[Adapted from previous years-- Ed.] Grades are being released at law schools around the country, and I thought I would offer some some comments about grades for our many law student readers (especially 1Ls). I wanted to address two questions: First, how important are first-year grades, and second, are law school grades random?
I’ll start with a few thoughts on the importance of 1L grades. Yes, 1L grades ordinarily are very important in the short term. There are so many law students and so many employers that employers tend to rely on proxies to to determine which law students will make the best attorneys. The most obvious proxies are an applicant’s school and GPA, largely because there isn’t much else to go on when the applicant is only a student. The basic problem is limited information. Employers need an easy way to screen candidates down to a small enough group to interview, and the school/GPA combo is a quick and easy screen. Different employers look for different combos: some employers favor school A over school B, others B over A (generally depending on whether big shots at the firm went to school A or B). And some employers focus more on grades than others. In general, though, the school/GPA combo is used as a sorting mechanism by legal employers hiring people out of law school.
With that said, I suspect that fall 1L exam grades are often less important than people think. This is true for two main reasons. First, lots of people find that their first-semester grades are pretty different from their later semester grades. It takes some students more time than others to get “the game” of how to answer a law school exam question, and when they do their grades go way up. that certainly was true fr me. Second, your law school GPA is less important — and in many cases, completely irrelevant — after your first job. Once you’re out of school for a bit, people care whether you are a good attorney, not your law school GPA.
Finally, it’s important not to let lower-than-expected grades become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Recognize the psychological game going on here: many students expect their fall 1L grades to give them a lightning bolt of insight about their future in the legal profession. Too many students think that grades are destiny, and begin to take steps to readjust their expectations to what they think is their destiny. A student who gets a B+ in Torts and a B in Contracts just might think to herself, “Well, maybe I should practice tort law, because I’m better at that.” Some students react to the sting of lower-than-expected grades by tuning out, by deciding law is dumb, and by concluding that they just aren’t good at it.
I urge students not to take that path. All grades do is measure how well you did relative to your classmates on a few 3-hour exams taken at a particular place at a particular time. They’re a snapshot of the judgment of one particular professor, rather than a Scarlet Letter sewn on for life that reflect your ability in that field. (I say that as someone who earned a B+ in his fall 1L Criminal Law & Procedure course and now teaches and writes in the field.)
Plus, a negative attitude only makes it less likely your grades will improve. If you tune out, you’ll only make it more likely that you won’t do as well as you should next time. My advice is to stick with it: Get your old exams back, review them, and make sure you know what you did wrong. Then have faith in yourself and your smarts that you can improve your grades in the spring.
Okay, on to the next question: Are law school grades random? Many students think so. They usually reach this conclusion after getting back their grades, and finding that they had better grades in the classes they hated and expected to fail than in the classes they loved and expected to ace. There’s no rhyme or reason to these silly letters, the thinking goes.
Not quite. To be sure, grades are at least a little bit random. For example, different professors have different approaches when they grade. Some pore over exams for hours, others read them pretty quickly. Some use a point system that gives you credit for mentioning an argument, others focus more on how skillfully you make the arguments. Some take off points for incorrect answers, others just don’t add any. Some care about how well you write, others don’t. Plus, it is by nature extremely difficult (if not impossible) to turn essay exams into a reliable and objective numerical score that accurately measures legal ability. The process requires judgment, judgment brings discretion, and discretion can be unpredictable.
But there are two important reasons why grades may seem random when they are not. First, in law it’s hard to know how much or how little you know. It’s surprisingly easy to have a false sense of security, or a false sense of insecurity, about an exam. Most law school exam questions are “issue spotters,” and it’s quite hard to gauge how well you answered an issue-spotter. If you miss all of the big difficult issues, you will think that the problem is easy for you and that you totally aced it. If you see all of the big issues, you will think that the problem is impossibly hard and consider yourself a miserable failure for being unable to know for sure how to resolve all of the difficult questions. The more you know, the more you see the difficulties of the problem and the more you know how little you know. Of course, the student who sees all of the hard issues on an exam and grapples with those difficulties gets the highest grade. The student who misses the issues and wrongly thinks the hard questions are easy does poorly.
The second reason grades may seem random is that grades are curved. You are graded not on how well you did in an absolute sense, but rather on how well you did relative to everyone else in your class. This means that your grades won’t necessarily correlate with the quality of your answers: Instead, they correlate with the quality of your answers relative to your classmates. If you totally clicked with crim law, but hated and never understood civ pro, you may get a higher grade in civ pro than crim because lots of other people in the class felt the same way. (And as a crim law prof, I have to say, who can blame them?) Similarly, if the exam in a particular class was unusually hard, you may end up with a top grade in the course simply because you were less lost than most of your classmates. Self-perceptions of performance won’t always match the curve-induced reality.
Andy says:
Prof. Kerr: Given what you’ve written, would you advocate GW Law (or any school) change to a pass-fail grading system, or some version of honors-pass-fail system?
January 16, 2010, 2:23 amOrin Kerr says:
Andy,
January 16, 2010, 2:42 amNo. I think it’s a bad idea for any law school, including Harvard and Yale. Employers have to pick a proxy somehow; while grades aren’t the end-all be-all, they are at least something. Taking away one proxy will only make employers rely on a different proxy, and the other proxies are highly likely to be more arbitrary and unfair than grades.
wolfefan says:
Hi Harold –
It might help to know what you mean. You talk in a lot of generalities, but specific examples of how every lawyer in all the world is rotten and the system is corrupted to the core and how all legislatures, whether conservative or liberal in orientation, might help.
You might try a different school that is more amenable to your ideological or religous views. IANAL, but I suspect one doesn’t get the same education in terms of ideology and approach to the law at GMU vs Boalt vs Regent vs Concord vs Ave Maria, and I know there are a much broader range out there than even that.
You could go back into LE – people at my agency start out just about where you seem to have maxed out at, and people coming in laterally start out above where you left off, so maybe you could broaden your geographic horizons in terms of seeking jobs. The DC metro (I’m in NOVA, not too far from GMU) is a fine place to live. OTOH, why would you want to go back into LE? All you’d do is spend your life feeding people back into that corrupt, rotten, horrible system with all those scummy judges where justice is so elusive, if it exists at all. Why be a part of that?
January 16, 2010, 2:54 amAllan says:
Grades really should only matter to prospective employers if the actual subject matter might relate to what you are going to do after law school. Legal writing is certainly important to post-legal work. But criminal law or torts might not be. Some people might not do well in the pressure cooker of a law school exam, but would do well in a place where they can spend time formulating an answer (an appellate boutique, perhaps).
