What is New York Law School like?

April 23, 2008 4:09 AM

I've just been offered a $20,000 scholarship to New York Law School, which is renewable each year so long as I maintain a certain GPA. To be perfectly honest, I had originally applied to NYLS as a "safety school," but this certainly sweetens the pot. I have applied to other New York City law schools, but I have not heard back from them yet - all I know is that I would like to pursue intellectual property law, public interest law, or administrative law in NYC. So I ask you, what is NYLS like, with regard to being a full-time student in his mid-twenties?

I know that NYLS does not have as strong a general reputation as Cardozo, Fordham, Brooklyn, etc., but other than that I don't know very much about it. What's it like to study and graduate from there? How will I fare in my job search afterwards - assuming that I am in the top 10% of my class, or worse, if that doesn't happen? Would it be worth taking the scholarship and going to NYLS, as opposed to going somewhere higher ranked, but at full cost? Let's say I wanted to go into civil rights law - would it make more sense to attend NYLS or CUNY? Should I be taking positive notice of the fact that that NYLS expanding and rebranding so much nowadays, or is that immaterial to the fact that they're not a highly-ranked school? Is all this rankings nonsense simply nonsense? Inquiring minds want to now!

posted by anonymous to law & government (16 comments total)

Go to the highest ranked school that you can, otherwise (especially in the dwindling economy), you run a very real risk of not being able to find a job.
posted by youcancallmeal at 4:23 AM on April 23, 2008

First, wait until the results from other schools come back to make a decision.

It's good that you have some idea of what fields you want to go into, but also realize that this changes for a great many students before they graduate. So don't put so much weight on the fact that you think you'll be in those areas.

School prestige is so much more important in law than most other fields, so you probably shouldn't discount it just for a scholarship. In fact, I want to tell you to ignore the scholarship completely when deciding which school to attend, but I realize that's unrealistic. Please remember that the scholarship looks great now, but that many students in even low-paying legal jobs manage to pay back their full tuition loans just fine. Many going into public interest manage to get loan forgiveness. Many assume they'll keep their scholarships but end up losing them after the first year. Scholarships are how lower-ranked schools draw students who could attend better schools, so at least realize what they're thinking.

At the same time, if you're definitely going to work in public interest or NYC administrative stuff, NYLS won't be so bad. Hell, it won't even be the end of the world if you do pursue the big corporate law job...it'll just be a lot harder. It'll be that much more important that you finish near the top of your class and make law review.

And this is no knock against NYLS. The quality of the education probably isn't much different at all. It's all (well, mostly) reputation. But even if it is nonsense, recruiters still take it into account.
posted by aswego at 4:54 AM on April 23, 2008

You've probably seen this point beaten to death if you've read other law boards, or even other law posts on AskMefi, but ranking is really what matters. Scholarships do make things attractive at certain schools, but my suggestion (as a 2L at a T25) is that you should only use scholarships as tiebreakers between similarly ranked/situated schools.

Even if you don't plan on doing Big Law, a highly ranked school is going to give you the most options by far. It sounds stupid, why would anyone care so much about rankings?, but it holds true. If you do end up in the public interest field with a lot of loans, most schools have loan repayment programs that will take care of you.

Good luck.
posted by craven_morhead at 5:01 AM on April 23, 2008

Youcancallmeal speaks the truth, at least according to my anecdotal evidence. Friends who went to high ranking schools found jobs easily and are now rich and successful. Other who attended mid-level schools had more difficulty finding jobs and are earning a lot less. The second group has mostly ended up finding work outside of law even though they would rather work as a lawyer. This is all in NYC.
posted by defreckled at 5:06 AM on April 23, 2008

I teach at NYLS. So my perspective is a bit biased. But its also for the same reason a bit informed.

If you are looking to get a job at a generic large law firm at a high salary, your life will be easier if you go to a higher-ranked school. The major firms have informal cutoffs for GPA at different schools; those cutoffs are higher for students at NYLS than they are for students at Fordham. A lot of this is based on long-running stereotypes, rather than the actual qualifications of our students, but it is out there. NYLS students face a tougher job market, and that is a fact of life we deal with.

The $60,000 less in debt you'll graduate with, on the other hand, has the potential to make your life in the next three years less stressful; you can focus more on your studies, and it will give you more flexibility in, for example, looking for a public-interest job when you graduate. The importance of this compared with other factors, though, will depend a lot on your other circumstances, so your mileage may vary.

NYLS also has a high bar passage rate, higher than most other New York schools. That's recent news. It's the result of a study we did on what our students needed from the school and of curricular and advising changes we put in place to help them. This is a good time for the school; it's looking at itself very seriously and making the changes it needs to to help its graduates take their legal careers to the next level.

