Law Schools
Stanford Law School Drops Letter Grades
Posted Jun 11, 2008 11:56 AM CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
Stanford University has become the third elite law school to drop letter grades.
Under the new system Stanford students will receive grades of honors, pass, restricted credit and no credit, reports Inside Higher Ed.
The system will change for students graduating in 2011, according to the Daily Journal (sub. req.). Students graduating before that will have the option of keeping their letter grades.
Law students don’t get letter grades at two other elite law schools: Yale and the University of California, Berkeley. Harvard is also discussing such a move, but so far it has made no announcement of a change. Insider Higher Ed says the debate is unlikely to move to lower tier schools, where students seek to distinguish themselves with higher grades.
Above the Law was the first to report the news, prompting more than 70 comments. One person wrote: “This fluffy grading is the luxury of schools in like the top five where grades don’t matter as much anyway. If you went to a 20-something school like I did, you need to be able to show you were in the top-whatever percent of your class to get into BigLaw, let alone federal clerkships.”
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Comments
anonymous
Jun 12, 2008 9:42 AM CST
The grading system used by law schools only gives the impression of “allowing students to set themselves apart” from their colleagues. The reality is that there is a method to the madness of law school exams, and those students who master the written structure that law professors are looking for tend to get the higher grades. This does NOT make them better lawyers nor better suited for the practice of law. It merely means that they have gained insight into the exam writing process - often from lawyer relatives or commercial exam writing courses - that results in their achieving a superior structure on their exam, and thus higher grades. It is humorous to see the law, almost singularly among the professions, pursue a path that puts so much emphasis on a number, with infinitely less attention paid to the overall person being considered for employment. The final irony is that the profession then bemoans the state of the legal industry, which has turned into a grinding, bottom-line numbers oriented BUSINESS. The days of law as a profession are gone. And no one should wonder why this has happened. It is because the legal profession - that’s you, partners - has turned the majority of its attention to numbers when selecting candidates for hire. And no one should be surprised, then, when those candidates turn their attention almost exclusively to numbers; not the quality of life at the firm, not long-term employment potential or a mutual relationship, but strictly how much will you pay me for the 3-5 years I plan on working here before I move on to the job I really want. This is sad. But no one has the guts to admit the problem even exists, much less take the steps necessary to fix it.
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Anonymous
Jun 13, 2008 3:38 AM CST
Re: anonymous.
Well said. One would think lawyers (and judges) would have figured this out by now.
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Florida Law
Jun 13, 2008 4:25 AM CST
Well said. I am recent law graduate, but had over 10 years of industry experience and a solid business reputation with a large fortune 50 company when I entered law school. I was surprised at how well people mastered the test taking process, and how little they actually cared about the law and how reluctant they were to question it. I can only hope that recent grads intend to learn to love the law at some point before they regret their decision to attend LS and heap on piles of debt with no passion for what they doing. Suppressing the traditional grading system across the board may restore the learning process once again. I applaud it.
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Cautious grader
Jun 13, 2008 5:41 AM CST
Just because grades alone are not a sufficient basis for evaluating applicants does not mean that they are not useful as one part of the evaluation.
These elite schools, by passing on grades, appear to be saying to employers, “Hey, just getting into our school is enough to distinguish our graduates - you don’t need to know much more than that.” As an employer, I guess I’d consider that a little patronizing.
My experience as a law school teacher is that students want feedback about how they are doing and where they fit in their class - it helps them focus their efforts where they are needed. On the other hand, there is a considerable amount of “grade stress” among law students. If Stanford law students cannot handle the stress of battling for grades in law school, however, I expect they may find the practice of law too much for them.
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Anonymous
Jun 13, 2008 6:00 AM CST
Um, feedback of how they fit where in their class? In no context will a lawyer sit down and write a three-hour exam. So the method of showing students where they fit into their class is, at best, arbitrary.
It’s shocking how much weight is placed on it. Why not place more weight on how well people do on the bar exam, rather than just whether they pass? That would not tell a potential employer very much about how well the candidate would perform as a lawyer. But it’s just as arbitrary as traditional law-school grades.
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A.Q.S.
Jun 13, 2008 6:11 AM CST
I am preparing for the NY Bar right now. It is sucking life. I have yet to see any correlation between the LSATs, law school exam grades, the preparation required for the Bar, the type of attorney you will eventually become. It seems the bar is the ultimate leveling field no matter where you went to law school or what your grades were or if you belonged to Law Review or not. That is illuminating on some planes…. in the end, the only reason I will have respect for the most “moronic” of attorneys is because they endured and survived Barbri and PMBR bar prep… that is what makes our profession “elite”—the qualifiers we have placed ourselves to feel good about ourselves.
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BC
Jun 13, 2008 6:26 AM CST
Harvard already doesn’t give rankings like most tier two and three schools. The mere fact that you went to Harvard is all that employers need to know. Good for the privileged few who are bright enough and worked hard enough to get into those types of schools. Going to a no grade policy is simply a lateral step in a school where the grades don’t really mean much anyway. I wish that my school was a Tier one where grades weren’t an issue, but alas, a low Tier 3 school will never be able to get to that type of level, and the future alumni of the school will have to deal with the ever burdening stigma of worrying about what happens when they don’t finish in the top 15% of the class.
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Business Attorney
Jun 13, 2008 6:30 AM CST
Bravo, Anonymous!
The law school exam is written very differently from the essay or research paper, which I and most others in the U.S. were trained to write.
