Fourth Tier Law School Wins Big in Recruiting

[sallyawp]

<p>The following are some exerpts from an article in today’s Wall Street Journal that I hope you will all find interesting and helpful. Notably, the article makes a big deal out of six students at Detroit Mercy (a fourth tier law school) getting jobs in BIGLAW; however, I’m certain that while this represents great progress in recruiting for this school, those six students still represent a small percentage of the number of students attending Detroit Mercy.</p>

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How Obscure Law School
Places Grads at Top Firms
By AMIR EFRATI

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Law students starting summer jobs at the New York office of a prominent national law firm come largely from the usual places: Harvard, Yale, Columbia, New York University and some local schools. Then there’s Keith Marlowe of the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law.</p>

<p>Last fall, Mr. Marlowe applied for summer work at 110 U.S. firms and got no offers. But the Calgary, Alberta, native had an ace in the hole: private interviews, arranged by his law school, with some of the country’s biggest firms, including Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP, which offered the 25-year-old a job paying about $3,000 a week.</p>

<p>In the stratified world of law, educational pedigree largely dictates where students will get a look. Firms want to signal to clients and colleagues that they only hire the best. As firms have grown and competition for junior lawyers has intensified, some firms have dipped below the Ivies and their equivalents. Nonetheless, a student from a school like Detroit Mercy – firmly in the cellar of U.S. News & World Report’s rankings of 184 accredited law schools – hasn’t stood a chance at the fancy firms.

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But thanks to some masterful marketing by Detroit Mercy’s dean, Mark C. Gordon, top students at the school are now gaining entree to the big leagues. In the last two years, a half-dozen students have been hired for summer or full-time jobs at firms like Mayer, Brown, Rowe and Maw LLP. Firms such as Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP now include Detroit Mercy in their select on-campus interview circuit.</p>

<p>A first-time dean and Harvard Law grad, Mr. Gordon got his school on the radar of the top-tier firms by enlisting a stable of big-time private-practice lawyers to join an advisory board that’s now some 60 members strong. His pitch: Help Detroit Mercy improve its third-year curriculum by creating a required set of courses that simulate real-life practice.

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Transaction-simulation classes are an “inefficient way to learn content” says Stanford Law School Dean Larry Kramer, who recommends students take no more than one or two of them.

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From Mr. Gordon’s vantage point, if the practical coursework and advisory board help his students get a top job, it’s fine with him.

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Founded in 1912 and located in a three-story building across from General Motors headquarters, Detroit Mercy has an entering class of 265 students and is sponsored by two Roman Catholic groups, the Society of Jesus and the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas. Most graduates go into private practice primarily in the greater Detroit area.

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Mr. Kruger is now in charge of providing documents from actual cases (redacted) for use in the new curriculum, known as the Law Firm program, which lets students handle a complex case or transaction as if they were part of a large law firm. Each course focuses on a different department in a typical corporate firm, such as real estate, intellectual property, white-collar crime or antitrust law. After a pilot program this past semester, all third-year students will be required to take at least two courses in the program.

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Having nine top national firms conduct on-campus interviews at Detroit Mercy is a coup for the school and a critical step toward building an institutional pipeline into the firms.

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So far Detroit Mercy’s successes haven’t raised its stock in the U.S. News rankings, which weigh such factors as percentage of graduates employed after graduation, scores on the Law School Admission Test and the bar-exam passage rate. The Michigan bar-exam passage rate for Detroit Mercy students was below the state average for the 2005 summer exam, but last summer it rose to the average for the state.

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[neverborn]

<p>It’s deceptive advertising at its worst. Expecting to get BIGLAW at a T2/3/4 is terrible, especially since many tier 4 schools have enforced curves near 2.8 to make sure you don’t get the near 4.0 you need to explain away the undoubtably poor LSAT/GPA that landed you there in the first place.</p>

[Americanski]

<p>I wouldn’t call placing 6 students into biglaw firms a “big win.” Of the 265 in that entering class, probably four or five times as many will fail out as get biglaw jobs. Their biggest achievement is somehow getting a positive article about the school published in the WSJ.</p>

[cartera45]

<p>They’re not “in” yet. They got a summer clerkship - let’s see how many get permanent offers. That’s when the firms have to face the possibility of having someone from Detroit Mercy in their Martindale Hubbell listing. According to the current Martindale Hubbell listings, there is only one Detroit Mercy grad at a tier 1 firm in the city of New York.</p>