Law Schools Try Helping Grads by Raising Grades, Paying Firms for ‘Test Drives’
Law schools are taking a proactive approach to helping their grads find jobs in a tough economic climate.
Many schools are boosting grades, while others are scheduling earlier on-campus interviews and even paying law firms to “test drive” students, the New York Times reports.
Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law is paying law firms $3,500 to try out its graduates in a program reported by the blog Above the Law last month. The blog notes that Dedman’s program is likely to boost its employment numbers—and its ranking by U.S. News & World Report. Other schools, such as Duke and the University of Texas at Austin, offer stipends for students to take unpaid public interest internships, the Times says.
Loyola Law School of Los Angeles announced in April that it was retroactively raising grades a step, so that an A becomes an A-plus. The idea was to put the school on a par with others that have a more lenient grading curve and to eliminate the competitive disadvantage for its grads. It is one of at least 10 law schools in the last two years that have changed grading systems to make them more lenient, according to the Times. Others include New York University, Georgetown, Golden Gate University and Tulane University.
The grading reform varies, the story says. “Some schools bump up everyone’s grades, some just allow for more As and others all but eliminate the once-gentlemanly C.” Other schools, such as Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and the University of California at Berkeley, are using a pass-fail system.
The grading changes “can create a vicious cycle,” the story says. As schools raise their grades to make their grads higher in the distribution, the average is raised, and there is pressure on other schools to then raise their grades.