I only learned how to write for a law exam AFTER law school, during prep for the bar exam. Basically, it is like a mathematical proof. Law profs should know the difference—why don’t they teach it?
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Imperfect Student, but Well-Rounded Individual
Jun 13, 2008 6:48 AM CST
I went to a Tier 2 school, and initially, I found myself having a difficult time making the transition from college to law school. That was a particularly damaging time to my ego, because let’s face it: most of us who end up in law school, whether Tier 1 or Tier 4 or somewhere in between, were either smart enough or worked hard enough in college to be near the top of our classes. Coming out of my 1L year, I found myself with a horrifying thought—I was in the middle of my class! But I kept pushing on. I worked and worked, and eventually, something clicked inside my brain, and I was able to take a better law school exam, but it was a long road of recovery from my 1L grades. Sadly, I almost received honors, but didn’t quite make it. My point is this—we all know very bright people who don’t test well, and those who do. We all know people who excel under pressure and those who crack and leave law school. Right now, I’m struggling to find a job in this depressed economy. I know I will find a job, but I have to explain to everyone why my GPA is not great, and point out that it got better every semester. Grades really only help those people in the Top 1/3 of their class. After that, it’s all superfluous. I am a perfect case-in-point of someone who has a love-hate relationship with letter grades, but I think they are a necessary evil. However, I was able to distinguish myself in other ways in my time on campus, and *that* is the true test of a person. People need to be well-rounded. I don’t have perfect grades, but I am a successful person because I know how to live outside of a law school textbook. Keep the grades.
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George Lenard
Jun 13, 2008 6:51 AM CST
Anonymous says better grades are all about mastering the written structure. Hello . . . don’t you think mastering the course content and applying its often-complex legal principles to the always-complex fact patterns of the exams has anything to do with it?
I’ll admit to being proud of having earned Coif (in the Big Ten). I’ll also admit that in many ways that does not mean I’m a better lawyer. But in some ways it does—I’ve always excelled at exactly what exams call for: thinking creatively about applying the law; and writing about it in a concise, organized, and persuasive fashion.
Back in the early 80s, it never once occurred to me to study the “written structure” required for exams or take a commercial exam-writing course (if they even existed). I just worked really hard at boiling the material down to manageable outlines and learning it. The written structure I used for exams was one I had developed my whole life through writing essays and blue book exams on a vast array of subjects. By the time one enters law school, they should know how to write a blue book essay exam. If not, their high school and undergraduate education was grossly inadequate.
It’s interesting that Stanford is not really going to pass-fail. They are going from five grades (A, B, C, D, F) to four (honors, pass, restricted credit and no credit). In doing so, they are making it harder to compare their graduates in terms of gpa. But their transcripts could easily be converted to gpa. There’s a question as to whether to treat “honors” as an “A” or a “B”. Since they’re already getting bonus points for the school they attended, I’d give an “honors” grade a 3.5 and move on to calculate an average with a simple “pass” being a 2.0.
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Eldon
Jun 13, 2008 6:58 AM CST
The greatest bias in the law training system, namely law schools and then associate work, is that students are prepared to become workaholic, grind it out associates, not professionals. A straight-A student might be especially smart or talented, but mostly displays an ability to take orders, trade living for studying, and regurgitate everything on an exam. As a 30+ year lawyer and law school adjunct prof, I see legions of hopeful faces beat down by a system rather than boosted by promise. The law can be a wonderful pursuit, but it is made into a nightmare for too many, by too many small thinkers, and much too often.
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Get Real
Jun 13, 2008 7:22 AM CST
And we certainly are “graded” in the real world. Let’s not shock anyone’s delicate sensibilities.
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Max Lohman
Jun 13, 2008 7:32 AM CST
This is just another example of the “touchy-feely”, we don’t want to damage the over inflated ego or damage the fragile self esteem of the current generation. In the name of sensitivity and tolerance we have bred an entire generation of over confident, under performing children and this no grade policy is a sterling example of what is wrong with this country. When the average twenty something comes to work they expect the corner office and to have their bottom powdered. Harsh words or professional critique of their performance and work product is received like it’s the first time they were ever critiqued…because it probably is.
This is the generation of participation ribbons and trophies for the losing team. Therefore, it is no surprise that certain elite law schools are going the extra mile in order to further encase this delicate made out of crystal generation in bubble wrap.
Before I became an attorney I was in a profession were failure to master the subject matter and failure to perform under pressure could result in death…I was a military pilot. There was no room for second best nor was there room or time for “nice effort.” Well, incompetence and poor performance can have dire consequences in the legal profession also. Grades are a necessary evil in order to separate the wheat from the chaff. Young lawyers complain about quality of life and getting into “BigLaw” and the grades/school combination required to achieve entry. Well, you can’t have both. Quality of life and expectations at BigLaw have generally gotten better in the last decade, not worse. Because the previous generation expected to have to make it up or move it out.
As has been previously stated, grades are not necessarily the best indicator of one’s ability as a future attorney; however, there must be a yard stick by which to measure each law student’s performance. I mean for godsake, the grading system is blind and based on a curve. It is hardly draconian. Besides, after you get your first job, nobody really cares what your grades in law school were.
