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1. Posted by anonymous - 2 months, 2 weeks, 3 days, 10 hours, 52 minutes ago

   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.

2. Posted by Anonymous - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 16 hours, 56 minutes ago

   Re: anonymous.

   Well said. One would think lawyers (and judges) would have figured this out by now.

3. Posted by Florida Law - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 16 hours, 10 minutes ago

   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.

4. Posted by Cautious grader - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 14 hours, 53 minutes ago

   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.

5. Posted by Anonymous - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 14 hours, 35 minutes ago

   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.

6. Posted by A.Q.S. - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 14 hours, 24 minutes ago

   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.

7. Posted by BC - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 14 hours, 8 minutes ago

   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.

8. Posted by Business Attorney - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 14 hours, 5 minutes ago

   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?

9. Posted by Imperfect Student, but Well-Rounded Individual - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 13 hours, 46 minutes ago

   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.

10. Posted by George Lenard - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 13 hours, 43 minutes ago

    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.

11. Posted by Eldon - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 13 hours, 36 minutes ago

    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.

12. Posted by Get Real - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 13 hours, 12 minutes ago

    And we certainly are “graded” in the real world.  Let’s not shock anyone’s delicate sensibilities.

13. Posted by Max Lohman - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 13 hours, 3 minutes ago

    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.

14. Posted by Todd Rainer - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 12 hours, 57 minutes ago

    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.

15. Posted by Scott Turow II - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 12 hours, 47 minutes ago

    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.

16. Posted by Teresa - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 12 hours, 47 minutes ago

    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.

17. Posted by Lionel Hutz - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 12 hours, 46 minutes ago

    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.

18. Posted by Get some perspective - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 12 hours, 31 minutes ago

    "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…

19. Posted by David R. Herz - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 12 hours, 24 minutes ago

    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.

20. Posted by worried law student - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 12 hours, 21 minutes ago

    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.

21. Posted by Bill - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 12 hours, 14 minutes ago

    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.

22. Posted by Elwood - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 12 hours, 13 minutes ago

    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.

23. Posted by Bill - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 12 hours, 12 minutes ago

    "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.

24. Posted by interested - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 12 hours, 10 minutes ago

    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.

25. Posted by Bill - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 11 hours, 51 minutes ago

    "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!

26. Posted by JD - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 11 hours, 49 minutes ago

    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.

27. Posted by interested - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 11 hours, 40 minutes ago

    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.

28. Posted by steve - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 11 hours, 35 minutes ago

    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.

29. Posted by Yale Grad - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 11 hours, 33 minutes ago

    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.

30. Posted by interested - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 11 hours, 21 minutes ago

    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.

31. Posted by CB - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 11 hours, 20 minutes ago

    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.

32. Posted by anonymous2 - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 11 hours, 19 minutes ago

    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.

33. Posted by Jen - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 11 hours, 16 minutes ago

    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.

34. Posted by CB - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 11 hours, 13 minutes ago

    I think we had the same CivPro professor.  “A match across the ‘v’ burns diversitY”, right?

35. Posted by Jen - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 11 hours, 1 minute ago

    Yes, CB, we definitely had the same professor!  After almost 10 years, I can still hear him saying that in my head now.

36. Posted by Berkeley Law - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 11 hours ago

    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.

37. Posted by Anonymous - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 10 hours, 58 minutes ago

    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.

38. Posted by Stan - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 10 hours, 57 minutes ago

    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.

39. Posted by Older Student - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 10 hours, 50 minutes ago

    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.

40. Posted by steve - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 10 hours, 42 minutes ago

    "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.

41. Posted by Sub Par - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 10 hours, 40 minutes ago

    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.

42. Posted by another anonymous2 - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 10 hours, 32 minutes ago

    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?

43. Posted by Berkeley Law - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 10 hours, 13 minutes ago

    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.”

44. Posted by Anonymous - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 10 hours, 12 minutes ago

    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.

45. Posted by Scott Turow II - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 9 hours, 36 minutes ago

    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!

46. Posted by Sarah - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 9 hours, 21 minutes ago

    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!”

47. Posted by Dan Monahan - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 8 hours, 56 minutes ago

    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

48. Posted by T - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 8 hours, 55 minutes ago

    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.

