Vandy 2L Taking Question Forum

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c28

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Re: Vandy 2L Taking Question

Post by c28 » Mon Sep 11, 2017 7:39 pm

arklaw13 wrote:
c28 wrote:
arklaw13 wrote:
Gitaroo_Dude wrote:Would it be sensible to attend Vandy with the goal of working in California afterwards (my homestate)? I know the school has a rep as a super-regional for the South, but it looks like they send about 5%-6% of each class to CA. So I'm guessing a lot of that is self-selection because each class probably doesn't have more than 8% CA residents. Just based on their employment info I get the impression the school can get you back to your home market, but I'm not sure if that's confirmation bias on my part. Are the people heading to CA only getting back through BigLaw?
Depends on what exactly your goal is. If it's

Legal job in california >>>>>>>> everything else

then maybe not. If it's

Biglaw in california > Legal job in california > biglaw anywhere else >>>> legal job anywhere else

then maybe. It's hard to crunch the exact numbers becuase Vandy just doesn't get a ton of west coast students. We send very few people to LA, for instance. I think we've sent more people to Palo Alto and San Diego in the last few years than LA. Does that mean that you can't get LA from Vandy? Not necessarily. But all things being equal, if being in California is the most important thing to you, I would probably bick USC/UCLA over Vandy, all else being equal.
A professor told me last semester that Vanderbilt students have a higher California bar passage rate than Stanford graduates. I have no data to back this up but also have no reason to assume he's lying to me (he also took [and passed] the California bar). I know several people with California ties who went back to Cali from Vanderbilt and didn't have any real issues. In some respects, going out of state can give you an advantage when you want to go back home. Once they've had their fill of USC/UCLA students, hiring from a different school can add a little diversity.
Depends on what year of bar passage he's talking about. Last numbers I see are for c/o 2015 and they went 7/14, so probably not that year. Also, bar passage rate doesn't mean anything in terms of employment.

I don't know enough about the hiring practices of CA firms to comment on whether, class rank being approximately equal, some at USC/UCLA is more likely to get an interview from a given firm. I tend to think that there is something to the notion that being one of only a handful of applicants from a given school can help set you apart as compared to the firm's regular feeder schools, but that also probably depends on the firm.
Of course you're right that bar passage does not equal employment. I only meant that little anecdote to signal: (1) Vanderbilt students are taking the California bar because they either are or they expect to be practicing in California, and (2) Vanderbilt students are well qualified to practice in California (assuming this matters to an employer).

Intro-gamer

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Re: Vandy 2L Taking Question

Post by Intro-gamer » Thu Jan 18, 2018 11:50 am

Does anyone know how much doing the joint JD/MSF at Vandy costs? I’ve been looking online for the cost but i haven’t found it for some reason. I get that the extra credential isn’t a game changer but if it’s not crazy expensive I would at least consider doing it since it doesn’t take any longer than the 3 years a normal JD would usually take.

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