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Todd Rainer
Jun 13, 2008 7:37 AM CST
Ya know, I’m starting my second year in school now and my grades stink. It’s not that I don’t comprehend the material, I do, as an older student, I’ve lived a lot of what my classmates are just now learning and I pretty much always have something to add to the class discussion (I guess that makes me a gunner, which is fine). I just don’t test well in the system that professors want. I have to disagree with Mr. Lenard. Often the complex fact pattern doesn’t have anything to do with it. Often it is using the professors buzzwords and using the answer pattern that the professor desires to see. Figuring out what wrong answer on a multiple choice is closest to right (often a subjective answer based on the professor’s opinion). And figuring out what information the professor actually wants given the amount of time one has to write. I’ll admit, I’m a plodder when it comes to writing and that hurts me.
I have 20 years of life experience on the majority of my classmates. My grades will count for little to me when I get out in the real world again and am able to put nearly ten years of maritime experience to work either at a firm or on my own.
MY clients will be happy. Whereas some of the “smarter” (read that, higher scoring) students at my school… I wouldn’t trust them to wash my cat much less represent me in a court of law.
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Scott Turow II
Jun 13, 2008 7:47 AM CST
If you get into Stanford or Yale and perhaps even Harvard law schools, you really don’t need grades to impress others or validate your credentials; you have made it. Berkeley, on the other hand, is barely a top ten school (full of top 3 rejects) and not having grades for its students likely will hurt them in the recruiting world.
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Teresa
Jun 13, 2008 7:47 AM CST
Grades serve several purposes. As Cautious Grader suggests, they provide some feedback to students about whether they can recall relevant information under stressful circumstances - a skill used by all professionals. They provide some (but certainly not sufficient) comparative information regarding students’ ability to master this skill, which can be helpful to both the students and future employers. Grades also motivate many students to attempt to learn materials that are of no interest to particular students, but knowledge of which is required to have an adequately broad understanding of the law. For example students often complain about taking tax and evidence, yet both courses contain information that every lawyer should have some passing familiarity with if for no other reason than lawyers need to know what they don’t know.
Many of the complaints on this blog and elsewhere are not so much directed at providing grades to students, but instead reflect dissatisfaction with the primary method used to create those grades—the single written examination at the end of the semester composed primarily of essay questions regarding obscure points of law. While this remains the most efficient way of gathering information from and about 60-100 students in a class, it is clearly not the most effective way to evaluate their progress toward becoming compentent lawyers. Many schools are moving to multiple testing techniques including performance in simulations and live client situations, professional writing (briefs, contracts, wills, etc.), and presentation of research projects. The Carnagie Report on Legal Education supports this trend, and may provide some encouragement for administrations to consider what kinds of support they can provide to faculty willing to engage in these more time-consuming methods of evaluation.
The second major complaint seems to center on the use legal employers make of grades. In part, the only honest response is “It was ever thus, and probably always will be.” To the extent, that grades have come to play a larger role in hiring than personal and family connections (a factor that still has some weight in many hiring decisions), it can be understood as an advance toward a level playing field since everyone starts out with the same chance to obtain good grades in law school. This is not to say that personal factors don’t enter into grade preformance. I started law school with a ten-month old child, and my husband and I owned a retail business which required my presence every weekend. Nonetheless, as a woman going to law school in the mid-80’s, there were no formal entry barriers, and most of the faculty expected to see women succeed as often as men. The differences in our grades most often came down to who was willing to consistently work the hardest. I have no problem with that being the criterion for rewards. As a young mother, wife, and business owner, I often chose to focus on things other than law school. Did this hurt my grades? Yes. Did I receive rewards outside of law school for these choices? Yes. My marriage survived law school (unlike some of our friends), we have three wonderful adult children, and the business provided the income the family needed during that time of our lives.
In the end, I continue to think grades are valuable to students and others in assessing a variety of characteristics including command of the material and time committed to legal studies. I do not think they are the best indicators of who will be good lawyers, nor do I think they are the best indicators of who will succeed in the business of law. But they are some indicator of some of the characteristics that are relevant to competence and success.
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Lionel Hutz
Jun 13, 2008 7:49 AM CST
The problem with law school grades, I think, can be summarized in an experience I had my first year. Our contracts professor was absolutely brilliant and subjected us to every possible minute detail dealing with contract law. During the last week of class, I mustered up the courage to ask a question I know a lot of people had been thinking since August. I asked him if we were ever going to show us how to write an actual contract. He looked dumbfounded, as if in the many, many years he had been teaching the though never even occured to him. HIs respones was “We don’t have enough staff to do that kind of thing!”
The problem with law grades isn’t that schools are trying to differentiate between student aptitude or performance. Its that they are using a method that is completely arbitrary with no correlation to the practice of actual law. Why don’t law schools implement more pracitacal exercises. Instead of trying to cram a year’ s worth of stuff into one written exam, why don’t schools make student draft documents, practice motion arguements, do negotiations etc? The standard response is seems to be that the old lecture note test method is the most efficient if not effective. God knows we pay enough for the proviledge to attend law school. Maybe we should demand a little more quality out of the instruction. Maybe schools should hire more Professors or , dare I say it, restrict enrollment so that teachers can focus on fewer studetns. That way, when an employer sees an A student he/sh will have know doubt as to whether those grades will mean the student will actually be a good lawyer.
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Get some perspective
Jun 13, 2008 8:03 AM CST
“Berkeley, on the other hand, is barely a top ten school (full of top 3 rejects)”
Wow, life must be so hard for those poor underprivileged kids…
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David R. Herz
Jun 13, 2008 8:10 AM CST
Grades are nothing more than a sorting tool. The question is on what basis do they sort, and what do they teach students to emphasize. The fact is that most students with a good grade will not turn around and ask what they have learned. They will move on to getting the next grade.
