<p>
</p>
<p>17% of UVA Law grads ended up with 1-year school funded fellowships that pay like 30k a year. </p>
<p>Outside of Biglaw/ clerkships, T14 JD carries no extra value than your average run of the mill JD from diploma factories. In other words, if you strike out at OCI, you are screwed.</p>
<p>People don’t seem to fully comprehend the state of legal job market nowadays. The folks I know at firms such as Skadden, DPW, STB, Cravath, etc are slammed with work and busy billing crazy hours. That is because these prestigious firms have strong businesses and bring in consistent line of revenues even in bad economic times. If you end up at these firms, not only do you build marketable skills quicker, but you also have substantial more job security than other lawyers since these firms require large quantity of labor at all times. </p>
<p>On the other hand, many folks I know who are at lower V100 firms are fearing for their life and have nightmares about being laid off in near future, since many times they are begging for more work and can’t find enough work to bill hours to justify their 160k/yr paycheck. One girl I know was laid off from her Biglaw firm last year as a first year associate and hasn’t been able to find a job ever since, although she is willing to work for as little as 70-80k a year. </p>
<p>The job market is so competitive that Biglaw firms nowadays won’t tolerate low billable hours/ low quality work from their attorneys, and firms will happily show you the door out if you don’t meet their expectations. However, what if you can’t bill enough hours not because you are lazy but because the firm isn’t doing well and doesn’t have enough work? This is out of your control. Being a junior attorney, with 1-2 years of Biglaw experience, gets you very little exit opportunities, and if you were laid off at that point of your career, you may never recover. </p>
<p>Landing at an elite firm as your first job out of school is absolutely crucial in shaping your overall long-term career trajectory, especially in a hyper-competitive field such as law. Accomplishing that agenda out of HLS is about three times more likely to happen, compared to GULC.</p>