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Curious as to how insular the LA market is. Is Berkeley's placement power lesser in LA compared to SF? With no other ties to California/LA, would attending Berkeley be helpful in breaking into the market, or largely irrelevant?

I don't have a definitive answer (as I'm not from Cali nor do I practice in the market) but I'd think Cal would have a pretty decent network for working in CA, especially Los Angeles area. If I wanted to practice in SoCal, I'd take it over peers (like Duke or Mich, etc), however, if I wanted to practice in SoCal and I was looking at Cal vs. Chi or something, I'd pick Chi. If you're comparing UCLA to Cal, maybe someone more informed could chime in, but I'd still personally take Cal (unless you aren't going for biglaw and just want to be in Los Angeles and UCLA is a significantly cheaper option for you).
Best of luck.

Current Berkeley 2L. I had zero interest in LA so this is all secondhand, but from my experience, anyone who wanted a summer job in LA was able to secure one (both for 1L and 2L summer). It's tough to compare Berkeley's relative power across markets simply because so many of us want to practice in the Bay Area so stats are skewed. But I think attending Berkeley would be a great way to establish ties to California if you're strongly considering targeting LA.

Yes.

lawbear2022 wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 09, 2021 2:17 am

Current Berkeley 2L. I had zero interest in LA so this is all secondhand, but from my experience, anyone who wanted a summer job in LA was able to secure one (both for 1L and 2L summer). It's tough to compare Berkeley's relative power across markets simply because so many of us want to practice in the Bay Area so stats are skewed. But I think attending Berkeley would be a great way to establish ties to California if you're strongly considering targeting LA.

I agree with this. I've seen/heard of plenty of people getting LA if they want LA. You just have to be single minded about it, and would probably help to network before OCI.

Yes. Better than UCLA/USC/Loyola. The reason for the stat differential is that more UCLA/USC students want SoCal, but proportionally, Berk students who want SoCal are going to get it over either of the other schools if they can convincingly demonstrate ties to the area.

Berkeley places extremely well in LA - probably even better than CCN.