So I started putting some of the summer class thread into Excel, and here's some early results.
So far I put in a group I'll call "Vault 7" which consists of Wachtell, Cravath, S&C, Skadden, DPW, STB, and Cleary, NY offices only. Yes, this is rather arbitrary but whatever.
Vault 7 NY summer class composition:
Columbia (15.6%), Harvard (14.5%), NYU (12.8%), Yale (8.4%), Penn (5.6%), Stanford (3.6%), Cornell (3.6%), Duke (3.3%), Chicago (3.1%), GULC (3%), UVA (2.8%), Fordham (2.7%), Michigan (2.7%), Boalt (1.9%), Northwestern (1.6%), Texas (1.4%), Brooklyn (1.25%), etc.
Vault 7 placement as % of 1L class size:
Yale (27.1%), Columbia (26.5%), NYU (18.3%), Harvard (16.7%), Penn (14.8%), Stanford (13.3%), Cornell (11.9%), Duke (10.6%), Chicago (10.4%), Fordham (5.26%), UVA (4.8%), Michigan (4.6%), Boalt (4.5%), GULC (4.2%), Northwestern (4.1%), Texas (2%), etc.
One interesting thing might be to adjust for this as a % of the class working in NY (or "mid-Atlantic region"), since I know school websites often have this info. Maybe (much) later.
Also note that there's some unknowns in the data (not too many, thanks to everybody for their help) -- 9 missing for S&C, 9 for DPW, and 1 for Skadden. Some people have said a lot of these might be Fordham, but otherwise I don't think it'll change the numbers too much.
I was surprised Yale wasn't much lower, but I guess its class is even smaller than I thought. However I'm pretty sure that if I widen this to include Latham, Paul Weiss, Shearman, Kirkland, etc. then Yale would drop significantly.
Good work, this is interesting. Obviously there will be variations in preferences from year to year, so comparing preferences from one year with actual placements from another year can only tell you so much.
The other point is what nutella and I were discussing below, which is just how inflexible these preferences are. Another way of reading this would be, 67% of Texas grads would not work in NY unless they were at a Vault 7 firm. Yes, there's a lot of assumptions that go into making that statement, but if you think about it, it is quite possibly understating it.
Date: April 18th, 2006 4:05 PM Author: thirsty heady university
Yes, it's a little sloppy.
It's tough to separate the locational bias. If you're in NYC already you might take a job offer with a particular firm from NYC, instead of incurring the costs to take a similiar offer elsewhere. This'll play out for all the local markets.
Date: April 17th, 2006 9:41 PM Author: elite rambunctious really tough guy
What are the advantages of going to a Vault 7 for career placement ten years out? Do they tend to have larger salaries ten years out compared to someone at a firm ranked around 50?
Date: April 17th, 2006 9:49 PM Author: primrose senate
Your odds of making partner at a top firm or a ~50 firm are minimal, but the top firms generally have much larger PPPs. The better your firm, the more exit options you'll have.
I should mention that while I said "Vault 7" is rather arbitrary, I might've meant that more as a disclaimer to avoid arguments. Actually there are some reasons why you might clump this group together based on clientele, PPP, etc.
Here's a source I regard fairly highly, who names some of these firms "bulge bracket" firms, including specifically STB, DPW, Cleary, and Cravath (and Cahill). "Unbeatable prestige, making them law-firm-land's equivalent of "bulge bracket" investment banks."
Date: January 31st, 2007 11:09 PM Author: Lime round eye
It's silly trying to match up investment banks and law firms w/r/t prestige. The business models are simply too different to account for, e.g., Munger, Susman, Keker, W&C, etc.
And you can't differentiate by saying some stupid shit like "well those are like hedge funds." No, they're not.
Yeah, if we adjusted for % working in the region, that should be much more useful. Actually now I remember that GTO's study had this info (which I think was from US News), so it should be easy to adjust.
EDIT: Actually, if somebody could give me this info, I'd really appreciate it. If it's online, I'm guessing you can copy/paste from the site or something?
