Harvard Law Drops Letter Grades

Ellen Barshevsky
Oct 3, 2008 4:23 AM CST

Not a good idea. 

In college I got good grades, but when it came to applying to law school, I did NOT apply to Harvard, Yale or Princeton.

Why?  Because I knew it would be difficult to be at the top.

Now, if there are no grades, how can you distinguish between someone smart and a dummy?

I know a person who graduated Yale law, and he was so dumb that he could NOT stay past the 2nd year.  He failed the bar twice, was lazy and thought he was all that.

Well, I figured him out right away, but the partners always treated him very specially.  I think I know why, but when he didn’t do work, did NOT come in early or stay late and failed the bar 2x, even the partner agreed he should not stay.

In college, I took a course pass/fail, and did well.  But no one knows that now. But the Men did nothing in class.  The professor liked me, and that is because I cared.  Others didn’t.  They were lazy because of the pass/fail, and would be very stupid if they did not AT LEAST pass.

So without grades, can this go on even more?  I say yes.  Do we really want dummies at work to have to be caried by us?  No.

I know that other people share my views on this.

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LaBette
Oct 3, 2008 5:24 AM CST

If they can prove that a C from Harvard is as good or better than any higher grade from any other school then I think the change will be meaningful and good. I am not familiar with the competitive culture at Harvard, but maybe it will be a better experience for everyone who attends.

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Duke
Oct 3, 2008 5:58 AM CST

I’m a law professor.  I can tell you from experience that grading improves performance.  It increases the level of class interest and class discussion.  It’s good for everyone (except law professors,  who have to write and grade exams.)

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Justin
Oct 3, 2008 6:34 AM CST

I have mixed feelings.  I do believe that grades boost performance and motivation, however, grades are NOT indicative of the ability to be a lawyer.  I know people who were at the top of the class but have no idea how to practice law.  Book smarts do not equate being good at something other than studying and taking tests.  I’m not sure if eliminating grades altogether is the right approach, but less attention needs to be placed with grades by potential employers and schools so that the bottom portion of the class has more opportunities.

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Boston Attorney
Oct 3, 2008 7:10 AM CST

I am a partner at a large Boston firm, and in my short 8 years of experience have generally been very under-whelmed by Harvard grads.  They tend to be elitist, think they deserve everything, and think they know more than other associates who went to non-ivy league schools, even if those associates have been out of law school for a few years.  But when the pressure is on, the Harvard grads aren’t the shinning star they think they are.  Give me a hard worker from BC, BU, UConn, Suffolk or pretty much any other school, and I’ll usually have a very appreciative associate who will work hard and pump out good work.  Yes, and before everyone screams at me about generalizations, I have gotten some duds from these other schools, but not as many as Harvard.  I’ve also attended classes at Harvard (mostly undergrad) and am not impressed with anything there.  It’s all about getting in - but once your in, pretty much everyone gets good grades.  But now without the grades, I can’t even tell the good mediocre from the bad mediocre.  But hey, now a bunch of liberals feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

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Bill
Oct 3, 2008 7:23 AM CST

#9 pretty much has it nailed (except for the gratuitous anti-liberal gobbledygook at the end). Schools like Harvard are all about getting in. I doubt that the lowest ranked student at HLS really has a difficult time getting a job. I think this move is, just like their refusal to disclose incoming LSAT and GPA stats, just another method to preserve Harvard’s perhaps largely unjustified prestigious image.

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silencedogood
Oct 3, 2008 7:27 AM CST

Every one gets a ribbon…

I agree, this is more of the same in dumbing things down.  I’m no fan of the curve in every class—example was PR where the difference between A+ and C was 100% vs 97%—but there needs to be some way to evaluate how well a student absorbed the material.  This system just proves they showed up and didn’t sustain a head injury that semester.

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Not Surprised
Oct 3, 2008 7:51 AM CST

Prior to this shift, I’ve heard HLS students justify grade inflation (3.5 1L curve) as resulting from the quality of the students (competition).  I’m not going to bash HLS, I believe the quality of students surpasses 90+% of non-Yale, Stanford, or Columbia students.