If you want to do intellectual property work, NYLS is a powerhouse. Have a look at our list of courses, and keep in mind that these are all courses taught this year, some of them in multiple sections. We've got a great patent law program (my colleague Beth Noveck is responsible for the Peer-to-Patent program that's opening up patent applications for genuine public review), and more faculty who do Internet law than any other school in NYC. The Institute for Information Law and Policy involves students at every level; anyone who shows up and says "I want to be part of this," no matter what their grades or their previous experience, is welcome, and can be a part of all sorts of Institute projects. We have a real focus on helping students make things, so they can go to employers and say, "I made this; behold my mad skilzz."

I'd also note that if you want to do New York City administrative law, then NYLS is uniquely the right place to go. The Center for New York City Law is a unique institution. It's run by Ross Sandler, former commissioner of the NYC Department of Transportation, and the man has an absurdly large rolodex. The school publishes newsletters on developments in NYC law and on NYC land use decisions, runs the principal online library for NYC administrative decisions, and puts on an all sorts of conferences and events for the city administrative and city government bar. The networking opportunities there are unparalleled.

The next few years are going to be a transitional time for NYLS. If you come down to Tribeca, you'll see a gigantic construction site next to the school. That's our new building going up: four floors above ground and three below. It's going to be huge, it's going to be modern, it's going to be kickass. But it ain't built yet. As that one goes up and as the existing buildings are renovated to match it, there'll be some disruption. The library is currently in rented space across the street, my throat is sore some days from shouting in class over construction noise. (Wait. It's sore even on the quiet days. I may just be an overly excitable lecturer.) But when the dust settles, it'll be worth the inconvenience.

Speaking from personal experience, I think NYLS is a wonderful place. The faculty hiring has a strong component of collegiality. You hear stories about factionalized law schools where some professors won't talk to each other. We're not one of those places, which means we're a lot better about steering students with particular questions or interests to our colleagues who are expert in the appropriate area. It also means that the faculty are just plain nice; you won't get the full-on Professor Kingsfield experience here. The students I've met, taught, and worked with have also made this a great job. You'll have plenty of smart and thoughtful classmates, who come from all sorts of interesting backgrounds.

Feel free to get in touch if you want to ask follow-up questions. I'm happy to answer as many as you've got--or at least to refer you to people who can.
posted by grimmelm at 6:13 AM on April 23, 2008 [8 favorites]

It depends if you want a Biglaw job and are confident that you can get one. It also depends what your total loan debt will be upon graduation. I went to a top-tier school, funded completely with loans, and then found myself unemployed when I graduated (I was at the middle of the class). Fast-forward to today, several years later, when I'm working as a document review attorney and barely making a dent in my massive loans.

No matter what you do, be extremely careful about your loan debt. If you feel you can hold down a part-time job while in school, do it (though I would recommend against this for 1st year). Don't take any more in loans than you absolutely have to.

Sorry if it seems I'm harping on the loan issue, but the unfortunate truth is that I'm sort of trapped in my situation as a result of taking too much of the freely-available student loan money.
posted by Gaz Errant at 6:37 AM on April 23, 2008

Loan debt is more important than ranking. Region of law school matters most in your job search. Don't go to a Big East law school (Harvard & Yale excepted) is you plan to look for a job in the midwest or southwest. Particularly not if you will incur big debt.

If you want to stay in New York, go to the best NY law school that accepts you AND that will leave you with the lowest loan burden when you graduate. You have no idea where you will rank in the class and no idea if you will like being a lawyer. Law school is a far bigger crap shoot than people think (and than it's advertised as being); go into as little debt as possible.

I like being a lawyer; I went to a Big East law school. My loan debt is crippling; my GPA was at the bottom top-third (not high enough for honors, basically, but high enough that I get to say "top third" of my class); I was an editor on law review; I clerked. Nonetheless, it took me four years to get hired in the midwest and my law school loans rival my mortgage payment. I would have been far better off taking the scholarship at the well-respected local law school than I was going to the top-tier nonlocal without a decent scholarship.
posted by crush-onastick at 7:08 AM on April 23, 2008 [2 favorites]

crush-onastick: I would have been far better off taking the scholarship at the well-respected local law school than I was going to the top-tier nonlocal without a decent scholarship.

I agree.
posted by ibmcginty at 7:30 AM on April 23, 2008

Congratulations on receiving such a generous scholarship!

I think that everyone will agree that you should go to the law school with the highest standing. If you can get into Harvard, then you go to Harvard, etc. On the other hand . . .