I wonder whether law school deans speak with law firms, local DA offices, non-profits, etc. to find out what skills the employers need and try to match up their curriculum with those needs.
I went into the Army right out of law school and spend 3 months to learn how to be a lawyer… And that was not enough. I really did not learn how to write logically until almost a decade of practice (and some may say that I never learned). I knew a lot of law when I graduated and finished in the top quarter of my class, but I did not know the first thing about practicing law. That was a pity.
January 16, 2010, 2:55 amBeldar says:
Speaking as a 30-year lawyer who was intimately and regularly involved in hiring decisions at three different BigLaw firms: What Prof. Kerr has written here is all good advice and consistent with my own experience, except, possibly, for this:
First-year grades are, in fact, almost certainly more important than grades in your second or third years. Employers assume, correctly or not, that grade improvements in the second or third year reflect grade inflation and that first-year grades are more meaningful. Grades can either open or close a huge number of employment doors to you, and in some instances entire categories of employment doors. First-year grades often determine who’s offered automatic law review membership; “writing on” through competitions is fine and worthwhile, but there are some employers who take note of who “graded on” and give them preference. And while grades themselves are probably less relevant for second and subsequent jobs, they’re not completely irrelevant — some employers will indeed limit themselves to lawyers with excellent records both as students and young lawyers — and what your first job has been profoundly affects what second jobs may be open to you.
It’s worth trying hard to make good grades in law school. I don’t think Prof. Kerr is arguing that it’s not, and I think he’s right that many students would be well advised to take a deep breath, avoid panic, and seek a broad perspective. Be as serious about your grades as you expect to be about your profession, but don’t let worries about either of them consume you.
January 16, 2010, 4:57 amT.J. Chiang says:
To echo Beldar’s point from a slightly different angle. It is true that the importance of law school GPA diminishes after your first job. But I think it diminishes much less than Orin indicates. First, entire categories of jobs are foreclosed not only on graduation, but also afterwards: If you don’t have a high law school GPA, you will never be a Supreme Court clerk even after you make partner at a large firm; you will have a more difficult time entering legal academia even after multiple publications; etc. I have heard that GPA is considered even in promotions to partner; and I know for sure that it is considered heavily when lateraling as an associate. After all, it is pretty hard to tell whether a 3rd year associate does good work, since you can’t really ask their current employer (who doesn’t know about the traitor in their midst), and so firms rely largely on the same criteria as hiring at entry level.
In short, maybe after 10 years the influence of GPA diminishes considerably. But it takes a long time, and it never quite completely goes away. I should note that I am talking about law school GPA over 3 years, and not any single grade or even the 1L grades, so the occasional mess-up is not going to permanently doom your future.
January 16, 2010, 5:41 ambrad says:
As someone who just finished up law school I think I have some perspective on this.
Grades aren’t random in the sense that professors throw them down the stairs (I hope) but they are random in that the type of exam plays a huge role in how well you do. For example, this last semester I had a legal ethics class that I never went to and didn’t study for – but it was a semi-open book (just the rules) largely multiple choice exam. Simply put I ace those, in this case I ended up with an A. Just sat there and looked up the answers during the exam. Other open book and semi open book exams have had similar results. On the other hand, take home exams just aren’t my thing – too long for my ability to work under time constraints to shine but too short for my reflective term paper type work I just end up with a mediocre product. All of which is to say that if you want good grades part of it (in your second and third year) is about picking the right classes. Note that my school has a curve even for upper level classes so easy professors and the like aren’t really an option; I imagine class selection is even more important in schools that don’t curve upper level courses.
As for the importance of grades: I don’t have experience as a hiring manager, but as an applicant I send my resume and a cover letter which only list my cumulative GPA and class rank. The only way to infer my first year grades is by the fact that I’m on law review and unless you knew that my school doesn’t write students on you wouldn’t know how I got there until after the interview.
January 16, 2010, 5:42 amG-Veg says:
The notion that law school grades are still important even decades after graduation is a bit unsettling. It is hard for me to imagine even looking at the grades of a candidate with experience and reputation to rely on. I suspect that this is rare in other than a few narrow legal practices and would like to hear an opinion from those with some experience in hiring on this view.
Stated more simply, the vast majority of law practice is challenging because it is client specific, not because genius is required and the vast majority of law graduates were in the middle 60 percentile. Surely there is more room in the practice of law for experience than academic aptitude.
January 16, 2010, 7:27 ammicdeniro says:
There was a New Yorker cartoon of a gravestone where the epitaph was the decedent’s SAT math and verbal (back in the day that’s all there were).
Maybe some will want their first year law school GPAs chiseled into their slabs of granite.
My solution to the problem was to refuse to look at my grades. I figured that as long as my law school cashed the tuition checks, I hadn’t flunked out. And I graduated, with some funny extra cords draped on me by the Dean, so I guess I passed.
January 16, 2010, 7:58 amSP says:
Your first year grades open doors to journal or particular summer jobs, which in turn open doors to particular first jobs after graduation, which in turn open doors to particular career paths. Its all very important and you don’t get any chance for a do-over. The best advice a person who scores poorly on his first semester grades can be given is to leave law school and consider a new career. There is just not any room in this profession for you. The good jobs in the legal field, the ones offer pay, prestige, or security, are reserved for those with top grades. That’s just the reality these days, with so many law students competing for so few jobs.
January 16, 2010, 8:04 amPragmaticist says:
In my first semester of law school, my torts final consisted of two parts: multiple choice and essays. The professor told me that I had the highest score in the class on the multiple choice portion of the exam, and a low score on the essays portion. Why was my score on the essays portion so low when I had demonstrated understanding of torts by achieving a nearly perfect score on the multiple choice portion? Because I had mistakenly wrote my essays on the presumption that my reader had an intellect superior to that of a slow child.
January 16, 2010, 8:24 amJRL says:
I understand what Orin is trying to do here, but it really is not possible to overstate how important 1st year grades are.
January 16, 2010, 8:28 amenjointhis says:
My experience: First semester 1L grades terrible; second semester 1L grades worse (bottom 25%). I had not mastered the knack of writing exam answers. But for 2L & 3L, I cured the problem, and my grades were in top 20-30%. Still, the 1L grades made getting (a) a large firm job or (b) a clerkship impossible.
I was fortunate because my first post-law school job was with an outstanding attorney who recognized the difference between academics and real-life lawyering. From there, I happened into a big-firm job where I think my performance far exceeded those of others with higher grades.
Obviously, 1L grades are an imperfect proxy for the academic component of lawyering skills. But they’re an easy comparator. Other, more accurate proxies are difficult to suss out. Still, strong academics constitute only a part of the lawyer’s toolkit; I think they’re probably less important than empathy & good interpersonal dynamics. And for the vast majority of lawyering, brilliance is not necessary (and can actually be an impediment).
