Should I transfer?

One of NBR's favorite first-years came into her office today to tell her that he'd be transferring to the University of Michigan.  It's fair to say that she was happy for him but sad for everyone else.

Transfers happen, though, and NBR still keeps in touch with students who have transferred.

But should YOU transfer?  Here are some considerations:

1.  Your 1L grades are exceptionally good.
2.  You have specific career goals (for example, becoming a law professor) that are best served by graduation from a school that places many of its graduates in law teaching.*
3.  You hate the school that you're currently attending.
4.  You hate the area of the country in which you're currently living.
5.  You don't mind having your first-year grades changed to "pass" at your new school and at having to apply for activities, such as law review, that would have been automatic at your current school.
6.  You have loved ones who live near your new school, or who are moving there.

Each of these is a decent reason to transfer, and the more of these reasons you have, the more you should consider transferring.

Bad reason to transfer:  the USNWR rankings.  The rankings are decent at separating the very best schools from the ones that have scary bar passage and employment statistics.  They're not great at making fine distinctions among schools that are within, say, 30-40 ranks from each other.

As for NBR's student, she wishes him well and is planning to stay in touch with him.  Go, um, gophers?


* A plug for NBR's school:  it's barely old enough for a bar mitzvah but has already placed several of its graduates in law teaching and administrative positions. 

Trying to decide whether to go to law school?

Check this post out (here).  Is law school a good investment?  Yes, for some people; no, for many others.  It's important to think about why you're interested in law school and to do your research before you matriculate at a particular school.

Am I glad I went?  You bet.  But, then, I have the job that my husband calls the "loophole in life."

Yes, that's what we need: more reliance on the numbers during the hiring season.

See this post on TaxProf Blog (here).  I agree with the idea that law students should have plenty of options when it comes to finding jobs, but this system seems to me to undercut the employers' ability to find the diamonds in the rough.

I'm going to bet that every employer that subscribes is going to want "top 10%, Law Review, judicial clerkship" folks.  Those folks don't need a huge amount of help finding jobs--and I think that focusing only on these criteria is causing just that type of mismatch between employer and employee that triggers the attrition in BigLaw associate classes.  These criteria are some indication of talent, but they don't--in and of themselves--indicate a candidate's other necessary abilities for success.  (Well, Law Review, at least, indicates that the candidate can probably research and write well and can work well in a team environment.)

Cutting out the interview stage only makes sense when employers are only asking about "top 10%-ish" information and not asking about those qualities that will lead to success in their particular business environment.  What employers should do instead is figure out what attributes they really need and focus their interviews to learn if a candidate has those attributes in abundance.

Great news for Kindle readers!

We received some good news recently:

Wolters Kluwer Law & Business (Aspen Publishers) has partnered with Amazon.com to sell eBooks via the Kindle platform.   Law School Survival Manual: From LSAT to Bar Exam will be among the first titles to be part of this exciting new opportunity. Through this partnership with Amazon, customers will be able to purchase the Law School Survival Manual via the Kindle Store on the Amazon.com website, directly through the Kindle eReader, and through multiple Kindle applications, including Kindle for iPad, Kindle for iPhone, Kindle for Android, Kindle for PC, Kindle for MAC, and more.

The Kindle version should be up soon.  Enjoy!

Lawyer humor.

See here.  It's our newest guilty pleasure. 

An interesting discussion on choosing law schools.

Over at Above the Law (here).  From our point of view, the best school for you isn't about which one's higher in the rankings.  The best one's the one that will (1) get you to where you want to be, if you know (neither of us knew what we wanted to do with our law degrees when we were choosing among schools); and (2) give you a great education with the least debt load possible.

Before this year's USNWR rankings come out.

Read this post (here) on the Legal Profession Blog by Professors Bill Henderson and Andy Morriss, who are two of my favorite thinkers on the topic of legal education and the profession.  They're right:  if we lie about our employment statistics in order to lure more students to our schools, that's a horrible lesson to teach those students once they realize that they've been hoodwinked (or even if they weren't hoodwinked).  Lying to potential law students opens the door for them to justify letting their clients lie to the public later on in life.