Top Law Schools

Got into Seattle U( 30k scholarship) originally from WA, went to college in California. Family wants me to go here, can live at home, full cost will be about 150K.( Afte saving 70K on living expenses living at home). Private sector is top class 90K, public 60,000K. I like the campus, vibe is alright.. negative is my family( they love me, but nag, and bug, and call.. it’s be a headache, but I can deal). Goal Business Law, tech, corporate.

Howard Law School... They gave me 10K. If You’re in the top 25% after 1L, they’ll pay for your full tuition 2nd-3rd( what I was told, they have programs for it)year. If you are in that 25% you get a chance at BigLaw, as they place well. I’ve spoken to 3 attorneys (USC real estate law(BigLaw), USC IP law, Syracuse IP Law( huge firm in San Fransisco, She’s my mentor now)

They told me to go to Howard, since I can come back, and get a whiff at their firms( They’re friends, so it could be all fluff).

Issues are moving( never been to the east coast), as well as going to a predominantly African American school( I’m a minority, raised in the burbs, went to school in So-Cal)
Don’t mind it, but, it’s something to add on. It’s going to cost me, with room and board 150K( if I have to pay full amount), heard they place well in private sector and big law.

I want to be in corporate, contracts, and tech( Have worked with the agencies in Cali( CAA, WME, UTA) and producers in the past, each I’ve spoken to said go to Howard.

Please no trolls, just help me. I’m not retaking( retook 4 times, post poned last year to retake, got the same score( crazy, huh?), it was a 157.

Thanks.

Howard, easy. There’s nowhere you can go with a Seattle degree that you can’t also get to with a Howard degree. The same can’t be said of the inverse.

It looks like they're tied in USNWR. Obviously that doesn't matter much, but could the poster above clarify why he thinks Howard is so much better?

Veil of Ignorance wrote:It looks like they're tied in USNWR. Obviously that doesn't matter much, but could the poster above clarify why he thinks Howard is so much better?

Just the opportunities in biglaw, and potential for scholarship... I’m not too keen on D.C. but I’ll go anywhere to win.. though I’m an older college student(31).

Just the I’ve been told it’s better, though Seattle U, wild be less stress.. truly.

You probably will not like what I will tell you but I think that going to either school will be a huge gamble. Neither school places particularly well in big law. There's no way for you to know at this point whether you will be in the top 25% in 1L. Given that you're 31, you have less time to repay your debt than someone going straight from undergraduate. Starting with 150K in debt at 34 will not be fun especially if you are graduating from law schools whose graduates do not fare well on the market -- Howard does a relatively better job but 20% big law is a low number.

https://www.lstreports.com/schools/howard/jobs/
https://www.lstreports.com/schools/seattle/jobs/

Jimlaw123 wrote:Got into Seattle U( 30k scholarship) originally from WA, went to college in California. Family wants me to go here, can live at home, full cost will be about 150K.( Afte saving 70K on living expenses living at home). Private sector is top class 90K, public 60,000K. I like the campus, vibe is alright.. negative is my family( they love me, but nag, and bug, and call.. it’s be a headache, but I can deal). Goal Business Law, tech, corporate.

Howard Law School... They gave me 10K. If You’re in the top 25% after 1L, they’ll pay for your full tuition 2nd-3rd( what I was told, they have programs for it)year. If you are in that 25% you get a chance at BigLaw, as they place well. I’ve spoken to 3 attorneys (USC real estate law(BigLaw), USC IP law, Syracuse IP Law( huge firm in San Fransisco, She’s my mentor now)

They told me to go to Howard, since I can come back, and get a whiff at their firms( They’re friends, so it could be all fluff).

Issues are moving( never been to the east coast), as well as going to a predominantly African American school( I’m a minority, raised in the burbs, went to school in So-Cal)
Don’t mind it, but, it’s something to add on. It’s going to cost me, with room and board 150K( if I have to pay full amount), heard they place well in private sector and big law.

I want to be in corporate, contracts, and tech( Have worked with the agencies in Cali( CAA, WME, UTA) and producers in the past, each I’ve spoken to said go to Howard.

