<p>I know a lot of people ask questions about how good there GPA must be to get into law school, but once admitted and taking law school courses does really maintaining that 4.0 GPA matter? Do law firms really care if you graduated in the middle of the pack of your law school if you attended a T-14 school?</p>
<p>You betcha. Maintaining a 4.0 is not the issue but class rank is (understand that at some law schools the one who graduates first in his class often does not have a 4.0). Though top law firms will dip for hiring significantly lower into a class from T-14 than from others, being only middle of the pack or lower in those T-14 can result in rejections.</p>
<p>Do you believe then it would be better to go to say a top 30 law school and try and graduate at the top of your class then get stuck in the middle of the pack in a t-14 school?</p>
<p>If your goal is to work for one of the top law firms in a major city go for the best law school you can get into and do as well as you can. But some have other goals in becoming lawyers; if you want to do public interest law maybe you want to go to a low cost state school with a great clinical program. The big firms definitely want top grades and law review.</p>
<p>Low grades in law school - any law school - can haunt you for a long time. It is your first year GPA that is responsible for your getting your first summer clerkship and some people ride that wave on to the first job out of law school. I have known students who slack off in to third year and those grades can really matter later. Even if you land a great job in "biglaw" out of law school, one C on your transcript can be a real problem for a lateral move. I am working with a tax attorney now who wants to move from a "biglaw" firm in NY to one in DC. He has a couple of Cs on his law school transcript, but has a great LL.M. transcript. He has been dinged by every firm so far because of the transcript. He will find something, but it may be a step down from the current firm. Transcripts follow you for a long time. I have worked with very senior attorneys who still have to produce a transcript.</p>
<p>hmm. that's really interesting. i don't know much about law schools but i always thought the first yr. was the most important but you're saying even third-year grades have far-reaching sig.</p>
<p>First year can be the most important, but I'm just warning not to rest on your laurels. If someone stays in the first job they get, that might be fine, but few people do that. Most people make more than one move in their careers. Even if you get a clerkship out of law school, the first firm will ask for that transcript.</p>
<p>When you apply for a position in law, whether it's a summer associate spot or a full-time associate, you have certain qualifications. If you have not worked much, have been mainly a student since kindergarten, you have only four or five areas of qualifications: 1) law school grades, 2) law school class standing, 3) the law school itself (maybe), 4) possible extra efforts such as being on law review, or another journal or a competitive moot court team and 4) possible extraneous work such as in a legal clinic. Lack of any of these suchas a so-so GPA can mean an overall lack of a major category of your resume. So, especially as a student or recent graduate, your grades are very important. Later in life, your experience and, if you are private practice, your ability to generate business, becomes much more important than any of these.</p>
<p>If you're going to law school with the purpose of working in a prestigious big firm, you really need to be the kind of person that can multitask and focus for long stretches of time and do it all well. So the type of personality that is going to study hard, write excellent papers, not burn out etc, tends to be the kind of person that the big firms hire. The students at the bottom of the class also get jobs eventually, however, just not the high paying ones.</p>
<p>bottom half of Harvard is more prestigious than top 20% at a state school.</p>
<p>Class rank is all firms would care about I think. They understand that you're competing against others for the top grade in class, so I would think they care about your performance relative to competition moreso than pure GPA.</p>
<p>Some schools don't rank so the grades are what is important. Poor grades from Harvard will very likely catch up with you sooner or later - perhaps not for the first job out of law school, but somewhere down the road.</p>
<p>The longer down the road you go, the less your grades will matter, actually. </p>
<p>However, low grades even at Harvard will definitely hurt you for your first job, especially for clerkships. You can still get a market-paying job unless they are terrible, but you won't get the top firms and it will be more difficult at lower ones. You first job can determine opportunities for later jobs as well. </p>
<p>Definitely, the lower the school the more crucial top grades are, though. If you are at a tier 3 or 4 school, unless you are top 5-10% you will have very limited options.</p>
<p>some really good info, i too was under the impression that was most significant were 1L Grades and that 2L & 3L mattered less so in grades and gpa wise and more so on landing a job, internships, etc. etc.</p>
<p>BTW, can someone inform me how to get my User Name p-word resent....i've got a different SN: 2skys1imit3</p>
<p>hopefully its still recoverable</p>
<p>thanks and glad to be back, reading and learning -.-</p>
<p>1) Even the "t14" is tiered. HYS, CCN, MVP, etc. I've seen the 2L hiring results at a t6 school and it's ridiculous how easy they have it.</p>
<p>To get an idea of the difference between attending Michigan and UCLA, check out the (somewhat anecdotal) data collected here: Law</a> Firm Summer Associates 2006</p>
<p>2) 1L grades determine who will be willing to hir you as a 2L summer associate. Nearly 100% of the time a 2L summer associate will be offered a full time position.</p>
<p>The big difference between 1L and subsequent years is the curve. The 1L curve is significantly harsher than for later classes, and is generally ruthlessly enforced.</p>
<p>3) If you are at the very tippy top of your class at any of the top 100 or so law schools in America, you're in good shape. Being in the top 2 or three students of your class at say Rutgers can get you a job at one of the best firms in NYC. You probably only have to finish in the top 1/3 of your class at Harvard to do that.</p>
<p>Don't think that you can go to a lower ranked school and do better because you'll be "better" than the competition. The lower ranked your school, the fiercer the competition to stay out of the bottom half of the class.</p>