I’ve always felt class rank is more a marketing tool to justify high rates (i.e., we charge $x/hr because our associates were all top 10% lawyers). Put another way, I found the really brilliant kids at my law school to be a little too … etherial. Theoretical understanding is nice, but lawyering involves delving into the nitty-gritty of interpersonal relations. Maybe they’ve changed since law school, but I would have been reluctant to hire the summa kids to handle my/my clients’ legal problems, because their theoretical analysis would interfere with solving the existing problems.
Now that I’ve moved into a position to hire young associates, I confess I’m more interested in craftsmen than artists. I’d rather have solid competence than erratic brilliance. So, that means I don’t necessarily view law review or top 10% as a resume plus, at least compared to real-world experience. Just sayin’
– ET!
January 16, 2010, 8:43 amlgm says:
Even if all graders and grading curves were identical, there still would be randomness in test performance. Suppose a final exam has five questions and you miss one because of a random misunderstanding. That takes you from 80 to 60, which probably is at least one standard deviation. Of course, the exam questions are a small sample of the things you’re supposed to know. If you know 80% of the material, there’s a 50% chance one of five questions will hit the stuff you don’t know. Standardized tests try to minimize this effect by asking many small questions. Post undergraduate exams tend to maximize the effect by asking a small number of questions.
January 16, 2010, 9:10 ama.b.c. says:
Law schools (or the market) sorts law students very finely- the 25th/75th percentile bands for LSAT and GPA are usually not that wide at most schools. This means that final exams should cluster pretty closely together in terms of quality. Especially on exams that are poorly written (this often means too easy) so as not to separate students, grades will appear somewhat random. But they aren’t random in any strong sense.
What I’ve noticed is an overwhelming correlation between how strongly a student thinks grades are random, and how low their grades are. I would guess this effect is even stronger at top schools, where many students have derived a disproportionate amount of their personal identity and self-worth from earning good grades. It can be very hard for this group to not get demoralized. But, Prof. Kerr is obviously right in arguing that it’s best to avoid adopting this attitude.
January 16, 2010, 9:11 amAlexander Wolfe says:
Here’s the deal: most law school students are not going to get summer associate gigs at Big Law firms (if anybody does, anymore) or a first-year associate gig a big law firm, nor are you likely to get a prominent judicial clerkship after graduation. Those are essentially the only positions for which the traditionally inordinate focus on GPA is justified, though even in the midst of a recession that is having a devastating impact on the traditional legal model law schools continue behave as if most of their graduates will follow this route. In general I would advise most law school students to do this: do as well as you possibly can in class, take practical courses that are most likely to benefit you post-law school, get on law review if you can, do moot court, and get internships where you learn practical aspects of the law. And most importantly, network, network, network. Finally, be prepared for a variety of outcomes upon graduation. Perhaps you will get that Big Law job, but it’s more likely you’ll have to open your own practice (unless you prefer to do document review for the next several years) so prepare adequately.
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January 16, 2010, 9:44 amValentino Rossi says:
Grades? Who needs grades? >http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202438969206&rss=newswire
January 16, 2010, 9:44 amDjDiverDan says:
Just a thought for 1Ls and prospective law school students. I did very, very well in law school. After I graduated, the Law School asked if I would be a resource for law school students who were struggling, I agreed and took maybe a dozen phone calls over the next year or so. One of the questions I asked was how much writing the student had done in their undergrad program. To a person, the answer was “as little as possible.” These people hated the extra time they would have to spend writing term papers, so actively looked to take classes where exams were multiple choice or short answer, and no term papers were required. I guess I was a bit lucky – I went to a small, private liberal arts college, and I cannot remember a term when I didn’t have to write at least 2, sometimes 4 or 5, significant papers – 20 pages plus footnotes & bibliography, and as a matter of survival, I learned to write well. Professor Kerr says of professors grading Law School exams: “Some care about how well you write, others don’t.” I think this might be misleading – even if they don’t explicitly take off points for grammar, spelling and organization, I’ll bet that 9 times out of 10 (at least) the well organized, well written essay ends up higher on the curve than the poorly written, poorly organized answer that covers the exact same issues.
And even if poor writing won’t kill you in Law School, it will eventually torpedo your career; a lawyer who cannot communicate effectively in writing will not be an effective advocate, and will not impress the clients he needs in order to make a living.
If you want to improve your grades, yes, getting a better understanding of what each professor is looking for helps, but I think the biggest favor you can do for yourself is to do everything you can to improve your writing skills. Entering the writing competition for spots on Law Review will be a real help, even if you don’t make it, as it will really help sharpen your writing skills. And if you are an undergrad looking to go to law school, start your preparation now – take several classes that will require you to write – History, Political Science, or English classes, the subject is up to you, but WRITE. That’s most of what you’ll do for a living as a lawyer, and avoiding the classes that will require two or three term papers because you don’t like to write (or because all that writing and research will take away from your quality drinking time) will not serve you well in law school. If you really hate writing that much, rethink your ambition to become a lawyer.
January 16, 2010, 9:44 amAlexander Wolfe says:
This advise is ridiculous. Unless you’re first-year grades are plausibly the result of an inherent inability to understand the law, I would never advise anyone to bail on school. Again, very few people are going to follow the “traditional” route after law school, even at top-tier schools, and especially these days, and they are the only ones for which this focus on first-semester grades is even remotely justified. If you do poorly, strive to do better. And bolster your knowledge of the law with practical experience.
January 16, 2010, 9:48 amDjDiverDan says:
Pragmaticist [Was that intentional, or did you mean "Pragmatist"], read my post above. I can tell just from your post why you did poorly on the essay portion. “Because I had mistakenly
January 16, 2010, 9:57 amwrotewritten my essays . . .” Because you wrote your essays with bad grammar.Laura(southernxyl) says:
I would think that person needs to look at the debt load he or she is going to take on through the rest of law school, and consider the probability of being able to pay it back if the aptitude isn’t there. Small debt, not a big deal maybe – high five-figures or more ought to give such a person pause. Not to mention, if the grades are poor because the subject matter isn’t compelling – why would you set yourself up to do something you won’t like?
January 16, 2010, 10:05 amrpt says:
This is certainly how it was 30 years ago coming out of UCLA. There were people who were obviously “already partners”, national practice leaders,9th Circuit, et al. The one phenomenon that helped those not at the top of the class in the following decade was the big firm need for laterals to fill the associate ranks. Finley Kumble and other New York firms coming into LA were prime examples. I spent some time at the beloved but now departed Wyman Bautzer firm by lateraling in from being the sole associate for a sole practitioner. Still have the 250-300 hours/mo computer printouts to show for it.