Please no trolls, just help me. I’m not retaking( retook 4 times, post poned last year to retake, got the same score( crazy, huh?), it was a 157.

Thanks.

AspiringAspirant wrote:Howard, easy. There’s nowhere you can go with a Seattle degree that you can’t also get to with a Howard degree. The same can’t be said of the inverse.

I don't know anyone in the Seattle legal community with a Howard Law degree. OP will do better in the PNW with a SU degree, but the EV for both of these options is not good.

redtalun wrote:

AspiringAspirant wrote:Howard, easy. There’s nowhere you can go with a Seattle degree that you can’t also get to with a Howard degree. The same can’t be said of the inverse.

I don't know anyone in the Seattle legal community with a Howard Law degree. OP will do better in the PNW with a SU degree, but the EV for both of these options is not good.

Also, OP's comment "90k is top class", is a bit of a misnomer. There is a huge range of starting salaries in the PNW, 215yr to 45kyr.

redtalun wrote:

AspiringAspirant wrote:Howard, easy. There’s nowhere you can go with a Seattle degree that you can’t also get to with a Howard degree. The same can’t be said of the inverse.

I don't know anyone in the Seattle legal community with a Howard Law degree. OP will do better in the PNW with a SU degree, but the EV for both of these options is not good.

Something tells me you don’t know too many black lawyers in the Seattle community, so this doesn’t say much.

OP, I made the above recommendation because essentially all markets — especially ones like Seattle — are incredibly in need of black lawyers. Thus Howard, being an HBCU, has a national reach that similarly ranked schools don’t have. Firms nationwide actively reach out to Howard in a way that they simply won’t for a place like Seattle U.

In short, top rank at Seattle U = Top Seattle jobs. Top rank at Howard = Top jobs anywhere. But make no mistake, you’ll have to do very well at either school to get desirable options.

AspiringAspirant wrote:

redtalun wrote:

AspiringAspirant wrote:Howard, easy. There’s nowhere you can go with a Seattle degree that you can’t also get to with a Howard degree. The same can’t be said of the inverse.

I don't know anyone in the Seattle legal community with a Howard Law degree. OP will do better in the PNW with a SU degree, but the EV for both of these options is not good.

Something tells me you don’t know too many black lawyers in the Seattle community, so this doesn’t say much.

OP, I made the above recommendation because essentially all markets — especially ones like Seattle — are incredibly in need of black lawyers. Thus Howard, being an HBCU, has a national reach that similarly ranked schools don’t have. Firms nationwide actively reach out to Howard in a way that they simply won’t for a place like Seattle U.

In short, top rank at Seattle U = Top Seattle jobs. Top rank at Howard = Top jobs anywhere. But make no mistake, you’ll have to do very well at either school to get desirable options.

This is exactly correct for the national law firms in Seattle.

I don't think one is better than the other. I'd suggest you go where you can save money.

You have a separate thread that became a discussion of basically this exact topic. The advice you got there was to either retake the LSAT or sit out a year and apply more broadly. That was good advice and you should proceed as suggested.

Jimlaw123 wrote:Got into Seattle U( 30k scholarship) originally from WA, went to college in California. Family wants me to go here, can live at home, full cost will be about 150K.( Afte saving 70K on living expenses living at home).

How do you feel about paying a second mortgage's worth of student loans until you're almost 50? 150k in student loans is roughly $1500/month for 10 years. How do you feel about paying that amount of money making $63k a year at age 35? Oh, and tack on another 25k in loans for various expenses (rising tuition, books, bar prep course, etc). I'm not describing the worst case scenario, I'm describing the average scenario for taking your Seattle U path.

Now you need to compare that scenario to the best case (making low 6 figures when you graduate) and the worst case (being unemployed when you graduate) and decide whether that amount of risk makes sense for a 31 year old aspiring lawyer. Personally, it would be too risky for me.

Howard Law School... They gave me 10K. If You’re in the top 25% after 1L, they’ll pay for your full tuition 2nd-3rd( what I was told, they have programs for it)year.