Date: April 18th, 2006 12:06 AM Author: beady-eyed useless travel guidebook
Got it, thanks. I picked NY because the info seemed pretty complete. I don't know Chicago firms too well but looks like Winston and McDermott might be pretty significant.
Date: April 18th, 2006 12:29 AM Author: magenta goyim
around 30-35 2Ls from stanford are working in ny this summer outta around 180 in the class. i imagine there are some 1Ls too, but chances are they are not in the top 7 firms.
Date: April 18th, 2006 1:03 AM Author: beady-eyed useless travel guidebook
Yeah, see below. Pretty impressive.
Still we're sort of assuming (and GTO made this assumption as well) that people are inflexible about their regional preferences. I have to wonder to what extent that's true. For example at CLS those of us interested in the West Coast will often interview at NY firms as well. If somebody doesn't get the Cali offers they wanted, they may well decide that they'd rather be at e.g. Simpson or Cleary in NY than Pillsbury in LA.
Date: April 18th, 2006 1:14 AM Author: magenta goyim
from what i know, people are not inflexible about their preferences. a large number of people are splitting west/east coast, including about 1/3 of the ny people. i would say a large percentage of the class interviewed in multiple cities and were open to a bunch of markets and decided after seeing what offers they got and where they fit in.
Date: April 18th, 2006 1:29 AM Author: beady-eyed useless travel guidebook
Yes, that makes sense. Stanford's class is small and I can imagine their 2Ls would be in demand in NY. I was personally rather inflexible -- I took an LA office over an arguably "better" NY firm -- but many of my classmates interviewing in Cali were open to staying in NY if the perceived discrepancy was big enough.
Date: April 18th, 2006 12:56 AM Author: beady-eyed useless travel guidebook
I ran another set of firms, which now includes the V7 from above plus Latham, Paul Weiss, Shearman, Kirkland, Debevoise, and Weil (13 firms).
A whopping 43.7% of Columbia's class is at these 13 firms, followed by Yale (33.7%), NYU (31%), Harvard (26.8%), Penn (21.4%), Cornell (19.7%), Stanford (19.7%), Chicago (18.2%), Duke (16.6%), and Georgetown (11.43%).
Incidentally, this includes 34 Stanford 2Ls, so if nutella is correct then almost every Stanford 2L working in NY will be at one of these 13 firms.
EDIT: I'm not sure it's worth it to add any more NY summer classes, since it seems after this Harvard, Yale, and Stanford basically taper off and the list becomes more like the NLJ total biglaw placement list posted below.
Date: April 18th, 2006 1:09 AM Author: beady-eyed useless travel guidebook
I might be a bit off on the %, since I'm using the ABA's 1L class size data, which obviously changes a bit when you throw transfers in/out of the mix.
Since I'm actually at CLS I can call up the exact number of 2Ls, which is 422, or 44 more than the ABA's 1L class size number. This drops the % down to 39.1%, but it's still a lot higher than the others.
Anyway unless I can get every school's actual 2L class size (source anywhere?), I figure I might as well just be consistent with the data.
Date: April 18th, 2006 1:12 AM Author: bearded glassy hissy fit
Do you know how many (total) CLS people work in NYC by any chance?
I know that information may be hard to get for other schools but I think that figure would be more informative - % of people working in "V13" NYC firms/office out of total number of people working in NYC.
Date: April 18th, 2006 1:15 AM Author: beady-eyed useless travel guidebook
No idea. I mentioned getting the data from US News which has regional placement % (this is what GTO used in his study) but that would be for a "mid-Atlantic region" and not NYC, and also preferences will obviously change from class to class.
Also see my comment above about how inflexible these regional preferences are. Probably doesn't matter in Columbia or Stanford's case, but might be a bigger deal at a school not located in a major market.
Date: April 18th, 2006 1:25 AM Author: beady-eyed useless travel guidebook
Yeah, but since that survey is based on top firms by size, it's interesting to note the difference between Columbia and Northwestern when you look at just a specific grouping of top firms.