January 16, 2010, 10:07 amJonathan H. Adler says:
I generally agree with Orin’s post. I’d make a few comments and observations.
Orin is absolutely correct that too many students exaggerate the ultimate importance of first-year grades. My first year grades were my worst in law school — perhaps because I was working and had been out of school for several years — and the first grade I received was the worst grade of my life. I got asked about that grade in lots of interviews, but it did not hamper my career.
Orin’s point that much is determined by how a student responds to his or her first semester grades is immensely important. I’ve seen many students recover from poor law school starts because they took many of the steps Orin recommends — reviewing exams, meeting with professors, reevaluating their study techniques, etc. Just this past semester I had more than one student do very well on my Administrative Law exam who were clearly struggling when I had them for first-year constitutional law. At the same time, I’ve also seen others languish because they assume that their initial grades are their destiny.
The importance of law school grades certainly declines over time after graduation, but it doesn’t disappear completely after the first job. How quickly it declines depends on a variety of factors — the nature of the jobs, the length in a position, whether a position is itself a good proxy for skills or grades, etc. Insofar as grades are a proxy where employers lack reliable information about a job applicant, it’s also worth noting that there are other things that can give employers better information than grades, including strong recommendations. (And by strong recommendations, I don’t simply mean a recommendation from someone who gave you a good grade, but a recommendation that demonstrates specific knowledge about the candidate in question. Glowing, but generic, recommendations are typically not so helpful.) So Orin’s correct that you can overcome poor first-year grades — and poor law school grades generally — but I wouldn’t want to overstate the point.
As for whether grading is “random,” I think Orin’s correct here as well. One point I’d emphasize is that grading tends to be a reliable indicator of how well a student’s exam does what a professor expected them to do. Insofar as some professors expect/want different things, this can create a perception of arbitrariness. For this reason, I always explain to students how I think they should approach my exams, just in case I’m looking for something different than some of my colleagues.
In terms of what causes lower grades, Orin’s right that missing issues can be a big factor. The other thing I see on my exams is a lack of analysis. That is, I will see a decent number of exams that spot all or most of the major issues, and may even identify the proper rules, but then fail to apply those rules to the facts at hand. Spotting an issue, stating the rule, and then offering a conclusory statement to the effect that the situation “clearly” satisfies the rule is not a good answer.
One other point I’d make is that I think many students get a false sense of security when they have open book exams, and think this means they don’t need to prepare as much because they can look things up. Big mistake. Time is almost always a premium in law school exams. While there may be time to quickly look up a key phrase or case name — if you know what you’re looking for and where it is — there’s rarely time to do much more.
JHA
January 16, 2010, 10:19 amAlexander Wolfe says:
I agree with that. I was assuming the person knew they wanted to study law. If you went to law school because you weren’t sure what to do with your life, and are doing poorly, then yes you should seriously consider cutting your losses.
January 16, 2010, 10:29 amPragmaticist says:
DJDIverDan:
FYI, “Pragmaticist” is a term coined by C.S. Pierce.
You’re correct about my grammatical error in a blog post I composed upon rising and which wasn’t proofread. But you’re incorrect in your inferential leap. The professor went over my essays with me and the reason my essays received low scores from him was not my grammar, but that I took for granted things which normally one could take for granted when communicating with someone intelligent. Anyway, I still made law review, so the net outcome of the situation is likely the same.
January 16, 2010, 10:41 amLaw Shucks says:
The only reason that first-year grades appear to decline in importance is because the first job becomes a proxy for those grades. If your first-year grades were poor, you’re not going to get that prime first job, which means you’re constantly going to be fighting against the current.
I agree with the sentiment above – if you went into law school with the plan of working in BigLaw (and took on a significant amount of debt to do so), you have exactly one more shot to turn it around. If your second-semester grades are not absolutely stellar, you really should be re-considering your plans. Just take a look at our layoff tracker and think about how you’re going to compete for the few jobs available.
This advice would be different in other years, but for those in school now, I suggest you change your perspective and plans in a hurry if you didn’t do well first semester. There simply aren’t enough jobs to go around and there is just no such thing as 3rd year interviewing for those who didn’t summer after 2nd year. Yes, people who graduated 30 years ago, even 10 years ago, had a different experience. You just don’t have that luxury right now.
Of course, if you’re not interested in BigLaw, not indebted, or just crazy about the law, knock yourself out.
January 16, 2010, 10:42 amPragmaticist says:
By the way, chastened by my experience in my torts final, I took nothing for granted and wrote all my subsequent essays on law exams as if I was writing for retards, and did very well.
January 16, 2010, 10:43 amASlyJD says:
My experience as a 3L:
I received horrible grades first semester. I redoubled my efforts, only to get the same grades second semester. I studied abroad in China that summer and interned in a Chinese law firm for three weeks. On coming back to the States, I interned for a solo practitioner.
Second year, I took too many classes to keep up with and received low grades again. Fourth semester, my husband was laid off and we ran out of money during finals week. Low grades again. But, I started working for another solo practitioner, who has expressed an interest in hiring me on after graduation.
Third year, I tried to continue working through school, just to keep the bills paid (or at least only a month behind). More low grades. But here’s the thing — I realized after first semester that the dog and pony show of OCI wasn’t going to take me on, and did everything I could to make myself attractive to a smaller firm. The important thing after law school is to get a job that can pay off the student debt, which in my case is substantial due to my husband’s unemployment. Anything else is gravy.
January 16, 2010, 11:17 amTRE says:
perceived quality of answers, or something even more qualified.
The reason I think they seem random is that each professor has a different approach as you say, that many or all students do not know about. Students with access to better information about a professor’s grading could reasonably be expected to do better.
January 16, 2010, 11:31 amAdam J says:
B+ in Crim Pro Orin? I’m afraid I just can’t consider you an expert in the field anymore.
January 16, 2010, 11:33 amJavert says:
Odd, because it’s the opposite for ugrad — where employment and grad school acceptance are heavily weighted on last two years.
I wonder if there’s an analog to 1L’s from freshmen. Students at top-ten schools are used to earning all A’s in high school, but don’t fully realize that as freshmen, the competition and standards increase exponentially. (The fish/pond issue.) Then they’re shocked when work that earned them an A in high school, earns them a C+ as freshmen.
