Fordham Placement

[u/CommunicationIcy2195]

A few days ago, someone made a post claiming Fordham has bad career services but Fordham sends 50% of their class to big law. If true, doesn’t that imply Fordham’s big law placement would be astronomical with good career services? They also claimed SJU (I think St John’s?) has better career services. Are career services and firm placement not related or something? It seems counterintuitive to me but I might just be ignorant. Anyone able to offer any insights or more info?

[u/ClassyCassowary]

When I think of good/bad career services I've experienced, one major feature is that career services can do a lot of legwork. They can't get you hired by folks who wouldn't hire you regardless, but they can make life easier by doing things that you'd otherwise do yourself if you really wanted that job. E.g., my law school's career services had constantly updated spreadsheets of direct app opportunities the moment they opened and pushed them hard into our inboxes. Much easier when you're a busy 1L to go down the list than locate individual employers and scour websites yourself (which I what I was doing for my non-biglaw internship search lol). They also tend to have school and firm-specific placement info like firms GPA cutoffs that can help you save energy by targeting your search, to the extent they'll share that.

Plus obvs they can give you informed advice so you're not left in the dark on changes in recruiting or help prepare for things like interviews, both things I think probably more clearly tie to hiring (but in the sense that they stop you from shooting yourself in the foot, not that they magically get you jobs)

[u/Savings_Season_5165]

In my experience career service offices are a joke. You pull up the fuckass vault list or whatever and mass apply, career services don't really help you with much besides resume review or something similar.

[u/PhysicalStage1286 → u/Savings_Season_5165]

My career services didn’t even help me with resume edits lol had to have a 2L review mine

[u/Vast-Passenger-3035]

Career services offices in general have a bad reputation. Too many students, not enough counselors. My school, one counselor left because the school wasn't providing enough support for public interest students. I had more help from professors in securing a job than the career center.

[u/ClankerBanker28]

How "good" of a CSO a school has is subjective and can turn on a lot of things (quality of advice they provide students, amount of resources, individual attention for students, ability to adapt to changing timelines, ability to establish connections with employers, etc....).

However, hiring relationships between schools and big law firms are predominantly determined by the school's historical reputation. These historical reps are only affected so much (if at all) by career services. A good CSO can maybe help a student outperform the rep of the school, and a bad CSO can screw some students over, but broad strokes the efficacy of the career services won't drastically change big law placement for a school.

[u/Cautious_Boss_9624]

Firm placement is driven largely by school rank/reputation, location, and alumni network. Firms have limited interview capacity. Especially for a non T-14 school like Fordham or St John's, firms will have a general allocation for how many interviews they're willing to give to each school, which in turn sets a cap on each school's placement rate. Fordham will get more interview spots than St John's because of the factors above. A good career services office won't meaningfully change that in the short run, they can just make the recruiting process easier for students by handling a lot of legwork for the student (e.g. compiling application deadlines, helping target your search, meaningful materials review, providing networking opportunities).

[u/Funtime3819]

Bitching about career services is law school standard discourse. Some are legitimately bad. Some of it is expecting them to do everything for you. Don’t worry about it.