Date: April 18th, 2006 1:22 AM Author: beady-eyed useless travel guidebook
Here's another way to look at these numbers.
FOUR schools -- Columbia, Harvard, NYU, and Yale -- make up over 50% (51.4%) of my "NY Vault 7" summer classes. These same four schools make up 48% of the 13 firms in my second list (adding Penn puts it over 50%).
There are NINE schools with over 10% of their class in this Vault 7: Yale, Columbia, NYU, Harvard, Penn, Stanford, Cornell, Duke, Chicago. The next one is Fordham at 5.3%.
When you widen it to my 13 firms, you can also add Georgetown with over 10% in top NY firms, with Fordham at 9.3%.
Date: April 18th, 2006 2:04 AM Author: Frisky Zombie-like Deer Antler Toilet Seat
unbelievable post. i wonder how factoring in regional practice by school would affect the likes of Mich, Boalt, Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Chicago etc.
EDIT: In other words, we know H, C, N all send boat loads in absolute numbers, and Y, Ch, S have so much presTTTige their grads can do anything they want, BUT for:
Georgetown
Duke
Cornell
UVA
Northwestern
Boalt
Michigan
where do you have the best SHOT at getting into a Vault T7/13 in NYC (read: how far down the curve can you be)?
Date: April 18th, 2006 5:19 AM Author: beady-eyed useless travel guidebook
Well it's interesting to note that for both my 7 and 13 firms, Fordham has more of its class in top NY biglaw than UVA, Michigan, Boalt, and Northwestern. (Fordham has more than GULC in the Vault 7, but add on those other 6 firms and GULC shoots up.) Regional preference is almost certainly a factor, but I can't really tell at a glance whether there might be a bunch of Michigan 2Ls at lower-ranked NY firms.
Date: April 18th, 2006 7:49 AM Author: Hyperventilating messiness business firm
Believe it or not, there's a fairly substantial number of people who frequent this site that often are forced to decide between attending several elite law schools. Thus, "studies" like this do serve a purpose.
For example, seeing the raw numbers like this may confirm, among other things, that taking a scholarship at Columbia is a better choice than paying full price as HYS if you plan to practice in NYC.
Date: April 18th, 2006 10:21 AM Author: twisted black stage
the elephant in the room is that everyone should know that if you are certain about where you want to be post-law school, then most likely you ought to go to a school in that area. i put together the numbers for chicago bc i work in the chicago market, and have always been interested in going to/staying in it. And those numbers are mostly what you would expect... but thats not to say there is no value in compiling the data.
UChicago and NU dominate with approx 25% of their classes placed in the top firms, with that percent inching closing to 33% when Winston and McDermott are accounted for. What was surprising is that Michigan, Harvard and Illinois were next, but only with between 5-10% with Michigan close to 5%. I expect it to be closer to 10% with the last two firms accounted for. Either way this is probably not to say that Michigan cannot place well there - it is actually 4th, but its a far 4th and it means that when i was deciding back in the day between schools like Michigan, Columbia, Chicago, Northwestern and Virginia, with my interest in only going to Chicago to work, this is a factor that weighs against Michigan relative to UChicago and NU - In My Opinion.
But if the data continues to come in, what would bear out is that Michigan probably falls to the middle of that group in other markets. Better than NU and Virginia in NYC, DC and CA, but lower than Columbia and Chicago. Also, I might be able to learn if NU's placement is prohibitively lower in these other markets to justify writing it off if I had perceived a slight chance of going to another market. If so, the decision falls to Chicago v Michigan for all markets. If not, then Chicago v NU for the Chicago market. Then I account for factors like QoL going in Michigan/NU's favor v clerkship/academic placement in Chicago's favor. But seeing the numbers helps flesh out the details.
I think this is important because it goes against the grain in thinking that there is no reason (absent $$$) to choose Michigan or Northwestern over Chicago - which is what lot of people think.