I also received a scholarship from NYLS back in 1996 when I was app'ing. I lived in Minneapolis and always wanted to live in NYC, so I applied to all of the NYC law schools. I was accepted to NYLS, Brooklyn and my hometown U of MN LS. NYLS was the first to offer me a scholarship of 20k+. Before deciding I called Brooklyn and asked if I was accepted and let it slip that I received the scholarship from NYLS. Brooklyn offered me a full academic scholarship. But then I weighed both scholarships, taking into account the amount of money I would have to borrow for living expenses and compared that to going to the U of MN, a top 20 school only one mile from my house and where it didn't cost a fortune to live. The U of MN was a much better decision based on its standing and the economics.

That said, now nine years after graduating I wish that I had gone to Brooklyn or NYLS. I totally regret not sucking it up and living in NYC for those years. At the time I was terrified of the loan debt that I would take on, but even graduating from the U of MN, which at the time cost less than 20K year to attend, I still managed to rack up nearly 100k in student loan debt. All of which I paid off within four years of graduating. Yipee for not having any student loan debt!

I do not practice big law firm law and never have. Your academic standing is more important than school standing if you're not seeking those huge, huge & large law firm associate positions. I think that quality of life is highly underrated when making these types of decisions. You have to take into account the intangibles along with the marketability of your law degree. I am in the Army and no one could give a crap what school I went to. I've deployed with Harvard grad judge advocates and they are no better than any other judge advocate. Trust me; a commander doesn't want to know what law school you went to. He wants to know what contracts can be entered into, how can this or that pot of money be spent, can a soldier be punished for this or that, is that a legal target, etc. And he wants those answers fast and accurate, not served to him on top of a law school diploma.

And yes, your legal focus will probably change while you’re in law school. Who knows, you could end up loving criminal defense or legal aid, etc. Always keep your options open, don't commit to any school based solely on the area of law that you think you will practice.

There is a MeFite who is an attorney headhunter. Perhaps she'll send you an email and give you feedback based on her position recruiting for a huge law firm.
posted by Juicylicious at 7:47 AM on April 23, 2008

2L at HYS here. There is some very good advice offered above that I won't repeat, but I'll add a few things to consider.

Many schools (though I don't know if NYLS is one of them) play fast and loose with the scholarships they award, particularly when they are based on a certain GPA cut-off. One popular tactic is to shuffle a significant portion of scholarship recipients into the same section, so as to make it more difficult for all of them to qualify for renewed scholarship come next year. Also, be very careful about assuming that you'll do well enough to maintain a certain GPA, graduate in certain percentage, etc. - if you are like most law school students, you will quickly find that amount of effort and grade results do not correlate strongly.

Do recognize that law is a very hierarchical and rankings-obsessed profession. The problem that results from that is that the starting salary is esentially a bimodal distribution (see chart). Realistically speaking, irrespective of your personal abilities as a lawyer, graduating from NYLS is substantially more likely to land you on the losing side of that distribution. Starting at a $40-60k/year salary will make paying loans a terrible burden, even if the loan amount will be mitigated somewhat by your $20k/year x 3 years scholarship.

Do try to decide now what you want to do with your law degree. You mention intellectual property law, public interest law, and administrative law. IP is a tough field to break into without a technical background even for higher-ranked schools, and is almost exclusively the province of BigLaw and IP boutique firms (two categories that may turn their nose up at NYLS graduates, again, unfairly). Public interest, however, may certainly be a viable option coming out of NYLS.

This is likely to be an unpopular piece of advice and one that you may not want to hear, but strongly reconsider retaking the LSAT, reapplying to law schools, and only attending if you get into one of the top 20 schools. (The reporting requirements for law schools have changed recently, and as a result, most schools now take the highest LSAT score rather than averaging them.) Even a fairly small increase in your LSAT score can mean a significant difference in the schools that accept you, and in the scholarships they may offer. I may be very risk-averse, but it is just a fact that once you start going outside the top 20-30 or so schools, the likelihood of obtaining a job that will make it easy to pay off your loans decreases substantially, while the total loan amount is likely to say roughly the same. Three years of your life and a hundred thousand dollars in loans is a very high price to pay, so it is not a choice that should be made rashly.

Freel free to MeFiMail me if you have any questions.
posted by detune at 8:10 AM on April 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'm about to graduate law school and had very similar choices to make three years ago. MeFiMail me if you're interested...
posted by the christopher hundreds at 8:53 AM on April 23, 2008

Keep in mind that entrance scholarships are very often lost the next year. I don't know a lot of people who managed to keep up a high enough GPA to get the money the next few years (but it's feasible, if you try).
posted by riane at 9:10 AM on April 23, 2008

Read this recent article in the Chicago Tribune. Realize that most lower-ranked schools which offer GPA-dependent scholarships tend to have strict curves which can make renewing those scholarships a roll of the dice. Realize also that everyone goes into these schools thinking that s/he'll be in the top 10%, and vowing to work as hard as possible to make that happen.