If we truly want to determine whether students will be fit as lawyers, maybe we should make them all take part in legal clinics and rate them on things that matter, such as ability to deal with clients and colleagues, ability to make tough ethical choices, ability to honestly represent the law and to get the best results given the facts presented.
Then let’s let the lawyers sell themselves to the law firms based on the record they have created. One might consider that this would be a much better test of a student’s persuasuve abilities, and skill as a lawyer, than his grdes are.
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worried law student
Jun 13, 2008 8:13 AM CST
I just finished my first year at a third tier law school. Like many people, I was unhappy with my grades and have a history of poor exam performance. I am an older student with 10 years of work experience. I knew I always wanted to go to law school but just never applied. When I got in, I was so worried about how I would make it through because the grading curve is very strict. During the past two semesters the importance of my gpa has been crammed down my throat on a weekly basis. I had to remind career services and some professors that not all of us full time day first years were just out of undergrad. Some of us have the resumes of night students but chose to study full time during the day. I don’t know what my rank is but I am not in the top half or maybe even the middle half. I did have improvement during the second semester and am not on academic probation or being dismissed, like several of my classmates. The removal of letter grades I think with levy some of the stress students have and will be more productive. If my third tier school got rid of grades it would not make me study any less. Like many law students that are not in the top 10, I am worried about getting a job. Is the fact that I speak 3 languages and have 10 years of very diverse legal work experience and volunteer experience going to be enough to overcome a potentially low gpa? I certainly hope so.
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Bill
Jun 13, 2008 8:20 AM CST
It seems like eliminating grades will likely just increase employers’ focus on participating in activities like journals and clinics, and whatever proactive extracurricular activities a student takes on. It’s very likely that this is actually a better indicator of a student’s true abilities to become a successful professional, but it also will add even further work and stress to the students’ lives. I see all these students fighting to do outside activities, regardless of whether they would otherwise be so inclined to do so.
Another problem with employers’ focus on grades is that there are many, many reasons why a very intelligent student may not do well. There could be family situtations; certainly someone who has to raise children and/or go through a divorce during law school is not going to have as much time and enthusiasm to focus exclusively on school as a single person. Law firms are losing a lot of very talented people because of this single-minded focus, but they don’t care - it’s a buyer’s market.
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Elwood
Jun 13, 2008 8:22 AM CST
When I was at Michigan Law School in the late 70’s we had a professor who had recently left Stanford due to the apathy of the students. Acoording to him , they were all Top Ten School caliber students who decided to say “screw it” and spend three years on the beach. I guess this simply confirms what he said 30 years ago.
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Bill
Jun 13, 2008 8:22 AM CST
“Is the fact that I speak 3 languages and have 10 years of very diverse legal work experience and volunteer experience going to be enough to overcome a potentially low gpa?”
Sadly, not likely.
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interested
Jun 13, 2008 8:25 AM CST
I echo #10 and the like. The only people that gripe about grades are the ones that don’t have good ones. Unlike the LSAT and other standardized tests, law school grades aren’t tainted with the understanding that those with the funds and/or time to buy a study course are going to get better scores. Anyone in law school can develop a relationship with their professors, ask to find out what the professor expects on exams, and look in their libraries for copies of old exams to see how to write them. Grades on law school exams are good indicators of success down the road, in that they show a person’s ability to either learn from their mistakes and do what is necessary to succeed in any type of format. The only change that I would suggest is to require all professors to give a midterm exam worth no more than half you grade to allow people to become acclimated to the process before the end of the first semester.
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Bill
Jun 13, 2008 8:43 AM CST
“Unlike the LSAT and other standardized tests, law school grades aren’t tainted with the understanding that those with the funds and/or time to buy a study course are going to get better scores.”
Ha-ha! Yes, they tainted with the understanding that those with relatives who are lawyers are going to get better scores!
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JD
Jun 13, 2008 8:46 AM CST
Turow said:
“Berkeley, on the other hand, is barely a top ten school (full of top 3 rejects) and not having grades for its students likely will hurt them in the recruiting world.”
Berkeley has had a no-letter-grade policy for a couple of decades, at least. Not sure I have seen many Berkeley grads waiting in the soup kitchen lines . . .
That said, Berkeley always used a system similar to Stanford’s new one, where there actually are grades (High Honors, Honors, etc.), and it actually has a strict curve with about 60% receiving pass only—i.e., no honors. As a result, the students who chose Berkeley over Stanford in order to go to a public law school (or for whatever reason) did suffer by entering the same recruiting world with Stanford grads who benefitted from outrageous grade inflation (using a median of B+ or A- or whatever it was). So you are right in the sense that Stanford’s change will likely even things out a bit in that job market.
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interested
Jun 13, 2008 8:54 AM CST
Bill - lawyers in the family may help with getting a job, but most students with lawyer relatives are not getting some supervaluable exam writing tutoring experience that gives them the edge. More than likely, they are getting some insight from their relatives’ experiences into what it takes to succeed and then it is on them to do it. Unlike the traditional student that comes straight out of undergrad figuring “why not give law school a try” only then to get blindsided after not investigating what they should be doing. No lawyer in my family, and I figured out how to finish in the top 5% at a tier one school.
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steve
Jun 13, 2008 8:59 AM CST
The real problem with legal education has nothing to do with grades, really—it’s how students and professors arrive at them.