This is not to say that justifies grade inflation or no/pass grading systems.  Quite the contrary, the institution’s name on a diploma you receive reveals what prestige bracket you fit into.  A 3.0 curve system would encourage competition.

As for making it easier to find a job… if you’re in the bottom half of HLS and can’t get a well-paying firm job, that speaks more to your social ineptitude than anything else, trust me.

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KM
Oct 3, 2008 8:06 AM CST

As a graduate of a 2nd tier school in Philadelphia, I know for a fact that students in the bottom half of HLS classes, don’t deserve any pity. I busted my hump in law school and was repeatedly passed over by big firms, whereas as my sister, who graduated from Harvard, had firms near and far tripping over themselves to recruit her despite her mediocre grades. As long as many big law firm hiring partners use pedigree as the main criteria for recruitment, many hardworking, deserving law students will be shut out. Unless and until all law schools eliminate grades and place all students on a level playing field, Harvard students will continue to have an unfair advantage and this will only widen the gap and make it harder for smart students everywhere to get job opportunities.

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gw 1L
Oct 3, 2008 8:35 AM CST

Ellen Barshevsky, I get it now! You must be really really old. Like McCain old. #12 and #14 and just mean bullies. Shame on them.

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BC
Oct 3, 2008 8:58 AM CST

Everyone is so mean to Ellen all the time.  Ellen, sweety, Princeton doesn’t have a law school.  Be careful what you write.

On a note on the Harvard dropping the grades, Dear Lord.  Do they really need anything else to give them an advantage.  I know a Harvard education will pretty much get you anywhere you want to go, but to flaunt it…wow.

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Good Question
Oct 3, 2008 9:14 AM CST

People keep mentioning that GPAs aren’t a good metric; but, what would be a better one to go by?  Really, can you expect to glean what you really need to know about a candidate in a 20-30 minute interview or over a meal?  I think the GPA and school is the best indicater of future performance.  Anyone who says differently, please give me more than a few anomolous examples of poor performers who were great performers at highly ranked schools.  ‘Preciate it:-)

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DCBarrister08
Oct 3, 2008 9:50 AM CST

Princeton doesn’t have a law school. It only offers a co-op in criminal justice from John Jay. Really not a good idea to lie on an ABA blog…just sayin’

As a 2008 law school graduate (Suffolk) it is surprising that law schools out of the ring of the top five don’t prepare law school students for the vicious, guerilla style networking it takes to land a job out here. Big law firms use placement offices consisting of decision makers who never spent a second in law school and have no way to fairly or fully measure talent or potential.

When I was in my so-called mediocre law school I dominated in class discussions. I also dominated in class discussions when I took a course at Harvard sitting alongside Harvard law students. It comes down to skill and law school grades are the lamest way to measure what a person will do in the field. Some of the best lawyers I know out here don’t even talk about grades they just urged me to get through the bar and get out there and work.

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Shade
Oct 3, 2008 9:58 AM CST

Bill, one comment out of 27 versus your post which I read as being “11 months, 4 weeks, 2 days, 9 hours, 59 minutes ago”...not a bad thing to infer that you’re not one of the top 50% in or from your law school or that you couldn’t get a return email from a major law school in New England. :)

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Older Guy
Oct 3, 2008 10:21 AM CST

I am actually a mediocre HLS grad from back in the day. My grades were not horrible, just eh. (a little under a B+ average). So under this new system would not be distinguishable from the brainiacs who really grasped “the law”? That doesn’t make any sense. I agree that it would seem to help the lower echelons of HLS students, and penalize the superstars. And believe me, there are some people there who really do blow you away with their insights. The future law profs, that is.

So what will the Law Review do now? Will it use a pure “write on” system?

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Mark Buchanan
Oct 3, 2008 10:51 AM CST

24. “Look under the hood of applicants?”  Hmm.  An unfortunate analogy.

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checking in
Oct 3, 2008 11:08 AM CST

Hey Everyone….the “Ellen” character is joke. She posts the most retarded things to get a rise out of everyone. Exhibit A—> no law school at Princeton.

