First, thank you for your kind words and measured response. From reading your posts over the past year or so, I have always found your advice to be sound, and much of the following commentary re TLS in general does not apply to yourself or some other posters in this thread.QContinuum wrote:First, congrats on your success! You've clearly done very well, and should justifiably be proud of your accomplishments: Top quarter, Law Review, a solid 1L internship, and now, at least two 2L SA offers.PartiallyLearnedHand wrote:OP, I go to a non-T14, T1 law school that is near the DC area. This past recruiting season, I landed 7 DC call backs from V100 firms and 2 offers from those call backs. I am on LR, but did not finish in the top 10% (finished top 25%), am a K-JD, and I am not a URM. I also wanted DC big law before school, and I extensively researched the employment stats of the schools I was considering, as well as reading threads similar to this one on TLS, while making my decision on schools. I knew exactly what I was getting into when I decided on the school I am currently attending, but I still managed to make it work and, as a counter to some of the advice on this thread, it is eminently possible to do the same from GW or W&L.
However, it is not easy, and to riff off of what Staddle said, the only thing that allowed me to even have a chance was true determination and hard work. Everyone in law school goes to class, most people do the reading, and everyone studies hard for finals, but not everyone has an inner burning desire to accomplish their goals no matter. It sounds incredibly cheesy--almost laugh out loud so-- but I know for a fact that there are many other students at my school who worked extremely hard during 1L year but fell short because they did not have an inner passion pushing them to make the sacrifices necessary to accomplish their goals. I was scared sh*tless that I wouldn't land a big law job, so I hustled ass off 1L year to get passable grades, secured a 1L internship in DC, and used that to network my ass off during the summer, which ultimately helped me get my foot in the door with a few extra callbacks. Look, maybe I got really lucky (I'm sure some other posters in here will say so), and I had LR and my internship going for me, but my point is that the rest of the advice in this thread is not necessarily gospel. It simply is not true that big law jobs are completely unattainable unless you go to a T-14 or are in the top 5%-10% of your class, and that should at least enter your calculus a little bit when making your decision.
With that being said, my point is in no ways intended to have you disregard the rest of the advice in this thread. If you play the numbers game, you can objectively see that most graduates of these schools do not end up in DC big law, or big law in general. Instead, I wanted to share my experiences to hopefully give you a more "realistic" story on what is necessary to secure a big law job in DC from a similar school. Don't disregard everyone else, but hopefully this can give you a different perspective than TLS's general prevailing sentiment of "retake for T-14 or bust." As for your original question, I would probably lean towards W&L because of the scholarship money, with a view to securing a 1L internship in DC/Nova if you do attend. Feel free to PM me if you would like to discuss anything further.
Second, I'd like to respectfully push back on your - and many other posters' - misperception of TLS' mantra being "T14 or bust." I don't think TLS has ever told people "T14 or bust" as a general rule. What happens in many cases is that we look at someone's GPA and LSAT, and realize that, with a bit of extra effort - a few extra points on the LSAT - that person could get into a T14. Someone could easily be locked out of the T14 and struggle to land $$$ in the T20 with a 166, but land acceptances and substantial scholarships in the T14 with a 170. In those cases, taking into account the person's stated goals and desires, we often advise that retaking and attending a T14 is the best thing to do. But again, that isn't the same as saying that no school outside the T14 is worth attending. I don't think that's ever been the prevailing view around here - I'd go so far as to say that "T14 or bust" is a pretty fringe view.
Third, I think we've always acknowledged that there are exceptions to the rule. It's possible to land BigLaw from a T2 - even a T3. I have a good friend who graduated from a T3 and recently made partner at a V100. It's just very unlikely. Our advice has always been that, where possible, applicants should try to position themselves to be the rule - instead of putting themselves in a situation where they'll have to fight for their lives to be the exception to the rule. For someone wanting BigLaw, it makes far more sense to put in some extra work on the LSAT to get into, say, Vandy, instead of going to Arizona State.
What's better than any anecdotal advice is, I think, raw numerical data, and that's what I always try to base my advice off of. GWU has a BigLaw placement rate of 32%. W&L has a BigLaw placement rate of 24%. So in that connection, it does look like it'd make sense to take W&L with $$$ over GWU at sticker. It's an 8% difference in placement. BUT the reason many posters ITT are reluctant to plump for either school - understandably - is because even GWU's 32% placement rate is not that great. Think about it. You'd be spending well into the six figures for a less than one in three chance at landing BigLaw anywhere (including non-D.C.). Would you invest that much money in a lotto ticket with those odds?
