Choosing Schools: Geography

Mike Stone

Thoughts of the day:

Had a phone call last night with a close college friend who is very business minded. We discussed my current standing with LSAT prep. I confidently believe I'm on pace to get into some pretty awesome schools (top 30). My favorites are constantly changing, but these days my eye is on Arizona State University. They have a sport law concentration (I majored in sport management at UMass for undergrad), and their law school is in downtown Phoenix (30min from main campus in Tempe). Everything about their program sounds phenomenal, and right up my alley. With 18 pro teams in Cali and 4 in AZ, I feel like my networking potential is evident.

My "fear the fork" fantasies have been limitless, until the phone call. In summation, my friend made me aware that if I go to law school on the west coast, I will likely struggle to find a job on the east coast where I'm from. (I live in NY now, would ideally love to move to Boston after school, but I would really like to go south for school.)

My questions boil down like this. Does it make sense to go far away to school (AZ, Cali, TX, Georgia, Florida), if I would like to live in Boston? Or should I stop being a snow-pansy and establish myself at BU/BC/Northeastern?
Bottom Line: How easy is it to find a job on the opposite coast of the school you attend???

I know this was wordy, sorry, I'm in borderline panic mode after last night's deflating conversation.

nicole.hopkins

@Pacifico , paging pac-daddy ...

Outside of the T14, it's better to go to a school in the region in which you want to settle. That's the rule of thumb.

I would not go to UTex (#15 and still has plenty of reach outside of TX/the South), for instance, if you want to do sports law (I haven't heard anything about that kind of concentration there, nor about many atty's coming out of UT with that specialty, but my knowledge is limited by my own interests/focus in research) outside of TX/north of the Mason-Dixon. They're not known for sports/entertainment law to my knowledge, and while UTex is "The Harvard of the South," it's not the Harvard of the North. And if you don't want to end up in the South ... well ... Maybe you shouldn't put too many of your eggs in our lovely basket.

But if I wanted to do O&G law, that UT degree would likely put me in an excellent position anywhere in the country (anywhere there's oil/gas, that is).

It might be the case that ASU has that kind of strong speciality that would apply outside of the region as well.

Mike Stone

TX officially off the list lol. I hadn't done my research on it yet, I only had it on thus far bc I've heard good things. Done.

What do you mean about ASU "that would apply outside the region as well?" Are you saying that it might be strong enough of a sport law program that it would be okay to go outside the region where I'd like to settle (Boston)?

nicole.hopkins

@"Mike Stone" said:
Are you saying that it might be strong enough of a sport law program that it would be okay to go outside the region where I'd like to settle (Boston)?

Might be (thus the O&G analogy). I don't know. You gotta keep in mind that UT is #15 and ASU is #26 or so, so that might also affect portability. I could be wrong. That's why you should research this if you're interested. And bug @Pacifico as much as possible.

Perhaps also check out: http://law-schools.startclass.com/d/c/Entertainment-Law

Etc. Site has lots of things.

nicole.hopkins

And check this out ... https://uttresl.wordpress.com/

olepueblo

I live near phoenix. Downtown phoenix sucks. Phoenix sucks in general. Then again, I'm as biased as they come.

leonsmoney

ASU is the school I'm targeting. I'm an AZ resident. I toured the campus in February. The brand new campus in downtown Phoenix is set to open fall of 2016. It looks amazing. I've never lived in Phoenix but I know it's not one of the nicer cities. They just put in a new mass transit monorail system, which I'm sure will drop you off close to the school, facilitating the ability to live in a nicer area and not have to deal with the traffic. Good luck to you!

Mike Stone

@swamlepow @leonsmoney Alright let me take one small sidestep and throw out (to anybody) why does Phoenix suck?? Traffic doesn't really phase me as a New Yorker. My people either drive 12 or 120, and lanes are suggestions.

@nicole.hopkins thank you for those links. I'll check the second one out shortly. That first one though, I couldn't tell if it was a reliable website. Sometimes I do pretty basic searches and it comes back with results of only 4 schools... But if you say it's good I'll take your word for it. 7Sage hasn't steered me wrong yet. I love this website/course/discussion. Thank you so much.

@Pacifico you've been summoned. Please, I would love to hear any insight.