49. Posted by 2008Grad - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 7 hours, 32 minutes ago

    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.

50. Posted by Kensing - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 7 hours, 31 minutes ago

    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.

51. Posted by Stephen - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 6 hours, 52 minutes ago

    Grade are not a determination of how great a lawyer is.  I really think that firms that hire based on grade are not the kind of law firms great attorney’s should work for.  Maybe that is why the silk firms have a two year turnover rate.

52. Posted by Scott Turow II - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 6 hours, 18 minutes ago

    To all of the long-winded posters: you get an “F” for lack of conciseness, brevity, pithiness, and persuasiveness!  Less is more, remember that.  Now get back to work.

53. Posted by Elliot Smith - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 4 hours, 32 minutes ago

    I am amazed how many people on here want to tell everyone how great they are for their wonderful grades and top schools.  Heads up to those who cannot shut up about themselves - no one else cares!

    As for grades, I believe they mean something but the idea that a job would be based on it is foolishness.  I went to a top tier law school and started law school out very poorly.  For the first semester I was at the bottom 10 percent of my class.  It was frustrating since I put in plenty of time studying.  My last semester of law school I received grades that put me in the top 5 percent of my class for the semester.  Ultimately I ended up in the middle of my class and am just fine.  The drastic difference between the beginning and ending semesters was simple - I learned how to write the test and I practiced typing so I could put down more garbage. 

    It worked the same for the bar exam.  Two weeks of studying and passed with plenty of cushion.  Not that I knew the material all that well, just what to study and put on the test.

    The sad thing is that there are people on this site who actually think they are more intellectually capable than others because they received higher grades in law school.  I didn’t get so much smarter over night.  I simply learned what some people happened to be lucky enough to do without knowing it.  Unfortunately for so many potentially wonderful attorneys, so many of those same people who happened to write the tests correctly from the beginning are the ones who have influence over the hiring process at the big firms.

    For those of you who are still in law school and have done poorly. Don’t give up and don’t give into the “you won’t get a job” hype.  You may not get your ideal job right out of law school but neither do those who go to the big firms (they just don’t know it yet).  In a few years, it really only matters about the quality of your work you produce and who you are as a person.

54. Posted by Another Berkeley Grad - 2 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 1 hour, 51 minutes ago

    Yes, berkeley have “grades” HH (10%), H (30%) or P, but, honestly, it is very easy to find a law firm job even with a majority of Ps on your transcript.  Yes, big law firm recruiting materials claim that they want “top 10%” or “top 30%” but in reality there are not too many students to fall into that category, as they have so many other choices.  All my friends (and myself) with most Ps landed jobs at big international law firms and we had multiple offers to choose from.  Once you have “berkeley law” on your transcript, you are pretty much golden.  Even if your grades suck, if you have great personality or an interesting background, YOU get to decide which firm.  We went from “will anybody hire us?” to “Skadden or Latham?”

55. Posted by Laura D. Cooper - 2 months, 2 weeks, 1 day, 23 hours, 19 minutes ago

    Whiners all.  I went to a tier 1 law school in the mid-1980s.  As a person with a disablity, I was in the top of my class, law review, regional moot court award, federal clerkship,and STILL COULDN"GET A JOB OFFER!  Reason?  WHEELCHAIR.  Legal employers do a lot of hiring based on criteria completely unrelated to potential performance.  “The Club” is still exclusive.  Letter grades help those of us with other “handicaps” prove we can excel, but, gee, it doesn’t always help even then.  “Arbitrary” is a part of the process, always has been, always will be.  If you can’t deal with it, you’re in the wrong profession.

56. Posted by avg law grad, ready to actually work - 2 months, 2 weeks, 1 day, 21 hours, 8 minutes ago

    It seems like some people who went to law school in the 70s and 80s don’t seem to realize how hyper-competitive kids are with grades now. I was always driven, but never in my life did I discuss grades so much until I went to law school. Today in my generation - Generation Instant Gratification - people will do (PAY) anything to get an A. Sure, there still are those brilliant braniacs who learn fast and learn well, but there are also A LOT of idiots in top 10%’s clothing. Just the same way many (but not all) college students of the 70s & 80s would almost NEVER get into top colleges today with their high school grades/SATs (3.0 in 2008 and I’ll likely see you at the junior college trying to transfer instead), I’m sure that many (but not all) of those same law grads would experience the bump down the ladder on today’s law school curve. I’m not discounting how hard the 70s/80s grads worked or their intelligence - but the law school climate has definitely changed, as well as how today’s students play the game.

