Interesting link below. It is a ranking based exclusively on the "prestige" of the law school. Look how Yale, Harvard and Stanford are way ahead the others. Also interesting is to see UC Berkeley in a much better place and NYU in #10. I would like to know your thoughts on that ranking?

http://www.prelawhandbook.com/law_school_rankings__prestigious

Best,

paul

Haven t contributed in a while so here are my thoughts.

I do believe that for corporate law the 2 best programs are Harvard and Columbia. In Harvard you have Bebchuk, Ferrel, Powell, Roe and a greater number of the leading edge corporate academics than anywhere else. I
In Columbia, take a look at the leading casebooks in US Law. These are the books you are going to spend HOURS AND HOURS READING AND WORKING ON:
securities: coffee, he is at Columbia
corporations: Coffee and Eisenberg ie the authors of 2 out of the 3 classic corporations books teach at Columbia. Milhaupt and Goshen who are amazing teachers are also at Columbia.
law and finance of corporate acquisitions (IE M&A)(06 Ed): Gordon and Gilson (2 of 3),
Antitrust: Goldschmid dito.
Same in Administrative Law.
In Bankruptcy you actually get the lawyers who represented Enron to teach you bankruptcy. What more can you say? If you want to study US corporate or securities law I find it hard to believe that any school is going to beat Columbia.
Big program/small program: In my view its a minor consideration. You are going to make many friends wherever you go.

Good luck!

Ok Bloogs, this is my reply to you.

I have two friends: one went to Stanford last year and another one went to Columbia a couple of years ago. Both took classes with Gilson. My friend at Stanford was in a class of 20 students (2 LLMs), became Gilson's friend and apparently not only him but all other LLMs became very close to faculty (who even helped them to get jobs in law firms). My friend who went to Columbia had classes in auditoriums with 80+ students (more than 35 LLMs three of them from his nationality) and had very few contact with Coffee and Gilson throughout the year. That is why I think size does matter.

We are only staying for 1 year so there is a limited amount of credits that we can take. If you are a corporate lawyer, you will probably take kmarkets, corporations, M&A and maybe 1 or 2 other corporate/finance courses (I think it is a good idea to take an elective at the business department). I really don't care if the university offers 5 corporations classes with different professors. Actually I would be afraid of not getting the professor I want. Do all the LLMs got into Coffee's class?

I am afraid I am becoming a "persona non grata" at Columbia...Don't take me wrong, I love the school, just disagree that size is not important. I wish Columbia had a smaller program.

hi

i hope i m not interupting your conversation but did anyone receive the last email that they said they would send to confirm the date of the decision?

you all compare harvard to chicago, columbia,etc but why doesn't anyone compare it with berkeley. it is the best public univ. i was just wondering what is the cause to berkeley's rankings to go from as low as around the 20th to as high as the top.

Berkeley is a great school. But you cannot compare it with Harvard, Stanford and Columbia. That's all.

i have no argue towards HLS and SLS being better but i personaly don't think columbia is that much better than berkeley. the US news might have berkeley down really low but the shanghai and the english times has it ranked rather highly.

anyway did you guys receive the email that HLS said they would send once they know when the decision would be made? is the big day 17 or 20 or 24?? if u know let me know too!! thanks

The big day? No one knows...no one knows...
in the last email I got from them, they said it should be sometime in the week of 20-24 of March...so I guess we can forget about 17.

I know Stanford is doing phone interviews. My guess is that both schools (HLS and SLS) will send their decisions in the week of the 20.

Berkeley is great! Reputation wise Berkeley ranks very high in the US News ranking (same as Columbia I think).

Paul, do you know is SLS has started doing phone-interviews? I heard that they were not holding interviews this year and that they were just going to announce decisions. Has anyone been interviewed by SLS? Thanks!

Being from the West Coast, I like Stanford and Berkeley. (California is a lot of fun.) However, for international law, your best options are Columbia, NYU, Georgetown and Harvard. The first three have many connections to international organizations in NY and DC. The most obvious reason is that international law - public and private - occurs in these cities (not Palo Alto). Harvard does have a name and thus for JD students admitted to both Harvard and Columbia, its a 2/3 - 1/3 split. Those interested in international law go to Columbia. Given the high quality of all of these schools, you might want to consider other factors such as where to live (do you really want to live in New Haven?).

I cannot agree more. But I think it is fair to say that the vast majority of Columbia students who are corporate lawyers take courses from the following list:

1. Corporations
2. Securities
3. M&A
4. Deals
5. Corporate Governance Colloquium
6. Contracts
7. Corporate Finance

These courses are also available at Stanford and at other "less international" schools. You may have electives at Columbia on "doing business in China" but this courses are also available at Wharton, Stanford GSB, etc. So my point is, for a corporate lawyer (who wants to understand US law, sit for the bar and practice a couple of years in the US), does it make sense to go to a more international school like Georgetown, NYU and Columbia, if he is accepted to Yale or Stanford?

If you want to do corporate work, my vote would be no to Georgetown and no to Yale. I think Columbia, Stanford, NYU and Harvard are all close in terms of corporate law. You should also consider Chicago as well.

Columbia and NYU do have the advantage of being in NY where many major corporations are headquartered (even if incorporated in Delaware).

Do law schools permit LLMs to take an MBA class or two? If so, that should be factored into the dynamic.