Having gone to UChicago and ended up with clerkships and jobs where i've worked alongside grads from both Michigan and Northwestern, I often wonder if I made the wrong decision because I found UChicago less than fun and have few fond memories - not because the people sucked (they dont, despite the common misconception), but because the school generally sucked (hyde park, competitive atmosphere, awful student population outside the law school, etc). And then i meet all these people from Michigan and Northwestern who loved their experience and they have the same jobs as me (and I graduated top 10%).
Date: April 18th, 2006 11:48 AM Author: Unholy jap rigor
"the elephant in the room is that everyone should know that if you are certain about where you want to be post-law school, then most likely you ought to go to a school in that area"
Why do you think this? GTO's study (and the #s in this thread, when corrected for geographic preferences) indicate just the opposite.
Date: April 18th, 2006 7:57 AM Author: electric scourge upon the earth Subject: % in Vault 25
Rank School Hires Class %
1 Yale 100 183 54.6
2 CLS 208 410 50.7
3 Harvard 276 553 49.9
4 Chicago 84 194 43.3
5 NYU 188 437 43.0
6 SLS 63 176 35.8
7 NU 74 221 33.5
8 UPenn 79 252 31.3
9 Cornell 57 190 30.0
10 Duke 53 237 22.4
11 UMich 69 381 18.1
12 Boalt 48 320 15.0
13 GULC 99 687 14.4
14 UVA 50 355 14.1
15 UCLA 32 327 9.8
16 UT 13 466 2.8
These are the numbers I have. I might have missed a few people here and there, but here it is. The class size what the ABA listed as those graduating what ever year the most current data is for.
I should add that this data is from the summer associates thread and there isn't data from every Vault 25.
Date: April 18th, 2006 8:59 AM Author: Costumed karate
I'd love to hear Leiter's explanation for why UT places less than 3% of its students in Vault25 firms. I would think Vanderbilt and USC (and perhaps even Fordham and George Washington) could do better than that.
Date: April 18th, 2006 9:11 AM Author: Cheese-eating Circlehead
None of the big Texas firms, where many, many UT students go (either by self-selection or necessity -- certainly some sort of combination of both) show up until V40-50 if I recall correctly. If you looked at V25 plus, say, Baker Botts, Vinson & Elkins, and Fulbright, UT's showing would probably improve considerably. But obviously you could craft favorable data slices to make any school look better. Still, I'll bet self-selection plays a fairly strong role here.
Date: April 18th, 2006 9:33 AM Author: Costumed karate
Ideally, it would be great to have the stats for the entire Vault 100, or perhaps even the AmLaw 200. Those two lists seem to be the proxy for what most people here consider to be "Biglaw". With info from all those firms, we could fairly accurately predict "Biglaw" placement across all top tier schools, and would have a better picture than is currently provided by the Career Services offices that fudge their placement stats to ridiculous extents.
Thanks for the work Hazelrah. This thread seems to confirm the notion that if you want NYC Biglaw take Fordham over any non-T14, and the numbers are close when it comes to Georgetown V. Fordham (and some of the other T14 that dont send a lot of people to NY). Of course class size and self selection play a big role but i think this study is a good starting point for comparing schools and NYC placement.
Date: March 26th, 2007 1:11 PM Author: poppy public bath
If you want to be a partner at NYC Biglaw Fordham is most likely not the way to go. I don't believe that Fordham has a equal % of partners as 1-3 year Associates we have in those firms. Also, the partners from Fordham aren't on par with those from other top schools. "On par" defined as money and influence within the firm. All partners are not created equal.
Most top firms only come to Fordham to use the students as suped up paralegals for the first few years with little or no chance at partner.
I still don't know why anyone would ever want to work at a NYC Biglaw firm. Way too many hours, no chance at a social life, and have to work with mal adjusted personalities. Unless of course, they really need the money.
This is a response to the post above about what firms to include in a similar study on LA. I've been thinking about this (since I'm working in Cali after all) but I think it raises some interesting issues that probably applies to other markets.
There's two considerations here in picking firms. First is that I want relatively "prestigious" firms, and this is because people aren't so interested in overall biglaw placement (you can just look at school's salary info, etc for that), but getting the "top" jobs.