    As an example, pre-law kids are spending thousands to take and even retake for Princeton Review or Testmasters until they get that perfect LSAT. Sure, if you can afford study for the LSAT for 2+ years, I’d hope you’d get no less than a 170. It’s like the kids who hit puberty and enroll in SAT classes every year until the end of high school - six years of practice and of course you are going to nail the standardized test.

    This problem doesn’t get any better in law school, especially with stiffly curved grading (and too many multiple choice exams, in my opinion). For example, as #33 stated, the difference between an A and a C in her class was SEVEN points. So even if you learned a lot and performed rather well individually, you get bumped down because of mandatory curves.

    When I started law school 3 years ago, I had no idea about supplements and hornbooks, and by the time I learned about them mid-semester, professors we expressing their distaste to them What a load of crap. Little did I know that my peers were skipping reading out of our $120 casebooks (and often class altogether) and instead memorizing $45 Emanuels Outlines, ready to play the game and regurgitate them in 3 hour exams. This cost me BIG time my first semester, and even though I made improvements in the Spring of my first year, those fall grades held me back in relation to my peers. Interestingly, I started my 2L year learning that, unlike myself, many of my “top” classmates had still not even set foot inside the local courthouse. No trial watching, no prelim hearings. Hell, not even to take a look.

    Over the years I saw how others would schmooze the right upperclassmen to get copies of the “good outlines.” And forget re-handwriting them or “mimeograph” versions - a few clicks and the 50 pages of the ENTIRE course was right in one’s email inbox. For example, there was an outline known as “Corp Script” for my Corporations course - fully verbatim outline of the lecture. Legend has it that someone had made mp3s of the lectures (even though recordings were against that prof’s class policy) and gotten everything down, word for word for word.  It had everything one needed for daily lectures or just the open-note exam.. The professor (who seemed unaware at the time of the outline) had not changed his lecture much in 3 or 4 years, soooo of course the students with this golden Word doc landed high up on the curve, whether or not they went to class, cracked open their book, or even knew what the hell 10(b)6 is about. Oh did I mention that 100% of our grades here were determined by a 70 question MULTIPLE CHOICE EXAM? I instead sweat through the material and seemed lucky to walk with a B, even though I obviously lost out on an A or even an B+ thanks to the Corp Script-holders.  But sure, every single one of those A’s was attributed to natural ability, and my B just means I’m not hardworking or smart enough. Right. I’d love to see some of those old veteran attorneys sit for a first year exam and see how they really fare, given the way the game is played today.

    I think the elimination of letter grades allows students to focus more on LEARNING material (rather than cramming off of script outlines), and less on bumping up that two digit number. Certainly students should be learning enough to pass their courses, but with a C/NC grading system, they can instead focus on other IMPORTANT foundational skills the will allow for a smoother transition into the practice of law. Providing an academic environment that is more conducive to participation in complementary legal activities like multiple externships, legal clinics, more moot court competitions, and greater involvement in legal associations would be a great benefit. Sure employers skim these accomplishments, yet still weigh folks on transcripts, when the former seems to give a stronger indication of the day to day potential of the candidate before them.

57. Posted by Kensing - 2 months, 1 week, 6 days, 23 hours, 52 minutes ago

    A number of comments have stated that by eliminating letter grades, students will focus more on learning rather than on earning higher grades.

    The assumption is that by focusing on attaining higher grades, students don’t really learn as much because they focus more on reading commercial legal outlines and on finding out what type of answers professors want to read.

    Well, if this is true (and in many instances it may very well be) isn’t this actually “learning?”

    There is no way any examination can test every single minute aspect of any subject area. The purpose of an examination is to test the student’s knowledge of the major subject areas and her/his ability to apply that knowlege in a practical and meaningful way so as to arrive at a well-reasoned conclusion. This is what lawyers and other professionals do.