As for the topic….let them go to a no grade system. Sure employers use it as a standard of hiring, and without it some other meaningless factor now attains a higher relevance. In the end….your success as a lawyer depends on how YOU are at practicing law and getting clients. Rainmaking is not taught at law school, so there’s only pass/fail in the real world, in that respect. (No A’s or B’s for good effort….just rich or broke)

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Bobby Guei
Oct 3, 2008 12:34 PM CST

Nobody cares about whether Princeton has a law school or not.  The question is: What does Ellen Barshevsky’s boyfriend think about this issue?

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Bobbie Ray
Oct 3, 2008 2:07 PM CST

I agree with #9.  Give me a student from any state university in the top 20% over a Harvard, Yale, NYU grad.  Most Harvard lawyers cannot handle extreme pressure.

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Gabriel J.
Oct 3, 2008 2:35 PM CST

Who cares?  Grades, I mean.  The only time I really cared about grades was in college b/c I wanted to hve the option of going to a good law school.  And I did:  UCLA Law.  But once I was in law school, it was about taking interesting courses and learning as much as i could.  Yeah, I tried to get good grades (at least that first semester) , but after a while, you realize that grades don’t really matter.  Ten years later, I don’t have anybody asking me about my GPA.  It DOESN’T MATTER.  I know it matters to those who want to go into large law firms- and I suppose if that’s your goal, then I really can’t convince you otherwise.  I’m just thinking that one misses the point about “having to distinguish” between really, really smart and not-so-smart law students.  Once you begin practicing law, if you have the passion to be a good lawyer, then you will be one; if you don’t, no matter how good your grades were, you’ll never be that great.  Passion for the practice of law is really what matters, not the grades.

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R
Oct 3, 2008 3:52 PM CST

Another example of political correctness and dumbing down to the least common denominator.  Having no “connections,” I elected to go to Harvard Law School over Yale in part because the grading at Harvard, with what was then a very steep B/B+ peaked curve, would give me the opportunity to distinguish myself, whereas in Yale almost every grade for almost every student in almost every course was said to be likely to be the same generic “pass.”  I was not disappointed.  I came in third in my section and on that basis was one of the 20 1Ls who made Law Review on grades.  For a long time now, the standards for Law Review have also been muddied with non-objective criteria and the coin thereby considerably cheapened.  This change will serve to hurt the truly outstanding students far more than it might help the job prospects or egos of those in the bottom half of the class.

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Willem DeDonis
Oct 4, 2008 10:21 AM CST

You have to be smart, or know someone, or be a mnority to get in to Harvard.  After you’re in, you have to be an imbecile not to graduate.  That’s why there are so many dilweeds out there with a HLS degree.  Only about 1/3 of them are any good.  Do the math for yourself.

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Really?
Oct 4, 2008 12:11 PM CST

Is this a very late April Fool’s joke?

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orange country community college law school studen
Oct 4, 2008 7:04 PM CST

plz leave ellen and her boyfriend alone.

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Anthony F. Akins, ESQ
Oct 5, 2008 7:00 AM CST

As a Senior Partner at a high Profile Intellectual Property Law Firm, I interview applicants every year, and I use grades as 50% of my process, Interview 20%, and 30% review of our in house designed testing. I have found good and bad from Ivy & Non Ivy. I believe that HLS is moving to this pass / fail approach to continue to justify the crazy prices they charge for tuition. If you were a parent footing the bill or were required to maintain a certain GPA to continue to receive government funds, etc; you can see why HLS is trying to get rid of grades. Colleges are nothing, but big businesses, and schools like Harvard and Yale, are places where the rich can send there children, so that they can be a part of a so called Elite group. There are also well qualified students at these Institutions. When I graduated from Law School 20+ years ago, being in the top 3-5% of your class was the key to the top firms; however the lower % did get jobs, but most had to work for the Government for a few years and prove themselves, worthy. Grades, and the right undergraduate degree, were the keys to my success, and I guess my Ivy League education did not hurt.

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