Colleges, especially top business schools, have tried to stay on the cutting edge of education by crafting curricula and classroom methods according to varying learning styles and in line with what can TEACH students the best. More importantly, among the professions—pharmacy, medicine, veterinary, dentistry, and legal—I would argue that the legal profession has the most antiquated, ineffective system of education. The other professions have grown their systems to make sure that students are prepared to work from the second they leave and have passed their boards. Their education prepares them for the PRACTICE of their profession, with countless practical exercises and tests that reinforce the knowledge that goes with those exercises.
On the other hand, I can’t tell you how many times I have heard lawyers tell me that law school does not prepare you for the PRACTICE of law. It is so true. While these other professional students get constant feedback while doing practical exercises and taking multiple tests, law students must continue to read case law and memorize things for ONE test. By the time you get your feedback, you are halfway through another semester of classes! Education at all other levels has constantly changed over the years to meet the learning styles of students and better prepare them for working in the real world. I do not feel that law schools do that.
Grades are a reflection of a few hours of taking one test, without books. The reality is that if you ever tried to draft a memo or brief without materials, you’d most likely be guilty of malpractice. In addition, professors like it more if you write a novel and explore every avenue, so they make many of their fact patterns more ambiguous than they would be in real life. In the end, one day determines your grade.
If law schools EVER decide to move to the cutting edge of education, with a more practical and learning-oriented approach, like great business schools and other professions, then grades will mean much more because they will be a true gauge of whether law students will be good lawyers. More importantly, law schools will most likely put out better lawyers.
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Yale Grad
Jun 13, 2008 9:01 AM CST
Going to the Honors/Pass system is not “eliminating grades.” It just eliminates fine distinctions. Even at Yale, most employers look at grades and prefer grads with lots of Honors grades. Those grades tend to go to students who work the hardest and that’s what law firms and judges want, smart people who work hard. I also have to disagree that there’s no correlation between grades and achievement. If one looks at the deans of the Bar over the last 50 years, including looking at their public service, it becomes apparent that many are top grads of top law schools. What’s giving us so many nerds instead of leaders is the billing expectations of many law firms which don’t leave much room for a life that helps broaden all those bright minds. Few firms or new lawyers can afford to rotate their first and second years through several areas of the law. Big clients want specialists who can hit the ground running on a particular matter.
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interested
Jun 13, 2008 9:13 AM CST
steve - law schools aren’t churning out lawyers ready to practice, but lets not put medical schools and business schools on higher ground than they deserve. Med students aren’t ready to practice medicine when they leave school. That is why they have paid apprenticeships for 3-6 years in the forms of residency and fellowship programs. To compare apples to apples, you would have to convince all lawyers to practice practicing for 3 years after school for $50k per year. As far as MBA’s go, it isn’t the school that gets all the credit for preparing them to work when they get out, it is the business that training them in the real world for 3+ years before they went back to school for more specialized training (or to check the box to move up in management). The MAcc program I completed didn’t prepare me to audit when i started in Big 4 accounting, on the job training did.
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CB
Jun 13, 2008 9:14 AM CST
I was told by one of the deans of my law school that LSAT score should always be weighted more than undergrad grades becuase it’s a better predictor of law school success. The grades give some insight into academic work ethic. He was clear to point out, however, that none of it (LSAT, undergrad grades, law school grades) are very good at predicting who the stand-out lawyers will be.
However, when BigLaw goes to pick associates, they have to use some criteria, and they pick the easiest - law school and rank. If nothing else, someone who got into Harvard law and got good grades while there is most likely a very, very hard worker and probably fairly intelligent. In the end, it makes sense even if it seems unfair. They hire the people that have had either the work ethic or wherewithal (or more likely, both) to be goal oriented their whole adult lives.
P.S. I’m neither a top 10 law school grad nor a BigLaw employee.
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anonymous2
Jun 13, 2008 9:15 AM CST
The responses to my post (#1) have been quite interesting. I especially enjoyed seeing the attempts to defend the current grading system in law school and/or those that stated that better grades come to those who are willing to work harder.
Sadly, the “harder workers” basis for grades just isn’t the nature of reality (at least not now; perhaps it was in the 70’s / 80’s). Many of my professors in law school (Top 20 school) shared with me that exams fell within 3 general categories: a couple stellar exams, written so well that it was almost as if they had a copy of the exam before taking it; a couple horrific exams, written so poorly that it was questionable whether they should get an F or a D or a C-; and The Rest, which covered most of the topics the professor was looking for, and covered them well.
The first 2 categories make it easy for professors to fill in the blanks at the top & bottom of their curve. It’s the masses in the middle that make it difficult. And none of the professors even tried to hide their not-so-secret “secret”: they would find minute nuances between groups of exams (many said “as little as an extra couple of sentences written on a topic”), and then use those minute nuances to divvy up the remaining slots on the curve (A, A-, B+, B, B-, and sometimes C+).
Now, as a practical matter, maybe that seems normal or expected or “just the way life is” to some of you. To me, and to many of my colleagues, this seemed just arbitrary as h***, and a horrific outcome for those of us who wrote more SLOWLY than some of our colleagues. Most of us had the identical information on our outlines, and most of us could identify the vast majority of issues being presented on the exams. Some were just better able to write a little more of the information they wanted to communicate more quickly than others, and those extra few sentences here & there literally made a huge difference.