Pacifico

Sorry I didn't respond to all these notifications sooner, I was out of town for a wedding.

So you have a few factors in play here. I think both sports and entertainment are areas in which networking is the most important factor and greatly outweigh any school's super awesome sports law concentration, whatever each particular school may mean by that. Furthermore, they are very popular fields with lots of awesome jobs that nobody gets straight out of law school. So forget the sports law programs and go somewhere that will actually give you the right opportunities.

In general, if you want to go to a specific city to work, you either go to school in that city or have strong ties there already. The caveat to this is that the further removed you are from the T14, the stronger those ties need to be. But I think that sports and entertainment change that dynamic a little bit. The networking advantage is so big that I think it really means those regional schools in other cities are not worth it. So if you only want Boston then I would say just go to any T14 or go to school in Boston.

Imagine all of the contacts in the Boston area that you could make in 3 years at BC or BU. If I were you I'd rather spend my spare time making connections in the industry where I want to work rather than being halfway across the country in an awesome sports law program.

Furthermore, if you go to a school with a good sports law program like ASU I feel like you're just going to end up in direct competition with all those other people who can for that reason and you would have no real advantages. In my opinion if you went to school in Boston and studied as much transactional law as possible with a little litigation mixed in then, and networked your ass off, then you would beat out those ASU kids all the time.

To caveat off of my point about not going to regional schools outside Boston, I would make an exception for schools with good to great big law outcomes. In my opinion the best route to get into sports is to go big law and do anything remotely resembling sports law and then lateral out to a team or other sports related organization. So you could go to somewhere like Fordham, get NY or Boston big law, and then go get into the Boston sports scene after a few years in the suck.

nicole.hopkins

@"Mike Stone" said:
Sometimes I do pretty basic searches and it comes back with results of only 4 schools...

It's just a tool for comparison—not a replacement for research.

nicole.hopkins

@Pacifico said:
If I were you I'd rather spend my spare time making connections in the industry where I want to work rather than being halfway across the country in an awesome sports law program.

This is why he's the man! Well, one reason.

leonsmoney

@"Mike Stone" I don't think Phoenix sucks. Its just not one of the nicer cities in Arizona. I personally like the Gilbert/Chandler areas to live. They've got a gang/drug problem in Phoenix but I believe that's more on the outskirts of Phoenix. The campus is downtown which is where all the action is. I'm old and hate traffic. I also have a 10 year old son, so living near a great school for him with as low of crime rate as possible is what's important to me. That's why I personally wouldn't want to live in Phoenix. Hearing that you're from New York, Phoenix is probably like Mister Roger's neighborhood compared to what you're used to. LOL I've spent the last 5 years living in Okinawa, Japan, so every city in America seems like it could be on an episode of gangland undercover compared to this place. I guess lastly, It's still the school I believe I am going to attend so none of the factors about Phoenix I mentioned are a big enough deterrent to sway me away... Cheers

Mike Stone

@leonsmoney @nicole.hopkins @Pacifico
All of you guys, this is amazing insight. I hope other 7sagers can read this and interpret analogously, because I feel a bit selfish and spoiled by all of you. Honestly, can't thank you enough for the multitude of detail. PS -- Pacifico, sorry to blow up your Sage while you were at a wedding! Hope you had a good time.

I don't know that I'll have the grades for T14. Naturally, I'm going to try. My UGPA was 3.34, so I'm really going to have to powerhouse this Dec LSAT (feeling a retake in Feb no matter what because I don't see how it can hurt). But assuming I'm not accepted into a T14, I guess BU and BC just jumped up quite a bit in my prospect list.

Next thought I'm now having though is this. How far geographically does this rule of thumb apply? I mean UNC or UGeorgia are also on my radar, but if that's just as bad (or almost as bad), I don't want to waste time or money on those apps either....

Pacifico, since you seem to have a strong knowledge of sport/ent law, what non-sport/ent concentration might you compare it to? I've heard mixed reviews including Intellectual Property, Trademark/Copyright/Patent (which sounds painstakingly boring, but I honestly don't know much about it), and litigation. Plus, now you've added transactional law.... Wish I had more time to do research thoroughly, but I'm 2 months to test day and scrambling accordingly. I'm about to quit my job tomorrow or Monday to focus on this 100%.