January 16, 2010, 11:42 amTheNino85 says:
Grading is inherently random. For a bit of a different perspective, take physics. As a grad student in physics, I have to do some grading. Not a lot, because thankfully my professors realize I’m more useful doing research, but some. Even in something as concrete as physics, where in a given theory there is only one correct answer, it’s still a pain to grade simply because if someone doesn’t get that right answer, you have to grade them on how “close” they came, and how “close” they came is at times completely subjective.
I can’t even imagine how hard grading a legal essay would be.
January 16, 2010, 11:58 amRandy says:
I was shocked to learn upon entering law school that your grade for a class is totally dependent upon one final exam. I still understand the logic of this, other than perhaps laziness on the part of professors to not want to grade so many times. There is no reason, for instance, why torts classes can’t have at least a mid-term exam.
But I suppose the problem would still remain — grading on a curve is the culprit. Is there any alternative to this? Why is the curve more important than straight grading? Who decided it and why? It simply makes no sense to me. If you mastered a subject, who cares if everyone else did. Isn’t that what you are supposed to do aim for? Especially as a professor?
January 16, 2010, 12:05 pmRandy says:
My informal not-very-accurate observation from law school is that the students with the lower grades usually performed much better in mock trials than the high grade students. There might be a correlation there.
January 16, 2010, 12:09 pmG-Veg says:
There is an undercurrent discussion here that hasn’t been addressed directly.
I wonder if those qualified to offer some insight (I am not) could discuss the difference between what is required to be a “high flyer” with ambitions to practice in the prestigious law firms, clerk, and teach law and what is required to be a competitive candidate for the more common legal practice. Perhaps the advice is different for those who are able to and do devote themselves entirely to law school because they expect and want to be a “high flyer” and those who recognize that they either cannot compete at that level or cannot single-mindedly devote themselves to studying law.
January 16, 2010, 12:20 pmPhineas says:
Orin, you haven’t given an adequate explanation for the apparent randomness and arbitrariness of law school grading by suggesting that it stems, first of all, from misperceptions of one’s own mastery of tested subjects, and, second of all, from the composition of a class.
It is certainly true that one’s self-perception of their performance, immediately after an exam, is unlikely to track their ultimate performance. The first factor likely plays a significant role in this. But the second factor is unlikely to be a relevant one unless we’re talking about classes where the class composition is something other than random. Fed Courts might be the sort of class where you get a lower grade because of a harder curve. Criminal Law? Con Law? Civ Pro? How likely is it that most of my classmates in Torts were, on the whole, better prepared for the exam, while I was, on the whole, better prepared than most of my classmates in Criminal Law for that exam?
So you’ve given only a very narrow explanation for what is, really, a very narrowly-defined phenomenon. Why are people surprised by their grades after their first term? You have part of an answer for them. But why do they ultimately conclude that there is no rational explanation for their overall performance? Do you think law students can’t figure out that they’ve missed issues on exams where they’ve felt confident during the administration of the exams?
The perception of arbitrariness and randomness stems, in my experience, from this phenomenon: By the end of the second term, I had a honed study method and style. When I applied that method more or less uniformly across different classes for the rest of my years in law school, I had widely disparate results. Indeed, there was something of an inverse relationship between the amount of preparation I did during a term and my final grade. Why?
The best explanation for my law school performance, I’ve decided, is that my method wasn’t geared solely to discerning and fulfilling professors’ expectations. Rather, my approach was to try to learn the material, to do additional research in areas that I found especially interesting, and to develop my own theoretical positions with respect to the subject matter. When this method happened to accord with professors’ expectations, I did well. Very well, even. When it didn’t—and it was often that it didn’t—I did less well—much less well.
I can’t say my experience has inspired much confidence for mainstream law-school pedagogy. Nor has it inspired much support for relying on grades as a primary method of selecting candidates for associate or clerkship positions.
January 16, 2010, 12:22 pmrb1971 says:
As a partner in a V10 firm with some hiring responsibility and that needs to fill a midlevel role asap, I was just thinking about this issue the other day. I would note that at least for BigLaw jobs grades remain important even for lateral hires. The only exception I can think of would be a partner with a significant book of business – otherwise, grades (+ school) are of about equal importance as the other considerations (experience and work history).
January 16, 2010, 12:30 pmAlexander Wolfe says:
I don’t know if I’m “qualified” to offer any insight, but as a recent law school grad I have insight in spades. If you’re looking to work in a large law firm, you must focus on the traditional model: attend a top tier school, aim to be in the top 10% or 20% of your class, be invited to law review, and participate in moot court. If you’re aiming for something else (and given how small the market is now for high-paid first year attorneys, most of us should be aiming for something else) do as much of the things above as you can, but focus on practical legal experience as well and network, network, network (the importance of the latter cannot be overstated.)
It is possible that the recession will force a change in the traditional law school/law firm model, but don’t count on it. Prepare for every possibility, including having to open your own practice to work as an attorney.
January 16, 2010, 12:46 pmunwelcome guest says:
When hiring, there are some people for whom how well you did in school is the only question that matters. And there are others who could not care less. My advice for those with poor first year grades is to search out the latter. And they do not always correlate with quality of firm or experience.
My first year grades were lower than I wanted or expected them to be. According to the career services people, the firms I wanted to work at would not look at me. However, I was lucky enough to go to a school that did not rank students or allow employers to pre-screen interviewees. I know for a fact that the person that hired me for my 1L summer job (for a major firm in Paris – yaay!!!) did not look at my first semester grades (and no, there were no family contacts. I just asked for the job.).
Although my 1L grades were below the purported cutoff of some of the firms I interviewed with, I got offers from a couple that were supposedly out of reach, but did not get offers from many other places where my grades would be supposedly ok. You never know – just go into the situation with an open mind and enthusiasm.
And grades overall do not even make the top 25 most important things in my life.
January 16, 2010, 12:56 pmlucy says:
Law school grades seem arbitrary and random in large part because professors are too lazy to grade midterms and homework assignments though out the semester like they do in every other discipline. So students don’t have a meaningful way to gauge how they are doing through out the semester and get to know what the teacher expects on tests. Also, even though issue spotting exams are so much more subjective, they are easier to write. To add insult to injury, the professors then spew nonsense about how students just can’t understand now, but will thank them later for their irrational method.
January 16, 2010, 1:27 pmConnecticut Lawyer says:
Prof. Kerr,
January 16, 2010, 1:31 pmThe distribution of grades within a class is less random than you might suggest. I would wager that most law professors would pick out the same exams for As and Ds. The really good and really bad ones stand out. Distinguishing those in the middle is a bit dicier.
The Truth Is Out There HAHA says:
Here’s a (very typical) attorney job posting, picked off the Internets at random: http://www.hg.org/legal_employment.asp?prec=133306
The listing asks for somebody w/ 3-6 years of experience. Must have had a 3.3+ GPA from a “Top 30 law school.” “Please submit transcript with resume.”