    What good is memorizing and understanding the entire tax code if you can’t even prepare your own tax return? Don’t laugh, I have known law professors in law school who teach tax, possess L.L.M.s in tax, publish extensive articles on tax law and yet, they admit they rely on their accountants to prepare their tax returns because they just don’t have the discipline to maintain tax records and develop strategies that will allow them to minimize their tax burdens. That’s sort of like the marriage therapist who has a Ph.D. and knows all of the great psychological theories that can supposedly save marriages and yet is divorced himself.

    Being a successful lawyer requires understanding what a client needs and how to legally meet this client’s needs by applying the appropriate codes and regulations. It also requires learning what a particular judge is looking for in legal arguments and drafting one that is persuasive and relevant so that your client will prevail in a legal action.

    Besides, one can argue that by eliminating letter grades, students may decide to learn what they need to know in order to get a “Pass” and nothing more. If you knew that no matter how knowlegeable you become at your job, you will never earn a salary higher than $40,000 and you are earning that salary now, why would you want to learn more? Very few people choose to work extremely hard for no additional rewards.

    In life, you are “graded” in one form or another - by salary, rank, promotion, etc. And let’s face it - there will always be people out there who are smarter, more connected and even luckier than you are. But there are plently of people who are less lucky than you are too. The fact that you are in law school shows that you have accomplished more than most.

58. Posted by Joe - 2 months, 1 week, 6 days, 22 hours, 30 minutes ago

    Would be interesting see where their “elite” grads in
    the white house and elsewhere would rate under these new grade standards.

    Just a civilian, thanks for the comment

59. Posted by Angry Grad - 2 months, 1 week, 6 days, 10 hours, 4 minutes ago

    U of AZ should have done this years ago.

    Grading a class of 90 on a 35 question multiple choice test is bigtime BS.  I should sue my alma mater to recover the 12 months of post graduation unemployment I incurred at their expense.

60. Posted by Kensing - 2 months, 1 week, 3 days, 4 hours, 44 minutes ago

    I used to think that essay questions in law school were the best way to test law students. But now I am not so sure.

    When I used to look at essay questions that were graded with an “A” versus essay questions that were graded with a “B,” there wasn’t that much of a difference. Perhaps the “A” essay was written slightly better or a little clearer than the “B” paper but both papers cited the relevant cases and provided reasonable analyses of the subject. In one case, the only difference between an “A” paper and a “C+” paper was one paragraph! The point is, grading essays is very subjective.

    With multiple choice questions, the grading is objective - count the number of questions that are correct, multiply these by the amount of points assigned and you have your grade.

    Furthermore, essay exams tend to favor certain subject areas depending on the professor who creates them. If an essay question is on a topic that some students like or are more knowledgeable about, then those students will do well. But a multiple choice exam can test more subjects so that overall, no group of students will have an advantage.

    This doesn’t mean that essay questions should be eliminated altogether from law school exams. I prefer exams that contain 50% multiple choice and 50% essays.Research papers should be assigned although there are those who say that students can get others to do their research papers. Class participation should be given weight as well.

    But for those who think that essay exams are better than multiple choice exams, think again. Many professors have been accused of unfair bias in grading essays i.e., grading harsher those essays that went against a professor’s personal beliefs or research.

    Professors do tend to give higher grades to students they like. Even though the grading system is supposed to be anonymous, especially in first-year law classes, professors find out.

    As far as finding a job immediately upon graduating out of law school, remember, law schools can’t guarantee that you will find employment after graduation.

    I know of engineers, business majors, teachers, social workers, medical doctors (yes, it’s true) and other professionals who couldn’t find jobs. Even many Ph.D.s can’t find jobs.

    Don’t look at law school as a training school/employment service institution. Law school is a professional graduate school designed to provide an education for those who wish to enter a profession. If you are entering that profession solely because you think you will find a high-paying job after graduation and not because you care about that profession, then you are in for a tremendous disappointment.

61. Posted by Joe Reisinger - 2 months, 1 week, 2 days, 18 hours, 12 minutes ago

    When I was in law school it was often said that “A” students made good law school professors.  “B” students made good judges, and “C” students become millionaires.  Now, from the vantage point of 38 years later, that certainly seems to have been true.  --- now, without grades, how are we to know who to count on to be the millionaires who will hire the “A” and “B” students when they loose their jobs or retire?