You say that hustling worked for you. You beat the odds. That's great! But hustling isn't going to work for everyone at a school that places so few of its students (percentage-wise) into BigLaw. What if OP hustles, but doesn't make the right connections over their 1L summer? What if they fail to write on to Law Review? What if, instead of outperforming 75% of their classmates on their final exams, they "only" outperform 60% of their classmates? Is your contention that all of your non-Law Review classmates failed to hustle? That 75% of your classmates didn't have a burning desire to secure a good job out of law school?
However, I have to disagree with you on the assertion that "retake for T-14 or bust" is a fringe rather than prevailing view on TLS. While it might not be explicitly given as a general advice, that is, in essence, what it has become. In almost every single "what are my chances" thread that I have read, the overwhelming majority of answers are for that poster to retake. It does not matter what the posters GPA is, what their LSAT is, or what their stated goals are -- TLS will always tell them to retake so that they can go from a T2 to a T1, or from a T30 to a T20, or from a T20 to a T14, or from a T14 to a T6, and so on and so forth. As you can see, it inevitably leads to the conclusion that the minimum result you should be satisfied with when considering whether to attend law school is a scholarship at a T14 school. And, before you state that posters may receive advice to attend a T20 so long as they have $$$, the overwhelming response to that is "Yeah, this isn't a bad option, but if you retook and got a few points higher, you could get that same $$$ at a higher ranked school." The "Choosing a Law School" forum has become an echo chamber for posters who either (1) went to a non-T14 school, did not do well, are now facing the consequences of that choice, and choose to give embittered advice to potential law students; or (2) T-14 students who believe that there is no good option other than the option they have chosen. Again, this is not directed at you specifically, and there are some other posters who provide sound advice on this forum, but my personal view from visiting this forum for over a year now is that the above rings true. If it seems like I am particularly bitter about this topic, thats honestly because I am. Even though I managed to do well for myself, I remember what it was like reading this forum as a 0L, and it was extremely demoralizing. This forum has not become a place where 0L's can come to see the reality of law school admissions/legal employment landscape and then receive advice tailored to their situation. Instead, it has become a one-stop-shop for receiving the same rote, often dismissive answer to almost any of their questions regarding which school to attend. I have no illusions that will change, but I wish it were different, and that is ultimately why I decided to structure my original post as I did.
Second, I'd like to also address your point on the raw numerical data surrounding big law placement statistics. I absolutely, 100%, agree with you on the numbers. OP, if you are still reading this, then those numbers must -- not should, but must -- be a huge part of your calculus in choosing which school to attend. It is imperative that you understand the difficulties of landing a big law job in the current legal employment landscape, and that at most schools the "rule" is that you will miss out on big law, let alone big law in DC. But my point was never to argue with those numbers or disregard their importance. My point is that those numbers are very important in informing OP's decision, but their decision also rests upon their own risk appetite and knowledge of themselves. It is up to OP to decide whether a 32% chance at big law in general is worth $150k of debt, not ours. All we can, and should do as posters, is point them in the right direction so that they are thinking about the right things, not compulsively and dismissively tell them that retaking is the only good option in their situation.
This same thinking also informs my response to your points on being the exception to the rule and the beating the odds by "hustling," which I think go hand-in-hand. I agree, TLS does acknowledge that there are exceptions to the rule, but it is almost never done in a balanced way. Most posters in this thread, instead of pointing to a schools employment statistics and then trying to give a realistic assessment on what it will take to become one of the 32% that get big law, phrase the possibility of being the exception to the rule as some daunting, herculean task that should never be worth the risk. I honestly do not believe that to be true, and that opinion is informed by my own experiences of being that exception to the rule. Was it stressful and hard to do? Absolutely. Was I the beneficiary of some luck along the way? Undoubtedly so. But looking back on my experience and the things that I had to do, I can absolutely say that the steps necessary to accomplish what I did are there to take for every single law school student, and it is up to them to take it. Yes, it is my contention that a significant enough majority of the other 75% of my classmates DID fail to hustle, and I believe that to be true at every law school in the T1. That reality is what opens up the door for those who genuinely do have a burning desire to accomplish their goals, and allows you to make your own luck and create your own opportunities that can help skew that 32% number to one that is more favorable for you.
Basically, my contention is that the 32% (or whatever similar T1 employment number you would like to point to) of graduates who land big law jobs come from a much smaller pool than the entirety of the class, and the employment statistics should be judged as such. If, out of a class of 150 people, there are only 80 people who actually have the requisite desire and capacity to get the grades necessary for big law, then if you are also in that group, you are competing against a much smaller pool and your odds suddenly become much better. I italicized those words above because, as I'm sure you will agree, there is no guarantee that OP will fall into that group. But my intention was that by hopefully sharing some of my own experiences as someone who succeeded under similar situations, OP and other 0Ls could get a better understanding of what it takes, and then judge their chances for themselves, while also balancing their debt appetite and other significant factors. My hope was that this would be a more constructive way of helping OP rather than telling him that retaking should be his only option.