It would seem like a minor detail, perhaps to some. But it is not. If you are consistently a slower writer, and thus turning in exams with 2 or 3 paragraphs less total information (out of 15 typed pages), then you could quite consistently end up in the B and B- slots on your professors’ curves. A “B” at our school was a 3.0 and a “B-” was a 2.7. Figure half your grades in roughly each category, and you get to graduate with a 2.85. Let me tell you: finding a job with less than a 3.0, even from a Top 20 school, was/is a very, very, very difficult task. I had many firms openly insult me in the interview, making not-so-veiled references to whether I had the intellect to handle work at their firm (fun to have beat many of them in court since then).
Again, this is not simply lack of intellect or talent or hard work (though those with the higher GPA’s would love to stroke their own egos & say that it is). It is largely a difference in styles / talent sets among law school students. And, by the way, I could NOT agree more with the writer who stated that law school grades should be made up of a variety of evaluations of various skill sets - negotiation, oral presentation, question & answer session, multiple choice exam, essay exam, brief writing, etc. This would be a NEAR-PERFECT way to evaluate students on the whole, and would give everyone a much clearer picture of the value to the firm / profession of the associate being considered. The current, single essay exam method does nothing more than give a HUGE advantage to those students who excel at 3 hour essay exams. Those with other skill sets (that will likely make them better attorneys in the long run) simply get relegated to the back half of the legal largesse bus.
Final question: which of you who are attorneys spend all day, every day, writing 3 hour, high intensity written works on an all-inclusive topic of law (not specific to your client’s issue, but covering the ENTIRE body of that topic)? That’s right: none of you do. So why are we deciding which students will perform well in an attorney’s real-world role, and handing out the best-paying opportunities, based on that criteria alone? It’s madness…..and ignorance…..and laziness.
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Jen
Jun 13, 2008 9:19 AM CST
I have less of an issue with letter grades and more of a concern with mandatory curves. I went to a Tier 2 school. One of my professors was a brilliant teacher who taught CivPro. He was also a Barbri professor. He made the most snoozer of a subject funny and interesting and, as a result, nearly every student in the classroom got it. After my first semester CivPro exam, a number of my friends lamented grades ranging from B to C-. We joked that we were in the “C+ Club”. When I went to discuss my exam with the professor, he told me not to worry about it. After scanning my exam, he said I got all the important points of law and what I missed was minutia. He was constrained by the mandatory curve and had to make fairly arbitrary judgments to effectuate the curve. The difference between an A and a C was 7 points on a 100 point scale. Because grades in law school are so important (especially first year), I think a mandatory curve is ridiculous. Nevertheless, he was right in that my first semester CivPro grade had no bearing on my career. I was not in the top 25% of my class, but I still managed to get a job at Biglaw and am doing fine.
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CB
Jun 13, 2008 9:22 AM CST
I think we had the same CivPro professor. “A match across the ‘v’ burns diversitY”, right?
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Jen
Jun 13, 2008 9:34 AM CST
Yes, CB, we definitely had the same professor! After almost 10 years, I can still hear him saying that in my head now.
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Berkeley Law
Jun 13, 2008 9:35 AM CST
Hearing people like anonymous say that there is no method to the madness with law school exams gets pretty old. It’s something that people say when they’re used to being at the top of their class from undergrad, and now they can’t accept the fact that they’re not doing quite as well in law school. When you say that to people at the top of the class who are pulling might as well just tell them that your grades aren’t good. Everyone at the “Top Ten” schools performed very well prior to law school, and instead of accepting the fact that they might not be at the top of their class in their new environment, they sit there talking about how random law school grading is.
Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s not. When you were at [insert Ivy League college here] getting wonderful (inflated) grades on your political science papers, what would you have thought if your classmates who didn’t do as well told you that the grading was totally random and there was no method to it? I’ve heard this nonsense for too long, and it’s pathetic. You may not be at the top of your class, but that doesn’t automatically mean that grading at law schools is random.
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Anonymous
Jun 13, 2008 9:36 AM CST
I beg to differ on the grades thing, especially w/Teresa. I’m a new lawyer who actually left a law firm job to attend law school a thousand miles away. ALL the top students in my class were the ones taking study courses & reading study guides that I didn’t have the money to buy b/c *gasp* I had to worry about paying for rent, gas, food, etc. Maybe if I’D had the money to buy these study guides, pay for an LSAT review course (I got an LSAC fee waiver btw) and so on, it might have changed things.
I also don’t come from a lawyer family; I’m actually the first in my family to go to law school. Therefore, do not make uninformed assumptions about grades being an equalizer—they are NOT. If you have to essentially pay for a course or items outside the required course materials in order to advance in the grade level or a test score & there’s no financial aid available for that stuff, it’s not an equal playing field AT ALL. If a monkey had millions of dollars, that monkey could be #1 in the class. Even getting into college isn’t equal since a poor person with aptitude is limited by the school’s financial aid offering; if it’s not enough, the school won’t bother working with you. I had to fight that fight in undergrad & push to get where I did. When some of you come from poor families & are going on sheer ability instead of money, then talk to me about grades being equal. At least I KNOW it’s all about how much money you have (so does the average person) & despite that, am pursuing the field I want on my terms.
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Stan
Jun 13, 2008 9:38 AM CST
I’m going into my 3rd year and initially floundered on the law school exam. I expected to be the best and brightest and found that I was a B/B- student. I studied very hard and took (overly)copious notes on all the reading. I felt that I was more prepared and had done more work than the vast majority of my classmates. Who really knows if this is true or not, but that’s how I felt and still kind of feel. I placed my blame squarely on the structure of the law school exam. I always thought it was kind of strange to base a future attorney’s ranking on their ability to do something that would be utterly unethical to do in actual practice.
