lawyer

#University of Michigan Law School

Ratings Rankings

What do these ratings mean?

from Brian Dalton, Breaking Media Director of Research

The ATL School and Firm Insiders Survey asks self-identified current students, alumni, and practicing lawyers to rate major aspects of life at their law school (academics, social life, clinical training, career services, financial aid advising) and/or law firm (compensation, hours, morale, culture, training). We then translate these ratings into letter grades, where the mean score for each particular ratings category is the equivalent of a “B.”

Employment

Insider Reviews

Alumni

Great faculty. Fantastic fellow students. Fair balance between academic and practical.

If you can t get into HYS, it s a very strong choice. Great faculty, relatively pleasant students, nice town, and much less back-biting than CCN. Once you re there, the most important thing to do is to get a position as a graduate student instructor at the undergrad college you teach or grade (much, much less than) 20h/wk, they pay your entire tuition and give you health insurance and $8k/semester in stipend. Doesn t even have to be the department in which you majored any humanity/social science will do. Humungous, loyal alumni base. You ll get used to the cold it s warmer than Chicago.

Michigan is a great place to go to law school. The students are smart and generally laid back and most of the faculty really cares about students. And three years in Ann Arbor can be fantastic. But all potential applicants need to really do their homework about law school debt. It is not clear that any top law school (Michigan, Penn, UVA, Chicago, Harvard etc ) is worth the current price. Yale may be the exception because of its generous LRAP program. Ultimately applicants need to understand that there are far fewer law firm jobs available and competition for public service is equally fierce. All of which means that the decision to go to law school should be carefully made.

Michigan was a great place to go to law school. I m not sure the question about practical/clinical training for the practice of law school is a fair one because that s not really what any law schools do. Maybe it s what they should do, but that s not how the field is oriented. Still, Michigan does a good job on this front and has an excellent array of clinical offers and practical classes. You can only learn so much in an academic setting no matter how practical the curriculum is.

The problem with Michigan Law School is that it s located in Michigan. If you want to, say, be a Silicon Valley corporate lawyer, Berkeley and Stanford (obviously) but also Hastings or Santa Clara even, may be better choices, because you can spend three years imbibing the culture. At MIchigan, there is no local flavor that is of any use to anyone outside of Michigan. Who really cares if Ford s fourth assistant GC for trademark protection comes to speak at a panel?

Unless you have good grades and are interested in pursuing a career in Big Law the career services folks are of little to no help.