EarlyDecision2020 wrote:I recently visit Michigan and am really considering attending. Here's my burning question:
-LST has 36% of the 2015 class going into 500+ attorney firms, and roughly 10% going into federal clerkships
-This leaves roughly 54% of the class doing something else
-To be conservative, I would assume that everyone at Michigan that could have done BigLaw because their grades were good enough chose to do BigLaw. But, when talking with Michigan Law students, I've been told that students that could qualified for BigLaw via grades instead chose to do PI or something else. What percentage of the 2015 Michigan Law class actually could have done BigLaw but chose instead to do something else?
I got nothing else to do today, let's break it down. LST link:
https://www.lstreports.com/schools/michigan/jobs/
- 197 took firm jobs
- 180 of those were with large firms, i.e. BigLaw.
- 11 were with small firms, which are not bigalw
- 3 were staff attorney positions, which are not biglaw equivalent jobs.
- 59 took clerkships
- 36 were federal clerkships, and count as biglaw equivalent
- 23 were local or 'other.' I don't know what kind of outcomes local clerks have. For the sake of pessimism, these jobs are not biglaw equivalent
- 15 took business jobs
- 6 jobs required bar passage. I'm willing to call these biglaw equivalent. Most of us who land biglaw jobs will end up here eventually.
- 7 were JD advantage. Not biglaw equivalent
- 2 were 'professional' jobs. Also not biglaw equivalent.
- 37 took government jobs
- 32 required bar passage. These are unknown without more information. Could be DOJ honors or similar jobs with other agencies, JAG, state agency jobs, congressional committee staffers, EOP jobs, state DA and PD jobs, the list goes on. I'll count these cause being a government lawyer sounds a-okay to me, what with the job security and all.
- 5 were unknown. Again, hard to say. Could be congressional staffers or similar political jobs, could be state, county, or city nonlawyer jobs. Since I was generous with bar passage required government jobs, I'll be pessimistic here. These are not biglaw equivalent jobs.
- 2 took jobs in education
- 1 job required bar passage. Probably a law professor? I'll count it.
- 1 did not. No bar passage = not a lawyer = not a biglaw equivalent.
- 34 took public interest jobs.
- 31 required bar passage. I'm not terribly familar with PI, but the consensus seems to be that these count count as biglaw equivalent.
- 3 were JD advantage. See commentary for education jobs.
- 14 unemployed
In total we have
- 286, or 80.7% of the class of 2015 have biglaw or biglaw equivalent jobs.
- 68 do not.
To properly answer the your bolded question, only 216 only landed actual biglaw jobs or federal clerkships, 70 landed non-clerkship biglaw equivalent jobs and 68 did not land a biglaw equivalent job. So it's about 60/20/20 split between biglaw/equivalent/hopefully has minimal student loans
NERD EDIT:
While I was deciding where to apply, I did a lot of screwing around with LST data and pretty much ended up using two metrics as the best way to grade outcomes. First, 'quality outcomes' (QoC) which is the percent of students that ended up at large firms or in federal clerkships. These are the people that are going to be able to pay off six-figure student loan debts. Second, quality outcomes + PI, (QoC+PI) which is the percent of students that had quality outcomes added to the percent of students that landed PI jobs. While PI jobs aren't as good as biglaw jobs since you have to help people and can't afford models and bottles*, at least someone is paying off your student loans. If we rank the non-T6 T14 schools using 2015 data, we have:
QoC
- Penn - 76.9
- Duke - 74.7
- UVA - 70.2
- Northwestern - 69.5
- Cornell - 66.6
- Michigan - 61
- Berkeley - 56.5
- Georgetown (Though both UCLA and UT have better QoC scores) - 44.1
QoC+PI
- Penn - 85
- UVA - 81.9
- Duke -79
- Cornell - 78.6
- Northwestern - 76.1
- Berkeley - 75.6
- Michigan - 73.7
- Georgetown (Beating UCLA and UT) - 63.7
I'm not enough of a statistician to really know how much a difference 5% makes when that's only about 15 people, but it's safe to say Penn the best, Duke and UVA are above average, Georgetown is worse, and Berkeley, Michigan, Cornell and Northwestern are all about the same. It is unlikely you'll land a job at Duke you couldn't get at Michigan. Penn, maybe. Though really there'd need to be a big multi-year study to say for sure.
*This is a joke, on the off chance you couldn't tell