Only in the legal profession would you ask somebody w/ 6 years of experience to submit a transcript with their application. (In other professors, you may be asked for a transcript once an offer has been extended, as part of the final due diligence/vetting before hiring.)
For better or worse, grades matter. A lot.
January 16, 2010, 2:50 pmDave N. says:
If you want to teach, get a prestigious clerkship, or work for BigLaw, then worry about your first year grades.
However, if you are interested in an area of law that BigLaw sneers at (Crim Law and Family Law, to name 2 areas), if your idea looking ahead is to actually have a life and time for your family, or if you just find law interesting, then relax. Enjoy law school. Don’t sweat the grades or the small stuff.
I have spent my career working for the government in various capacities. I have found it rewarding; I have earned a respectable living; and I have time for my family.
I ended my first year in almost the exact middle of my class (exactly one of every possible grade between A and C). I didn’t get the BigLaw interviews. Frankly, looking back, I am glad I didn’t.
January 16, 2010, 3:23 pmAriel says:
I disagree with the notion of law school grades being random. Within one semester, my grades were remarkably consistent. I got almost all the same grade in each semester, or with some minor variation.
However, one professor mentioned that he re-graded an exam by accident and that his second scoring was off by one increment (A to A- or equivalent). I suspect that that level of grading anomaly probably occurs, but I doubt that anything more than that is common. If that is “random,” than sure, law school grades might be random. But I think most people mean something more than that.
January 16, 2010, 6:18 pmgeorge weiss says:
1. as for the idea that many student’s grades are lower the first sem b/c they have not yet “figured out” how to write an exam-i think that is outdated. most students read lots of articles and books on how to effectively write exams using irac, forking answers etc.
i have not talked to anyone who is in school now or graduated recently that said their grades were the result of delayed “getting it.” in the past however Orin may be correct as more students came in not knowing what to expect at all.
2. as far as how much grades matter:
a) i agree that whole categories of jobs will be excluded to you on bad grades. obviously, you wont get a good clerkship, federal honors program, academia, or biglaw without good grades
b) i disagree that grades become irrelevant outside those categories once you have experience. many comentors have posted job postings here that show the opposite, and i spoken to IP attorneys that must submit transcripts to job offers after 20 years in the field.
Certainly, its possible that an employer outside of these categories is not interested in grades. However, realistically, and particularly in a legal job market which was shrinking BEFORE the recession began and is predicted to shrink relative to new JD’s AFTER the recession is over…this is less likely
It is the problem Orin mentioned first-limited information. If you have several applicants (suppose they have all had a first job somewhere and thus have 2-5 years of experience)..the only real difference you know about them (from your limited information) is their grades. Presumably, none of their emplyoers will say they are not good employees. Further, its unlikely one of the applicants stands out that much in a 5 minute interview.
the problem of limited information does not go away once there is something on the resume-and it also doesn’t go away once you move to a less coveted field-like crim or family. Supposedly, the supply of willing workers is less for those jobs and that makes it a little easier-but i highly doubt that any legal job will not be extremely competitive for years to come.
as we are seeing now, those with higher grades who normally went into the exclusive categories are settling for jobs that were slightly less competitive in the past. I doubt that your local DA would fill their limited spots with a average T3 grad with a solo practitioner clerkship on his resume when they can have a laid off big law associate with top 15% credentials.
c) even if its true that grades become less or not important after the first job…..you gotta get that first job. This is almost always the most difficult part of any career. Probably not going to be any easier with bad grades (see orin’s problem of limited info-each candidate has a few internships a few recommendations and their grades-grades is the winner)…again this is not just now-but in the continually shrinking number of openings to new JD’s out there. Furthermore, the longer you are unemployed the longer the gap on the resume, making it even more difficult.
3.
for those saying network netwrork network-thanks for the advice but please realize that
a) anyone who is unemployed right now has already told everyone who he had a shadow of a doubt could help
b) when people are direct about asking for help-its not much different from begging. its essentially “please go out of your way and score me a job outside normal means when we both know the market has rejected me so im probably not best for the job anyway”
this gets really offensive when you dont really know the person asking well enough to recommend them…such as when you meet them at a “networking event”
c) no good deed goes unpunished-if you bring in someone and they suck-blame goes to you
January 16, 2010, 7:22 pmMark Field says:
I thought it would be interesting to quote from the current issue of The Atlantic in an article on how to identify good teachers:
“Last summer, an internal Teach for America analysis found that an applicant’s college GPA alone is not as good a predictor as the GPA in the final two years of college. If an applicant starts out with mediocre grades and improves, in other words, that curve appears to be more revealing than getting straight A’s all along.”
January 16, 2010, 8:38 pmG-Veg says:
Overall, it is a pretty depressing statement of the law that comes out of this post and comments. Meaning to do no injustice to the comments above, it sure sounds like the consensus is that there is insufficient information about lawyers even five or ten years into their careers on which to base a hiring decision. If this is so, and five minute interviews are normal, there is something seriously wrong with our profession.
I am 15 years into my enforcement career. I can tell you the relative competence of many officers in the area and I suspect that many of my fellow officers could judge the potential of an even greater percentage of the whole. (This is true of officers in entirely different agencies where access to their personnel records is extremely limited.) Reputations are broadly known. We know who makes a poor witness, the diligence and the skill of other officers, who knows the law, and who performs well under pressure.
I have a good friend who is a doctor and he knows the reputations of specialists and surgeons outside of his network as well as he knows the ones in his network. I suspect that the professors on this blog could easily name or find out about, with virtually no effort, professors up and down the eastern seaboard and lecturers in even the smallest schools.
And yet, It is necessary to vet prospective legal hires on the basis of grades that are 20 or 30 years old because we lack access to information? Really?
How can it be that our clients rely upon us to find out virtually everything that can be known about the opposing side, to fact-find on the major players in other companies, and to conduct behind-the-scenes work to gauge the competence of opposing counsel and discover their reputed weaknesses but they can’t rely upon us to find out whether prospective hires are worth turning loose on our clients? Further, we were repeatedly warned about information placed into the public domain such as Facebook and blogs because, supposedly, firms routinely “Google” prospective hires to find out what we are “really” like. How is it that firms find time to do on-line research but can’t determine whether a prospective hire was an asset or a liability to their last firm… or the one before that.
If this is truly the state of affairs that our profession has reached, then we are in a collective heap of trouble.