Things started to click in my second year, and I have moved up to the coveted top 1/4 with consecutive semester GPA’s over 3.6. I honestly don’t know what has led to the change. If anything I study less than I did first year. I can only attribute the improvement to increased familiarity with the law school exam. My habits have not changed for the better, yet to the unsuspecting employer I suddenly possess ability and knowledge that the first year version of myself did not. How unfortunate for them.
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Older Student
Jun 13, 2008 9:44 AM CST
I have to agree with Steve, “Worried Law Student,” and Todd Ranier. As a 2nd year student in his 50’s (and the oldest student in our law school), possessing a Masters Degree, PhD, retired from the active duty military, and having been a college professor (business) for over 15 years, I can attest that the current LS methodology of assessing students’ performance and potential is extremely antiquated. One long essay exam doesn’t reflect how well one knows and can apply the legal concepts. As one who is at the top of the class with regards to written assignments, oral presentations, and research assignments, who does just fine with multiple choice questions, but struggles immensely with the extremely ambiguous essay questions, I am indeed in favor of modifying and updating the way LS grades are calculated. Yes, the essay responses are graded based on buzz-words, and amount written rather than focusing on knowledge and application of the concepts, regardless of what the professor says. Personally, I believe law students should NOT be graded against each other, but should be graded against a standard - let the ABA develop the standard. Furthermore, moving to a pass-fail system would truly equalize the playing field by removing the stigma of having B’s and C’s. Employers should request and examin copies of written work (including research), and bar exam results. But this will never happen - employers won’t change and law schools won’t change because they’re too lazy and don’t want to do any real work to accurately assess their students and future employees. The new Stanford system really doesn’t change anything - it’s still a grading system where students are compared against each other and the letter grades have been modified to words instead of A’s, B’s, C’s, etc.
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steve
Jun 13, 2008 9:53 AM CST
“interested”—I thank you for your insight and comment on my post.
Just for clarification:
In terms of business school, I was speaking more about my undergraduate experience in business classes, point being that I was able to retain more because of teaching style and repetition. The school wanted to stay in line with current business trends and practices, and it tailored its curriculum in that fashion. I learned concepts through case study on companies as well as through the teachers, and did a TON of projects and presentations for analysis and application. I just wanted to emphasize the connection that business schools try to have with the modern business world; many lawyers do not feel that law schools are connected with the PRACTICE of law. Their methods do not reflect what students need to know to be successful in practice.
You are correct about the medical profession. I know that dentists can hang the shingle after passing their boards; I am not sure about vets. Regardless, my point is that practical experience and the repetition associated with numerous tests in school helps to better prepare these people for that next step. They have dissected cadavers and seen x-rays, etc. The schools understand and employ the three methods of learning, simultaneously—presentation and description, visual demonstration, and an actual walk-through of the experience. They do this over and over again, so that people actually KNOW it, which makes it easier to put to use.
Good coaches will do the same thing with teams - they will talk about what they are doing, diagram it, and then take players to the field or court and walk through it before they ask them to do something “live.”
Most law professors just stand in the front of the room and talk, and it’s not the best way to impart knowledge. I just think all this banter by professors about legal theory needs to be reinforced more often with practical work, and the repetition of doing things will help students to KNOW more when they get out to the real world.
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Sub Par
Jun 13, 2008 9:54 AM CST
Tier 4 school here, 2.13 gpa. Have never had a problem finding a job. Moved to D.C. in November and have worked for 2 large capitol hill companies (not law firms)as a contract law clerk and now attorney. Grades are meaningless, and I chose to focus on life rather than grades. No grades, grades, who cares. You will always learn more outside the walls than in.
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another anonymous2
Jun 13, 2008 10:03 AM CST
Please note that there are postings from many different people under “Anonymous.” e.g. # 32 does not = # 37….
The problem with # 36, and what REALLY gets pretty old, is the fact that he/she, though they apparently went to “Berkeley Law,” does not bother reading an entire entry before responding to it. Like it or not, there are very small differences in most of the grades on the essay exams. Berk. Law seemed to understand that much of my entry. What Berk. Law did not seem to grasp is the infinite value presented by having a wide variety of criteria through which to evaluate students, producing final grades that present performance comprehensively, rather than just, “Hey, I’m a brilliant person….just look at how well I write a blind, hypothetical essay.”
That type of grading system would make GPA’s deeply meaningful, and should only be feared by “some” who seem afraid to leave the essay land, presumably their strong suit. This option is neither “old” nor “pathetic” nor a reflection of an inability “to accept” the seemingly obvious place in our class where we belong. It is, rather, a CHALLENGE to law schools to require their students to compete on every level (like a decathlon) rather than making all students compete in only one arena (everyone gets to do the shotput; not strong? sorry, you’re not much of an athlete).
Was that sufficiently broken down, Berk. Law?
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Berkeley Law
Jun 13, 2008 10:21 AM CST
42 - You make some strong points, and I agree that grades are not the only metric that future lawyers should be measured by. You should, however, recognize that I was not responding to any post in full - I was going off on that one sentence I hear all the time from classmates and students at peer schools. And if you really think the difference between grades on a given exam is small, that’s not a problem of “random” grading or having no method to the system, it’s a problem of easy exams. Maybe law school grades are fine, but exams at law schools should be more difficult across the board so that the class can really be sifted.