It's not a good risk.
posted by ewiar at 10:59 AM on April 23, 2008

I've never applied to law school, but did have to weigh competing scholarship offers for prep school, undergrad, and grad school. In cases, this strategy worked well: once you've gotten the acceptance letters, call up your top choice school, and explain that you've received this attractive offer. Ask 'em straight out if they can raise theirs so you can join their excellent institution.

You'd be surprised how often a financial aid offer is merely an opening bid. You want to be a lawyer. Lawyers negotiate.
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 2:18 PM on April 23, 2008

As someone who took the scholarship to attend a relatively crappy lawschool, I can safely report it's been a good choice thus far. I've just finished my 2L year and am about to be court certified so I can try cases for the local DA. I'm not a great student; I don't pay attention in lectures and I study about half as much as my classmates, if that. Yet I've had zero problem keeping my 2.9 GPA scholarship. The school I attend (Willamette) curves with an optimal distribution between 2.8 and 3.0; in other words, I have to be in the top 50 percent of my class to keep my scholarship. That hasn't been hard. After a rocky first semester, I learned how to write the way the professors want to you to write for the test, and I've been able to spend my time putting together a legal resume and volunteering for student groups instead of stressing all the time about class. (This is easy for me to say at the moment because I finished my last final 4 hours ago. I might have had a different tone last night at 1 a.m.)

I'll probably graduate with something in the vicinity of a $70,000 debt - the scholarship paid 3/5's tuition (yours sounds like it covers 80 percent or so), but with cost of living and the remaining tuition, costs add up quickly. I will obviously be somewhat restricted in where I can work because of the school I attended, and because I'm just barely in the top third instead of top 5 or 10 percent like my wiser peers. Yet I've received great practical experience so far, and I am generally impressed with the quality of my instructors. The school has great contacts with the legal profession and I have no doubt I'll land a job that i really want without much difficulty. It won't be a six-figure job, but I'm not a six-figure person. I have a peer who transferred to University of Oregon for their environmental law program - it's a top 10 program, even if UO isn't a top 10 school. He says the quality of instruction or students doesn't vary much, and the classes are basically the same.

You probably know this and other people have said this, but the only reason to go to a better law school is a better shot at that initial job. Your education will probably be similar, and you'll have to work harder at the better law schools to achieve the same % class ranking. I doubt people will care where you went to law school once you're a few years out, unless you're trying to go the professor route.

Also, nakedcodemonkey has a good point. You probably should try to negotiate. Get acceptance letters from a few other places, take them in to the law school admissions office and tell them you'd like more money. They probably have a few thousand they can throw your way if you're nice about it.
posted by Happydaz at 2:44 PM on April 23, 2008

I got a full scholarship to a smaller, less known institution in the midwest - it would have put me through law school for free. I ended up going to NYU Law instead with a relatively small scholarship and am happy with the decision. It would have been nearly impossible for me to land the job I did in NYC out of the smaller midwest school. Rankings are rediculously important in the legal field, both for Biglaw positions and in many of the more prestigious jobs in the public sector. I think that roughly speaking, the more prestigious or well paying the job, the more rankings conscious the employer will be. And yes, where you go to school will matter years and years down the line - people will still put that they were on law review on their web pages, and someone with a Harvard pedigree will get more automatic respect in the legal community than someone from NYLS.

If you don't care about prestigious or high-paying jobs, and don't mind the possibility of not finding a job at all (depending on the market when you exit school), then going to the least expensive school makes sense. Had I done so, it probably would have been more of a relaxing experience, because my experience at NYU was that you are thrown in with a bunch of over-achievers and have to learn to cope with not being the most ambitious person in the room anymore. That's good in some ways, but it is also stressful at the time. Then again, finding a job would have been stressful had I gone to a less known school. Note that rankings are so ingrained in me now that I almost typed "lesser school." Going to a less known school could also make sense if you want to go to law school for the experience, and are not set on being a lawyer, because people outside of the legal profession might not know the rankings or care so much (but I don't know that, it just seems reasonable to me).

Another consideration is that I see people who went into law school seeking a high paying job who come out, get that job, dislike it, but feel they have to stick with it until they are out of debt. The whole legal education experience becomes a trap for those who don't really like being a lawyer and can't see another line of work in which to make enough money to pay off their debts. So, if you want a lot of flexibility coming out of law school, going to the less expensive choice really could be best - otherwise, you might just have to take the highest paying job you can find, and it can almost become an indentured servitude kind of a situation, where you'd rather do something that someone without crushing debt could do and make a living at, but must spend your time at a higher paying job that you might not like instead.
posted by lorrer at 8:12 AM on April 25, 2008