Howard's not bad, but $10k is atrocious. Conditional money is no money at all, so forget about all the promises they make about giving you money if, if ,if...

You have no clue how well or poorly you will do in 1L. You could be the top student, you could be below median. Risking your financial well being for the next decade on being in the top 25% is insane.

If you go to Howard, you're gonna graduate with a quarter million in debt unless you happen to qualify for this full ride. If you happen to be in the 75% of Howard students who don't get the full ride and in the 80% of Howard graduates who don't get biglaw, your finances are going to be a nightmare for many many years. God forbid you end up as one of the nearly 40% of Howard grads who don't graduate into a full-time legal job.

To be honest, if I woke up in your shoes tomorrow I wouldn't go to law school. However, there are three paths ahead for you. 1) Keep doing what you're doing and hope that everything works out in your favor; 2) Reconsider retaking the LSAT and use an improved score to try to get more scholarship money and/or admission to schools with a better outcome; 3) do something besides law school.

beinghuman wrote:You probably will not like what I will tell you but I think that going to either school will be a huge gamble. Neither school places particularly well in big law. There's no way for you to know at this point whether you will be in the top 25% in 1L. Given that you're 31, you have less time to repay your debt than someone going straight from undergraduate. Starting with 150K in debt at 34 will not be fun especially if you are graduating from law schools whose graduates do not fare well on the market -- Howard does a relatively better job but 20% big law is a low number.

https://www.lstreports.com/schools/howard/jobs/
https://www.lstreports.com/schools/seattle/jobs/

Jimlaw123 wrote:Got into Seattle U( 30k scholarship) originally from WA, went to college in California. Family wants me to go here, can live at home, full cost will be about 150K.( Afte saving 70K on living expenses living at home). Private sector is top class 90K, public 60,000K. I like the campus, vibe is alright.. negative is my family( they love me, but nag, and bug, and call.. it’s be a headache, but I can deal). Goal Business Law, tech, corporate.

Howard Law School... They gave me 10K. If You’re in the top 25% after 1L, they’ll pay for your full tuition 2nd-3rd( what I was told, they have programs for it)year. If you are in that 25% you get a chance at BigLaw, as they place well. I’ve spoken to 3 attorneys (USC real estate law(BigLaw), USC IP law, Syracuse IP Law( huge firm in San Fransisco, She’s my mentor now)

They told me to go to Howard, since I can come back, and get a whiff at their firms( They’re friends, so it could be all fluff).

Issues are moving( never been to the east coast), as well as going to a predominantly African American school( I’m a minority, raised in the burbs, went to school in So-Cal)
Don’t mind it, but, it’s something to add on. It’s going to cost me, with room and board 150K( if I have to pay full amount), heard they place well in private sector and big law.

I want to be in corporate, contracts, and tech( Have worked with the agencies in Cali( CAA, WME, UTA) and producers in the past, each I’ve spoken to said go to Howard.

Please no trolls, just help me. I’m not retaking( retook 4 times, post poned last year to retake, got the same score( crazy, huh?), it was a 157.

Thanks.

This comment about Howard not placing well in big law is false. Howard is 21st in the country regarding percentage of graduates that get hired at top 100 firms. Howard actually place hire then Yale (judicial clerkships, academia opps), George Washington, Emory, and Norte Dame I just wanted to comment and say that this comment is a complete misrepresentation of the truth.

Section18 wrote:

beinghuman wrote:You probably will not like what I will tell you but I think that going to either school will be a huge gamble. Neither school places particularly well in big law. There's no way for you to know at this point whether you will be in the top 25% in 1L. Given that you're 31, you have less time to repay your debt than someone going straight from undergraduate. Starting with 150K in debt at 34 will not be fun especially if you are graduating from law schools whose graduates do not fare well on the market -- Howard does a relatively better job but 20% big law is a low number.

https://www.lstreports.com/schools/howard/jobs/
https://www.lstreports.com/schools/seattle/jobs/

Jimlaw123 wrote:Got into Seattle U( 30k scholarship) originally from WA, went to college in California. Family wants me to go here, can live at home, full cost will be about 150K.( Afte saving 70K on living expenses living at home). Private sector is top class 90K, public 60,000K. I like the campus, vibe is alright.. negative is my family( they love me, but nag, and bug, and call.. it’s be a headache, but I can deal). Goal Business Law, tech, corporate.

