Law schools do not specialize between practices. Go to the best school you can afford and get into, and then do well. You’ll choose a practice area your 2L SA or, at worst, after you pass the bar.
Presuming money is not a concern (for whatever reason), I would rank order your options:
Yale
NYU
Stanford/Harvard
As others have said above, you really don’t specialize that much in law school, most of your specialization will be through summer work, clinics, and after you graduate. Plus, you never know what you might be interested in in 3 years.
That being said, NYU’s PI programs are worth considering when comparing against H/S. But Yale is a shortcut to success. You can do whatever you want afterwards; every door will be open to you in a way that is meaningfully beyond the opportunities you will have coming out of H/S.
As others have said OP should go wherever the money is. I suspect this is NYU depending on the size of the HYS packages.
At equal price I would disagree with the quoted ordering. The difference between Yale and other schools isnt that it opens more/different doors, its that Yale has greater placement power into top opportunities. Labor law isnt the most difficult field to crack and OP is almost sure to get a good job out of any of these schools. The only difference in outcomes would be if OP wanted a selective post-grad PI fellowship, a high-visibility nonprofit, a top litigation boutique, or a competitive fedgov positions. In these categories Harvard and Stanford out-place NYU.
What about it? That thread doesnt provide per capita statistics for Skadden fellows. Raw numbers are good for considering a school’s cultural commitment to PI but not good for assessing placement power into selective opportunities. Plus even if you look at raw numbers my statement is still correct.
Please show how you arrived at your per capita analysis. After that, we can debate whether using Skadden fellow per capita placement rates illustrates whether Yale has a significant advantage over, say, NYU.
“E.g. Skadden Fellows / class size (http://abovethelaw.com/2016/12/congratu … fellows/2/)”
As the title suggests, I took the number of Skadden fellows… and divided by class size.
I dont pretend this metric is anything more than one example. However I am somewhat surprised that this proposition is controversial.
NYU is top-flight law school and has an especially good PI reputation. If it ends up offering more money it is likely OP’s best choice. That doesnt mean HYS grads wont overall have an easier time getting certain highly coveted positions.
I think it’s controversial to argue that Yale has a significant placement power advantage over NYU. If that’s not what you’re proposing then I withdraw my criticism. In addition, Skadden is a shitty metric of placement power alone because Skadden just chooses who to fund, not who gets offers. You have to have an offer in hand before even applying to Skadden. Furthermore, Skadden, like their SA hiring, places greater emphasis on biglaw hiring metric (i.e., school rank) than funders like EJW. Skadden shouldn’t be used to demonstrate placement power alone.
Also, once you’re in the T6-range of schools, PI hiring becomes so idiosyncratic that it’s impossible to say with any certainty which has the best placement power.
I dont see how its relevant that Skadden is a funding source and not a job- its a funding source that many people want and few get. Generic non-paying PI jobs are a dime-a-dozen. EJW does seem to be a bit less snobby about school ranking but only a bit, and when the total number of positions between the two programs are combined HYS still wins in per capita placement. This gap may be even bigger once self-selection is accounted for (because more NYU students target PI it would make sense that they have more candidates applying).
Ultimately you are right that PI tends to be idosyncratic. Im referring to only a small selection of opportunities (including impact litigation boutiques and government work) where Yale seems to have a material edge. NYU is a truly top-flight school for PI.
I disagree that Yale has a material edge in impact litigation boutiques when comparing with NYU. Anecdotal, but I work in impact lit and there’s not that many Yalies. At my organization, there’s two Berkeley, three Harvard, one CLS, two NYU, two Northwestern, one Michigan. Ime, Yale has no significant advantage