The other consideration is that I want firms with relatively big summer classes. This is to balance out insignificant variations and also see how big the gap is between top schools and lower schools. So for example, in the NY data, Cleary has 20 from CLS and 22 from NYU -- not a big difference -- but 1 from St Johns out of something like 80 total.
Now take Kirkland LA, with 19 summers, and the top schools are UCLA (3) and Pepperdine (3). What if Kirkland tripled its summer class size to 60? I think you might see 10 UCLA summers, but you might still see the same 3 Pepperdine summers -- but that's not the conclusion you can make when the sample size is this small.
Notice that when you do get a bigger LA summer class -- like Latham (51) and Paul Hastings (31) -- the difference between UCLA/USC and Loyola/Pepperdine is a lot more clear.
Anyway, my point is that these considerations were easy to deal with for NY firms, because the firms that have high prestige also happen to have fairly big summer classes. In LA, aside from Latham, I think most summer classes are going to be in the 15-35 range. Plus there will be a lot more debate over relative prestige. I personally think S&C and STB are as prestigious as Gibson in LA, but how about Kirkland or Sidley? Milbank vs MoFo vs. Paul Hastings? Dewey, Akin Gump, Jones Day, etc? And Quinn is always a wildcard.
I guess my short list would be Munger, Irell, Quinn, LW, GDC, OMM, S&C, STB, and Skadden. I don't know which firms I would add (or not add) after that.
Date: April 18th, 2006 5:27 PM Author: stirring internal respiration
S&C is full of Loyola and USC grads. Very few good schools.
Kirkland also has three summers from Stanford. Last year there were 4 HLS, and 7 the summer before. I have no idea about STB, but I would guess it's similar to S&C in that it's mostly local.
Date: April 18th, 2006 5:41 PM Author: thirsty heady university
For S&C, among the associate ranks, I see two from Loyola and three from USC. Doesn't sound like they're "full of them". Other schools: 0 Yale, 2 Stanford, 3 Harvard, 1 Columbia, 0 NYU, 1 Fordham; 1 New York Law School; 2 Boalt; 2 UCLA.
Date: April 18th, 2006 5:33 PM Author: Hairraiser underhanded area regret
I'd be very interested to see the numbers plugged for LA. The list of firms looks good, except isn't S&C a very small office?
One way to balance significant variations is to combine data from the past 2 or 3 summer classes. But I don't know if we have access to that information.
"Now take Kirkland LA, with 19 summers, and the top schools are UCLA (3) and Pepperdine (3). What if Kirkland tripled its summer class size to 60? I think you might see 10 UCLA summers, but you might still see the same 3 Pepperdine summers -- but that's not the conclusion you can make when the sample size is this small."
The info for the previous two years of classes is online. When aggregated, you have 50 data points:
Good point, I forgot Kirkland keeps its summer class lists on its website. The patterns do become more pronounced when you aggregate them like that, but this is basically what makes me cautious about using just one year's data.
But stanlee's post above might be correct that the differences will even out once we add up a bunch of firms. The NY V7 firms totaled 640 summers, and LA would only be like a third or fourth of that, but that might be enough.
Date: April 18th, 2006 6:23 PM Author: silver exhilarant location hairy legs
Perhaps it's time for the Fordham haters to STFU - especially given that there are a number of Fordham students still not accounted for in the V7. How'd ya like them apples!!!!!
I liked this old thread, and I was showing it to a 1L recently so a bump for those interested. Sadly, never got the summer class data for Gibson and O'Melveny LA to figure out some LA stats. If anybody wants to help out now that the summer's over and you all have your offers, I'd still be interested in doing it. Just put them up on lawfirmaddict's page: http://lawfirmaddict.blogspot.com/ and give me heads up.
Date: August 29th, 2006 12:23 AM Author: thirsty heady university
LFA should add a link to this thread on his blog. (And any other thread where this type of stuff is compiled.) This stuff is too useless to be permanently lost (unless someone remembers the thread titles).
Maybe you could tell him Superman... I mean, Clark Kent. ;)