical of your claim.
I am unsure why so many people are upset. Nothing I said was particularly offensive to anyone. I wasn't talking down on UCI - I was merely stating my reason on why I took my name off the waitlist. If you disagree with my reasoning, that's fine, pat yourself on the back, you now have one less person to compete with. But it seems that too many people aren't capable of discussing opposing viewpoints without getting hostile.
This is not at all what UVA or I said at all. I even very deliberately said Pepperdine isn't comparable.
My consternation came from the fact that you are opining on a topic that you have no basis on which to offer your advice or opinion.
Done here.
My reasoning was based on years of reading TLS comments regarding the general legal market hiring practices. You are right, I have no idea how SoCal market hiring works; who would've thought that it had its own distinct way of hiring associates? I speculated that it worked the same way as any other market, so as wrong as it may be, it was an honest opinion.
That's fair, you have an honest and mistaken opinion based on years of reading and trying to comprehend how legal hiring works, but you've kind of missed the mark unfortunately in understanding it.
No one ever said that the general name brand recognition of schools doesn't matter. Firms will dip lower in the class at UCI than they will at Pepperdine. Since you've been reading TLS for years, I assume you understand how the forced curve works. If not, please let me know you don't understand how it works out in the real world so I can explain that first. But assuming you do since you've been reading TLS. So let's break this down for you to help you better understand generally how the hiring process will work.
Hypothetical Firm X:
Total SA spots desired: ~20
Schools they do hiring/OCI at: T14, UCLA, USC, UCI, UCD, Pepperdine, Loyola (making up this list, it'll probably be more schools than this, but this is meant to be illustrative, not exhaustive)
Generalized GPA Cutoffs: (Edit: these GPA cutoffs are also illustrative and not necessarily reflective of the cutoffs of each school. Just to show they would generally capture the same percentage of students at the schools in each tier)
T6: ~3.4 or above
T14: ~3.5 or above
UCLA/USC: ~3.6 or above
UCI: ~3.7 or above
UCD/Pepperdine/Loyola: ~3.8 or above
The firm does their screening interviews, and decides to offer to ~25 SAs (allowing for yield, etc.). It breaks down like this:
T6: 10 offers
T14: 6 offers
UCLA/USC: 5 offers
UCI: 3 offers
UCD/Pepperdine/Loyola: 1 offer
For whatever reason, only 5 T6 accept, 2 T14 accept, 5 UCLA/USC accept, 3 UCI accept, and the 1 UCD/Pepperdine/Loyola accept. They now have 16 SAs locked in. But they really wanted to hit their 20 SA class because that 16 number is just too low. So they go back to the people they interviewed but didn't offer a position, and maybe the next 4 on the list include another UCD/Pepperdine/Loyola offer, 2 T14, and another UCI. Three of them accept. Maybe the firm decides 19 is enough, but maybe they go back to their list again and figure out who they wanted more from those they interviewed but haven't yet offered a position until they get to their magic number of 20 SAs.
That soft GPA cutoff is set in stone for those schools, so it's perfectly reasonable that if there are more competitive UCI graduates interviewing at that firm, then it's possible more would be picked up by the firm. Extrapolate this across the market and you get UCI seeing generally the same placement in the market. Plus you can't attribute all fed clerk placement to Dean Chem, and there will still be a good number who end up in clerkships.
I'm all for civil discourse and I'm happy to help you understand this better, but you need to really consider what we're saying and not just instinctively compare it to the way you think you understand things. You're in a much better position to ask questions and try to understand better than to offer opinions about the way legal hiring would work because you think you have read enough TLS to understand the inner nuances of legal hiring.
ETA: I left out an important point that gets into the nuance of this hiring that deserves mentioning for anyone who happens to find this thread: some firms will prefer more T6, T14 grads, etc. where the T6 with a 3.4 is more desirable to the firm than the UCI student with a 3.7 or 3.8, but that won't always be the case. Firms will be making SA offer choices for a wide range of reasons from prestige of their associates to some semblance of "fit" to offering positions later in the cycle based on who is more likely to accept the offer to fill the class. The cutoffs will still be important, but a firm very reasonably may decide to offer a Loyola student with a 3.8 over the Columbia student with a 3.4 because the firm expects the Loyola student is more likely to accept the offer while still meeting their hiring criteria. Each firm will approach this uncertainty differently, but it's important in understanding why Berkeley, USC/UCLA, et al aren't categorically better than the lower ranked school students. Sometimes a UCI student with a 3.7 who was interesting and has lived in the area their entire lives will be more desirable than the Harvard student with mostly Ps and maybe an H or two. This is where the hiring becomes decidedly less about prestige, GPA, and objective factors.
