여기에 이런 저런 의견들이 너무 많아서 로스쿨 -> 로펌 테크에 관한 팩트만 정리해 드리려고 씁니다. 현재 빅로 corporate & securities practice 하는 4년차이고 로스쿨은 T14 중 한 곳 나왔습니다. 로스쿨 어드미션은 잘 모르지만 로펌 hiring에 관해서는 꽤 디테일하게 알고있습니다.
Admissions to Law School
로스쿨은 아직도 numbers game. Although, for Asians, your numbers need to be pretty high (although this has been true in prior years as well).
코로나 이후 많이 바꼈을수도 있는데, in a normal cycle, here's the "safe" cut off (obviously there will be outliers, but this is based on sampling from my class year + people I've talked to after my class year):
T14 (Michigan, Northwestern, Cornell, Georgetown (UCLA/UT Austin now... I guess)): GPA 3.8+, LSAT 168+
T10 (Penn, Berkeley, Virginia, Duke): GPA 3.8+, LSAT 170+
T6 (HYSCCN): GPA 3.8+, LSAT 171+ for CCN, LSAT 174+ for Harvard and Stanford, LSAT 176+ for Yale
Once your GPA is above 3.8, it doesn't really matter whether it's 3.99 or 3.82.
There is a trend that if you're from an Ivy League (or its equivalent), your LSAT can be slightly lower (for example, for Harvard, you'll need 175 if you did undergrad in Korea, but 173 might do if you went to an Ivy League and had a GPA of 3.8+ (and possibly have been inducted to Phi Beta Kappa, etc.)
OCI Process
Once you go to law school, your first year GPA matters above all else. DO WELL. It's like an insurance.
Get a solid legal job during the summer. It doesn't have to be working for the government or for a legal department in a Fortune 500 company. But make sure it's in the states. DON'T do Kim & Chang or Lee & Ko or other big Korean law firms unless you're in HYS. I'm telling you out of what I've seen. People at T10 have been pushed off the pile because it looks as if they are not serious about staying in the states/big law.
One thing to add--practice interviewing. I've personally had to cross off some candidates with average/passable grades because they could not deliver a strong interview. Practice looking confident and speaking confidently. Practice looking ENGAGED and EXCITED. This is so important that I cannot stress enough. You have 20 minutes to show who you are beyond the resume/transcript. Note that when I give a candidate a call back, people in my law firm will ask, "who was your screener?" We talk about you after they're done with their interview. Obviously when they really liked you, our conversations involve something like "XYZ was awesome. Yeah, we really need him in corporate."
One thing I want to highlight - we are NOT given your status information during OCI. And I don't think our recruiting department ever thinks about a candidate's foreign status. It's possible that we don't care because we have the option to transfer you to another office in London or Hong Kong if you don't get the lottery. But it's not given any weight in comparison to your law school GPA and how you come across on the interviews.