January 16, 2010, 9:05 pmT.J. Chiang says:
G-Veg: The answer to your question is pretty easy: attorney client privilege. Lawyers work in teams, so virtually nothing that outside people see is a “solo” work product. The only people who see a junior lawyer’s unedited solo work (such as a memo or brief) is his current boss. That boss probably has a pretty good idea of the junior lawyer’s competence; but he won’t be the one speaking to recruiters who are poaching his underlings. And the junior lawyer can’t show that work to other people because of attorney-client privilege.
This problem, in fact, is not at all a rare phenomenon. It happens pretty much any time that the work seen by outsiders is the product of collective effort that cannot be individually attributed. Do you know whether a junior chef at a restaurant is any good? Not unless he individually prepares a dish, right?
January 16, 2010, 9:37 pmG-Veg says:
T.J. Chiang,
I appreciate the response but are you suggesting that this state of anonymity continues for decades… That lawyers in big firms don’t have reputations outside of the firms for year after year? If so, then surely being hired at a big firm is a great disadvantage.
During the half hour or so that elapsed between my last comment and now, I spoke with a friend who does all of the interviewing and other vetting for a boutique law firm. He said that he routinely checks up on prospective hires – seeking out cases that they handled, calling provided references, etc. – and that his interviews last a half an hour or more. He implied this to be common, acknowledging that grades are very important if there is no prior experience and big firms can be very different.
With this new information, perhaps I should refine the question and the earlier complaint. Is it that large firms still see the world this way and that the smaller firms who have far greater latitude in hiring criteria approach it differently and, if so, perhaps the decline of the large practices and the movement towards specialized boutique practices spells doom for the GPA-centric approach to hiring. If so, then perhaps the advice to students will have to be amended to include obtaining specialized degrees and certificates in addition to their JD.
This dovetails comments I frequently heard from adjunct professors who were quite bullish on the value of transactional programs and the like for making students stand out.
I wonder then if what is being described above is not the curious reality of the large-firm model that seems to be on its way out and a return to the more independent practice and partnerships that I understand were the norm up until the 1950s and 60s.
January 16, 2010, 9:52 pmAlan says:
“You are graded not on how well you did in an absolute sense, but rather on how well you did relative to everyone else in your class.”
Unfortunately, you then have to compete with thousands of other people, almost all of whom didn’t take the same test in the same class. This is why I don’t understand the value of grading on a curve–of ranking you against everyone else in your class. When you apply for a job, you’re competing mostly with people who didn’t take the same exams as you took. I don’t see how an employer is supposed to rank applicants against each other who have different rankings (or even the same rankings) at different law schools. It’s like comparing fruits to fishes.
Grading on a curve would make sense only if everyone in the country took the same exam. That’s the value of standardized tests (much as it kills me to praise them, since I never did well on them).
January 16, 2010, 10:40 pmtheobromophile says:
This might have been mentioned already, but I’ll throw it out there now: in this legal market, 1L grades can arguably be less important. More hiring may go on during 3L year (when the economy improves) and after graduation. A lot of students make take lesser jobs immediately after graduation and may want to change jobs within a few years.
All of that points to the benefits of working hard throughout all three years.
Also, law school is a marathon. Just by showing up, doing all the work, and outlining, you can often crush your classmates in the 3L curve.
January 17, 2010, 12:24 amT.J. Chiang says:
G-Veg, I don’t think that the anonymity continues for decades, but it probably continues for a decade. But I don’t think overall that it is disadvantageous to be at a big firm. Even if you go to a small firm, you are still going to be working in teams, where the work cannot be individually attributed. If the case is one that a junior associate is the only person handling it and can claim solo credit, the case is probably such small fry that it bears little resemblance to the work and skill set that larger (and better paying) firms are interested in.
January 17, 2010, 12:29 amEric says:
This post describes the options I was faced with this past year. Orin, thanks for writing it. I just finished up my 3rd semester of law school, and they’ve gone like this:
1L.1 – 73.2/100, academic probation, automatic enrollment in my school’s academic support program;
1L.2 – 81.4/100, off probation, cumulative GPA of 77.3;
2L.1 – 85/100, cumulative GPA over 80, high grade of 88.
I was very, very close to just deciding to coast my way through the rest of school while hoping they’d keep letting me take classes. After a lot of reflection, I decided to give it my best shot. Now, my overall GPA still keeps me in the lower 50% of my class, and most firms wont touch me, but I believe I’ve done what I needed to do in order to at least be somewhat competitive. In fact, I sort of hope I get asked about my grades in an interview because I feel that I’ve shown some heart and determination over the course of the last year, and I’ve grown a lot as a person.
I don’t know what’s going to happen this summer and especially post-graduation, but I have seen other classmates take the opposite approach and “give up” trying to do better in school, and I am proud to be where I am right now.
My first summer I worked (got paid, actually) for a legal defender, then spent the first semester of 2L year externing for the federal government. Now I’ve been able to start working with an important Libertarian civil rights firm. I hope anyone who reads this post, assuming it’s not already buried, and who is going through the same situation I have been in can take heart. It might not be the glamorous experience you had hoped for but it’ll all work out.
January 17, 2010, 12:38 amluagha says:
Maybe it’s obvious, but I would mention again that the most important thing to do for collegiate test-taking is to look up that professor’s exams for the past several years and see what his grading is like and what he claims to be looking for. Most schools and some organizations keep that on file, and it can be totally invaluable.
January 17, 2010, 2:49 amSP says:
I don’t think any of the older posters here really have any idea what the market is like right now for graduates seeking their first job. It is worse than anybody wants to believe, certainly worse than law professors want to believe. If you are not at the top of your class, get out now.
January 17, 2010, 6:02 amMark Field says:
Those of us who have 3L kids do.
January 17, 2010, 11:13 amajk says:
good points, learnt a lot, thanks
January 17, 2010, 7:15 pmBretzky says:
The best advice that I can give to any person in the middle of or looking to begin their 1L year is: pay attention to what the professor says that he or she is looking for on the exam. Out of my eight 1L exams, about five or six of my professors simply told us exactly what they were looking for on the exam in terms of issues addressed and how to structure an essay. Find out what your professor is looking for and write your exam essays accordingly.
January 17, 2010, 7:50 pmRoger says:
1. Test taking.
Echoing previous posts, taking law school exams is about studying your professor, not the material. Your professor is going to spell out exactly what he wants in an exam. Some professors want IRAC, some want CRAC, some want just RA. You aren’t going to get any points for things your professors don’t care about, even if the professor in the class next to you says it is the most important thing in their course.
