in praise of cleveland and case

i encourage law-students-to-be to give cleveland, and particularly case western, a good look, on grounds such as the following:

- cleveland is a large legal market that is comparatively underserved by regional law schools; it's also not considered a choice destination by graduates of the national schools. in other words, graduates of cleveland-area law schools face less competition for local jobs than do graduates of comparable schools in comparable legal markets.

- salaries for legal jobs in cleveland are not much lower than in large markets like new york, washington or LA, but the cost of living is much lower.

- scholarships at case western have some of the most generous conditions on renewability that i've encountered. they are typically renewable if your grades are over 2.33 - in other words, if you're not at the very bottom of the class. this is on a curve with a roughly 3.10 median and 2.70 75% percentile in 1st year (and presumably somewhat higher in upper years).

this article talks about how cleveland is an awesome city to live in. the basic arguments are valid, but it overstates the case by not including some of cleveland's drawbacks, such as: it's the poorest big city in the U.S. by one popular measure.

this other article supports my case too.