Howard Law School... They gave me 10K. If You’re in the top 25% after 1L, they’ll pay for your full tuition 2nd-3rd( what I was told, they have programs for it)year. If you are in that 25% you get a chance at BigLaw, as they place well. I’ve spoken to 3 attorneys (USC real estate law(BigLaw), USC IP law, Syracuse IP Law( huge firm in San Fransisco, She’s my mentor now)

They told me to go to Howard, since I can come back, and get a whiff at their firms( They’re friends, so it could be all fluff).

Issues are moving( never been to the east coast), as well as going to a predominantly African American school( I’m a minority, raised in the burbs, went to school in So-Cal)
Don’t mind it, but, it’s something to add on. It’s going to cost me, with room and board 150K( if I have to pay full amount), heard they place well in private sector and big law.

I want to be in corporate, contracts, and tech( Have worked with the agencies in Cali( CAA, WME, UTA) and producers in the past, each I’ve spoken to said go to Howard.

Please no trolls, just help me. I’m not retaking( retook 4 times, post poned last year to retake, got the same score( crazy, huh?), it was a 157.

Thanks.

This comment about Howard not placing well in big law is false. Howard is 21st in the country regarding percentage of graduates that get hired at top 100 firms. Howard actually place hire then Yale (judicial clerkships, academia opps), George Washington, Emory, and Norte Dame I just wanted to comment and say that this comment is a complete misrepresentation of the truth.

Numbers never lie.

First, the "numbers" have long struggled to accurately portray Yale's actual placement power. If you look at BigLaw placement, Yale's numbers are anemic - but of course that's because YLS grads self-select out of BigLaw, not because they have any difficulty landing V10 gigs should they want them. If you look at the number of grads in non-J.D.-required employment, Yale's numbers are alarming, especially compared to the rest of the T13 - but of course that's because YLS grads find their way into unicorn jobs, assisted by Yale's connections and its best-in-class LRAP, not because they have difficulty securing J.D.-required employment. Yale places so differently than other law schools that looking at its raw metrics is fundamentally misleading. It's basically the one law school where crunching the numbers doesn't work. Any claim that Yale lags behind GWU, Emory, Notre Dame or Howard in placement power is completely absurd.

Second, Howard does not place "well" in BigLaw by any reasonable definition. It may be "21st in the country" (or it may not be; I didn't bother to crunch the numbers) but even assuming that is true, it's meaningless. It's well-known that there are sharp "cliffs" in placement power between the T13 and the T20, and the T20 and the rest of the T1. It's not a linear decline from #1 to #21 - far from it. The relevant factor is the percentage of Howard's grads that can land BigLaw, and as noted, it's not awful but any school that requires top-quarter performance to place you in BigLaw cannot be said to place "well" in BigLaw. Put another way, there's a 75% chance that Howard matriculants strike out of BigLaw. Would anyone call a 75% chance of failure in any context "good odds," especially if one first had to take out $150k in loans in order to get that 75% chance of failure?

I acknowledged Yale’s uniqueness. US News Report and Top 50 law schools to go rankings are clear about Howard. The exact number is 28 percent of 2018 graduates are big law associates at top 100 firms. There are only 20 law schools in the entire country who place a higher percentage. So the question you ask about having a 25 percent chance is pretty darn good on average. Howard gives you a 28 percent close to 30. Something else important to note is that Howard places a lot of people in the top of their class into prestigious public interest work because of their social justice mission. Meaning there are a good number of graduates outside of the top 25 percent of their class in big law. Of course Howard isn’t putting up big law numbers like Columbia, Penn, and the ivies but they are out performing a lot of top 30 school at half the price. In the end, this conversation about Seattle and Howard is not even worth a debate. Howard has a National brand as the most prestigious black private institution in the country that places close to 30 percent in big law versus a regional state school that gives you a less then 10 percent shot to do big law in that region.