ambivalent comment

Hm. I think I attend one of the schools you're attending and I'll first say: Give many extra points to the school located in the place you think you're mostly like to want to stay upon graduation. You'll make connections and learn the legal job landscape in the area where you go to school, so it will be easier to start your career there, but if you're going to school in a place you don't want to stay, all that benefit will be wasted. Plus, lots of legal employers prefer to hire from local or area schools, so if you're in law school where you want to work, you get that advantage, too.

About the faculty-student relationship: At GW, I think it's ok. Not great, but not generally super-distant. It depends on you and on the professor, but all profs have office hours and my experience has been that they're happy to see you during office hours. Nearly all are also happy to talk w/you after class. Many many are involved in one student organization or another, either as the faculty liason or just as someone who supports the organization and attends its functions. I don't think there are many profs who attend social events that aren't “official” in some way -- I mean, I don't hear about profs showing up at bars frequented by students or anything, but who knows? I'm not really in the know for things like that. A good number of profs (maybe 20-30, I'm guessing) attended the recent “Law Revue” -- a sort of talent show/satirical sendup of the school and faculty. To me that shows that many of them are good sports and don't take themselves too seriously, which is good.

So the deal is that if you like a prof and the subject he/she teaches, and you visit office hours frequently, you can have a good and fairly close relationship w/a prof and get good references, etc. My experience in this regard has been generally good, but then, I'm probably not a good person to ask b/c this has never been very important to me.

Sorry, I feel like I just told you nothing...