I’m also tired of reading posts by people who have never spent a day at Berkeley telling us how fluffy our grades are. If you want to stand out and be in the running for clerkships or you want to have your pick of AmLaw jobs (instead of hoping firms pick you), you need to pull Hs or HHs consistently. That takes a lot of work with a very talented pool of classmates and no grade inflation. You can be in the top half of the class at Berkeley and still pull a “P.”
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Anonymous
Jun 13, 2008 10:23 AM CST
I really wish that people would stop saying that students don’t receive letter grades at Berkeley’s law school, or at least be more nuanced about it. The grades there are High Honors, Honors, Pass, Pass Conditional, and No Pass. The grades are represented on the transcript by the letters HH, H, P, etc. So, to be hyper-technical about it, you do get “letter grades” there. But the key point is that there are just as many gradations as at schools offering grades of A, B, C, D, and F. The idea that the grading there is just some sort of fuzzy blur is baseless. They actually have a strict curve.
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Scott Turow II
Jun 13, 2008 10:58 AM CST
If you attend the following law schools, you don’t need grades or even good marks: Yale, Stanford, maybe Harvard. If you went to the following schools you need grades, but if you graduated in the bottom half, you likely will still land a job in a large law firm if you have a pulse: Chicago, Columbia, Michigan, and NYU. If you went to any other law school, best of luck!
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Sarah
Jun 13, 2008 11:13 AM CST
To quote a bar exam prep and law school professor. “I am teaching this so you will get barred, if you rely on this after…you will be disbarred!”
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Dan Monahan
Jun 13, 2008 11:39 AM CST
CUNY (City University Of New York) Law School was ahead of the curve when it started out as a progressive law school that didn’t believe in the law school grading system and the cut throat competition that such a system encourages among students. Sadly however, while once leading the pack, CUNY Law has regressed over the past 10 years going from a P+, P, F grading standard to a regular A-F grading system to the current system whereby if you get any two semesters below a 2.3 semester gpa you are dismissed. This change, and others, were forced on the law school by CUNY’s chancellor following some years of low bar pass rates in an effort to raise bar passage and make CUNY Law more “prestigious.” Well its too bad because in CUNY’s attempt to be more prestigious, they took steps counter to what the most prestigious law schools are doing - that is doing away with traditional grades. With all that said, CUNY Law is still a kick ass public interest law school. www.law.cuny.edu
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T
Jun 13, 2008 11:39 AM CST
A, B, C, D/F.
H, P, RC, NC.
It looks like a disguise.
If the goal is to take emphasis off grades, the system should be pass/fail.
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2008Grad
Jun 13, 2008 1:03 PM CST
Quite a bit of sour grapes on this thread. Here’s the simple reality, Good grades in law school are based on the same thing as success in any other endeavour. Natural ability multiplied by degree of effort yields your result. Complaints that you didn’t do well because you didn’t know how to take the test indicate some degree of lack of effort. Methods for taking law school exams or for knowing what a particular teacher wants are availalbe, and you will generally find them if you are making the extra effort that top law students make.
P.S. I don’t write this as a top law student. Frankly, I didn’t put in enough effort and I have only myself to blame to the degree that I am disappointed with my law school performance.
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Kensing
Jun 13, 2008 1:03 PM CST
Many people over the years have complained that school in general has not prepared them for the real world. I think that people generally confuse training with education.
Training provides a person with particular skills and tools that can be used immediately in a work setting. Education, on the other hand, develops a person’s mind and stimulates their comprehensive abilities so that they are better equipped to deal with complex problems.
Yes, I studied high school biology, chemistry, physics and calculus even though I never intended on becoming a scientist or a mathematician. But when the news discusses scientific, genetic and health issues, at least I know what DNA, bacteria and blood type are as does everyone else who has gone through high school.
Education is really a “work-out” of the mind. One can argue that since they are not going to be competitive athletes, why should they go to the gym and exercise? Because exercise strengthens your body, improves your immunity and allows your body to work more efficiently so that everyday tasks, such as walking and carrying groceries become easier and less straining.
This is what education does. It strenghtens the mind and helps in the development of “mental endurance.” Many have complained that grades cause too much stress for students. What do you think being a professional is all about? If grades stress you out, then how do you expect to deal with clients who have complicated legal problems and are depending on you to help them?
I don’t think it’s a good idea for law schools to eliminate letter grades. I think that students and professionals should be aware of their abilities and how their abilities rank with those of their colleagues. Knowing where you stand in relation to others allows you to develop a strategy for competing with others that involves you taking an inventory of your strengths and weaknesses.
I myself graduated in the top third of a Tier 2 law school. I never made law review or journal. I was always a good student but never a great one. I did not get any offers from any large prestigious law firms or that many small obscure law firms either and I expected that. This is why I started my own practice that has expanded over the years and has enabled me to earn a comfortable living. Instead of becoming an expert in one or two fields, I became generally knowledgeable in a variety of fields, which has enabled me to attract clients. This is my strength and I learned it while I was a student.
It should not be easy entering a profession. It should take a lot of hard work, motivation and yes, stress to enter any profession. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a profession, just a regular job. So yes, maybe LSATs, letter grades, as well as law school and bar examinations may not provide potential lawyers with the skills they need to practice law, but they do provide opportunities to expand your mind and test your endurance. In addition, they enhance the prestige of the profession and weed out those who just want an easy ride.
So quit whining, go study and actually earn the titles of Attorney-at-Law, Counselor-at-Law, and Esq.
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