What top undergrad gives you the best chance for a top law school?

[sakky]

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I mean - what is more likely to happen? Consider: in 2015 economy is very robust and IB and BigLaw hire levels are very strong. Is that trend likely to continue at similar levels in 2016, or is a recession with the same magnitude as Great Depression likely to happen in 2016?

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<p>Actually, you seem to be citing the extreme case, for recessions do not need to be as extreme as the one we are currently facing. US recessions/downturns generally happen every 8-12 years. Before the current one, the last downturn occurred in 2001; before that, one occurred in 1990-1991; before that, in 1981-1982. The goal is not just to avoid graduating from law school during a recession as extreme as this one, but to avoid graduating during any recession. Given the history of the business cycle, it is quite likely that another recession will hit somewhere around 2016-2020. Sure, perhaps it won’t be as harsh as the current recession. But it will still be a recession, meaning hiring will still be tight. </p>

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You are citing an extreme case. Recessions like the current one doesn’t happen much regularly at all. Since you will be going through law firm interviews as a law student less than a year after your first day of law school, the economy just one year out is certainly reasonably predictable.

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<p>I continue to dispute how helpful that is. Fine, so let’s say that you are able to predict that the economy will be healthy in another year, so you enter law school for that first year, then you obtain a summer biglaw internship. That’s still no guarantee that you will actually have a biglaw offer once you graduate, even if you perform well in that internship. During this downturn, law firms have rescinded offers to 3L’s, or simply not provide offers in the first place, even to former interns, perhaps through the devious tactic of the [cold</a> offer](<a href=“Biglaw Blind Item: An Ice-Cold Offer - Above the Law”>Biglaw Blind Item: An Ice-Cold Offer - Above the Law). Or, heck, let’s say that you are able to land a biglaw job after graduation…only to quickly be laid off because of a bad economy. Frankly, that’s not that much better than simply never obtaining the biglaw offer at all. </p>

<p>What you really want is time yourself to start biglaw internship recruiting right when the economy is recovering, thereby leaving yourself ample headroom of many years with which to build your career as an associate without fear of the next recession. Of course that sort of timing is next-to-impossible, and I would suggest that if you were truly that skillful, then you should become a stock prognosticator instead.</p>