Law Schools

While The Grass Can Be Greener On The Other Side, It Can Also Be Brown

Armed with strong 1L transcripts, scores of students will now be seeking to transfer to other law schools.

By Nicholas Alexiou on June 21, 2018 3:54 pm

‘Yesssss! We got in!’

With summer now officially upon us, law students across the country are (or at least should) balancing their summer positions with preparations for the Fall interview cycle.  But for a portion of the law student population, the question is not which employers they will interview with, but at what school those interviews will take place. That’s right, it is transfer season.  While college football recently reformed its archaic transfer rules to allow greater freedom of movement for “student athletes,” a similar shift is unnecessary in the already open season of law school transfers — a situation I can speak to personally, having spent 1L on the shore of Lake Michigan at Northwestern before transferring to NYU.

Armed with strong 1L transcripts, scores of students will seek to transfer, seeing it as an opportunity to: earn a degree from a more prestigious law school, go to/return to a geographic market in which they want to practice, or abandon a city in which you suffer through sub-zero temperatures for nine months for the opportunity to eat pizza where the sauce is on top.  Granted, the universality of that last reason is limited.

In the pre-recession legal economy, the decision to transfer was rarely questioned, especially if the school to which one was transferring was higher ranked.  Even if it would cost students more money — which it often did since scholarships were more limited in general, and likely nonexistent for transfers — the thought was said debt would be more than paid off with a Biglaw job that was more likely to be obtained from the more renowned school.  That calculus is much different in 2018, as transferring can end up costing a student $100,000+ with a Biglaw job still possibly out of reach.

If you are a current law student who is considering transferring, one of the most important things to consider is what your employment opportunities will look like at your new school.  This is not merely limited to the types of jobs that graduates from the new school obtain, though that is obviously critical, but the extent to which you will be able to take advantage of the new school’s institutional opportunities.  When I was going through the transfer process, I first found out I had been accepted to NYU not from the Office of Admissions, but rather from Career Services who wanted to make sure I was registered for Early Interview Week (the NYU term for OCI).  Orientation was a two-day affair which was followed immediately by EIW.  And this rapid transition was during a time in which on-campus interviewing was a relatively structured affair that took place entirely in mid to late August.  As has been mentioned before in this column, the fall recruiting cycle continues to push further and further into the summer.  Not only are OCI interviews starting earlier than in years past, but pre-OCI opportunities continue to grow at a seemingly exponential pace.  Job fairs have already started across the country, with more set to take place in July and August, while a number of employers have already reached out directly to law schools soliciting applications for 2019 Summer Associates.  The dilemma for transfer students is obvious.  If your rationale for transferring is based on greater employment opportunities, what happens if many of those opportunities have already expired by the time you get on campus?

An additional potential issue stems from the applicability of your old grades to your new school.  Not surprisingly, the vast majority of transfer students performed remarkably well academically during their first year of law school.  And while 1L grades are extremely important in the 2L summer associate hiring process, the importance stems from how they allow legal employers (especially law firms) to sort students and make predictions about who will be the best attorneys after graduation, as the entirety of the legal recruiting process is about projecting future legal acumen based on extraordinarily limited information.  But if the perceived gap in school reputation/student quality is sizeable enough, it can render your 1L grades moot.  A legal employer might think, “sure you were able to get a 3.9 at School X, but how would you have fared had you been here at School Y.”  Thus, you still might not get an interview with particular employers, even though you meet the GPA threshold, because said employers are using the standards they employ for students from your previous school, rather than the one you now attend.

However, this is not to say that transferring is a bad idea.  Going to a higher ranked school can open up more employment opportunities and, especially, clerkship options.  Transferring to a school in the geographic area where you want to practice can provide you with an invaluable alumni network and the opportunity to get hands on experience via clinics and externships with attorneys who will soon be your peers and who are uniquely situated to give you a job.  For those current law students who do decide to transfer, perhaps the single most important piece of advice I can give you is be prepared to explain why.  When going through my EIW interviews more than a decade ago, the single most frequently asked question, which was often the first thing out of the interviewer’s mouth, was why I decided to leave Northwestern for NYU.  If you are moving to a school that is perceived to be at a similar level of the school you just left, questions will center around why you would uproot your life for a minor improvement in opportunity.  A large gap in school reputation will engender questions about whether your 1L performance is sustainable.  A new geographic area will have employers asking if your desire to practice there is possibly subject to another changing whim.  Be prepared to answer these questions early and often.

This column has focused on the impact of transferring from an employment perspective, but there are other factors that are worth considering as well.  As all law students/graduates can attest, there is a true bond that develops among a class during the rigors of 1L and that strong connection can make it difficult for outsiders to integrate themselves.  Not to mention the psychology of leaving behind your classmates with whom you developed a bond during your first year.  But while transferring is not the clear cut move it might have been a decade ago, if the circumstances are right, it can be a life-changing decision.  Indeed, while I missed my Chicago friends and the comradery of Northwestern Law Class of 2008, transferring to NYU was one of the single best decisions, both professionally and personally, I have ever made.

Nicholas Alexiou is the Director of LL.M. and Alumni Advising as well as the Associate Director of Career Services at Vanderbilt University Law School. He will, hopefully, respond to your emails at [email protected].