Similarly, your professor may place special importance on any one of (or none of): policy, recent case law, memorization, etc. You need to find this out. This is why I believe going to class every single day, taking diligent notes, and studying the professor’s old exams are the most importants factors in getting good grades. This is also why supplements (e.g., Gilbert’s) are not too helpful; your professor – not Mr. Gilbert – is going to grade your exam. Supplements are useful for resolving outstanding issues (e.g., you missed a class, your professor talked too fast at the end of class, or you are just having a hard time understanding something) and are not meant to replace lectures and readings.
For the same reasons, I didn’t do the assigned readings before class yet still finished in the top 5%. The fact is that 1L year you don’t have the skills to figure out what is important in a 30-page case (indeed, learning this skill is the whole point of 1L year), and that is why paying attention during lecture is essential. Moreover, when the exam comes, most of the text of the case means nothing, unless your professor cares about policy (outside of the top 5 or 10 schools, most don’t) or offers objective questions (e.g., ‘Explain what a fundamental right is’). As long as you are able to apply the holding to the facts in the exam question, you can do extraordinarily well without having read the case. Of course, remembering the facts of a case makes spotting the issues and applying the holding easier because you can think of similarities and differences with the exam question. But far too often students get bogged down in the details of the cases they’ve read and they fail to realize that the majority of the points on an exam question are given for the analysis of a new fact pattern and NOT for the analysis or rule from a case read during the course. (And the relevant/most important facts from the cases will be discussed by the professor during lecture, which is why reading the cases didn’t add any value for me.)
Also, professors may say that the exam tests your understanding of the law and ability to apply it, rather than your writing skills or organization. They probably believe this, but the fact is that an exam that guide posts the answer with the use of subheadings, bullets, short paragraphs, and bold/underline fonts is going to score better than one where the professor has to spend time figuring out what you are trying to say, even if the exams in effect provide the same answers. If the first sentence in your paragraph is underlined and briefly summarizes what issues are and aren’t important, e.g., “A is liable for battery because ___ and notwithstanding ____”, the professor sees at the very beginning that you understood the issues and the rest of the paragraph is gravy. In contrast, it is not good if the reader has to wait until the very end of the paragraph to figure out whether you spotted the issue. Also, I think the following quote from one of my professors on the handwriting v. typing debate can be analogized to organizing your exam well v. not doing so: “I am not going to take off points if you handwrite your exam instead of typing it. But you are an idiot if you handwrite it.”
2. First year grades.
They mean a lot if you want a biglaw or federal government job. The fact is that if you aren’t in the top 5% to 30% (depending on the rank of your school) after 1L year, your opportunities for biglaw or the federal government are all but foreclosed. (I say all but foreclosed because almost of the hiring for these jobs is done with on-campus interviews that exclude those not ranked highly. That said, as a note of encouragement to others, I was at the top of my class 1L year, got shut out at OCI, but nonetheless was able, through networking with professors, to score my dream biglaw job during 3L year.) But 1L grades are not so important if you don’t want biglaw or the federal government, which brings me to my next point.
I think most students want biglaw or a federal government job solely because you can lock in employment during the 2L year for the next 3 or 4 years, whereas other avenues require you to wait until the end of 3L year or later to be offered a job. That is, biglaw and the federal government remove the uncertainty of the job search even if they are in an area in which the student has little or no interest. It can’t be disputed that there is value in finding out early on what you will be doing after law school, but that doesn’t mean you should rush to accepting the first job you are offered if you know you want to do something else after law school. For instance, somebody who wants to work in criminal, family, estate planning, real estate, or personal injury law would have relatively little use for (and probably would not be happy in) most practice groups in biglaw or the federal government.
January 18, 2010, 9:35 amEric Rasmusen says:
If I were hiring new lawyers, I’d look at 2nd semester grades above all else. What one needs is grades in required courses— so they’re comparable in difficulty— and as the post says, some law students take a little longer to get used to the rigor of law school.
Similarly, I bet looking at freshman English and math college grades would be more informative than the overall GPA.
January 18, 2010, 8:35 pmq says:
No, if everyone took the same exam, that would be less reason to grade on a curve. Grading on a curve basically gets rid of all potential variations except the variation in classmates. However, of all the possible variations, variations in the body of a certain course probably do not differ that much between different courses and years.
If grades are done on an absolute scale, and I got an A and you got a B in different courses, and assuming we’re equals in every other way, there could be several objective* reasons for this: 1) my professor was in a better mood, 2) my test was easier, 3) the material in my course is easier to understand, etc. If grades are done on a curve, then the difference in our grades could be: 1) those taking my course weren’t as smart as those taking your course. Between the two, the latter is much less likely to be as varied, especially if we’re talking about large classes.
* As opposed to subjective reasons, such as you/me being more interested in my course, which neither absolute or curved grading is going to mitigate.
January 19, 2010, 2:08 pmGuest14 says:
If you enjoy reviewing documents for $17.50/hour in a windowless basement, or would like to do “no fault insurance” (whatever that is) for $42k/year, with a 2300 hour billable minimum, then by all means, stay in law school after getting poor grades your first semester. If you’re sane, though, do drop out.
January 19, 2010, 7:47 pmv says:
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January 19, 2010, 10:15 pmv says:
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January 19, 2010, 10:15 pmPublius Novus says:
I did considerable interviewing of initial hires and laterals in my last ten years with the DOJ. Grades were very important for intial hires, because entry into the AG’s Honors Program (the only way non-experienced lawyers are hired) was restricted based on grades and to some extent, law schools. Grades for laterals were less important, but it varied with the interviewer. Some of my co-interviewers were very interested in law school grades (some were interested in undergrad, and believe it or not, high school grades) and some were not. At one point I suggested that DOJ conduct a scientific survey to determine if there was any correlation between law school grades and perceived performance. That, however, fell on deaf ears.
January 20, 2010, 11:56 amrising2L says:
I have just finished my 1L year, and I have some of the worst grades in my class. However, I was able to secure a competitive summer position, while many of friends (with much better grades) are left with nothing. I am quickly learning that a good personality and strong networking skills can make a huge difference.
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June 7, 2010, 4:36 amwhatever says:
First year grades are important – they affect your whole future career. In fact, they define your career. Summer associate needs to have good GPA, clerk needs to have good GPA, good firms require certain GPA, etc, etc, etc. There should be no doubt about it.
Law grades are not random – no student knows how “adjustment” process works, but it can, and it did affect my GPA and GPAs of other students. On top of that – I heard of cases of very serious “ajustments” to grades that changed GPAs significantly over long term. There is a big difference for hiring manager between a student who is below top 33% or above top 33%, and no one can argue about this. I think, ABA should very seriously look into how grades are being awarded and “ajusted” – there is HUGE room for manipulation there.
September 8, 2010, 5:57 pm