<p>I've been reading that Law school is vastly different than being a doctor, dentist, or pharmacist, where if you graduate from law school in the bottom tier, then you won't find a job easily, while if you just pass your classes in med school or any other dentistry or pharmacy school, then you're still a doctor. Is there any truth to the bottom tier thing, and can you rise up in your job regardless?</p>
<p>^ No, because the top 3 law schools in the country (HYS) don’t even have real grades anymore, and therefore no class ranks :D</p>
<p>but for regional, crappy law schools? yes, probably true :)</p>
<p>really, law schools don’t have grades anymore? its just pass/fail?</p>
<p>Yale, Harvard, UC-Berkeley, and Stanford have changed to a honors/pass/fail system.</p>
<p>As someone who went to a law school where we had a system without grades and a strict curve (20% received the highest grade, 40% received the next highest grade and 40% received the lowest grade (yes, I repeat that 40% received the lowest grade in every single class), with failures reserved for anyone who deserved it with no minimum requirement), I can tell you that many of the top law firms do pay very close attention to these grades. Top law firms are going to want to see at least a smattering of the highest grades before they will make an offer of employment to anyone. </p>
<p>Many of the top law schools didn’t used to have As, Bs and Cs as grades. The recent changes to H, P and F or similar systems are simply a return to older grading systems. Even when many of these law schools did give out As, Bs and Cs, they often did not rank their classes (my law school certainly did not), and a law student only had an inkling of where they stood in the class when dressed in a cap and gown waiting to graduate and presented with a list of who would be graduating with latin honors.</p>
<p>Just because students won’t have a GPA does not in any way mean that law firms and other potential employers won’t be paying attention to the grades that a law student receives.</p>
<p>Oh, and yes, if you are among the worst students in your class, even at a top law school, you will often have a lot more difficulty than your more successful classmates in finding employment. At a lower ranked law school, doing well versus doing poorly can mean the difference between a fruitful career as an attorney and struggling to find legal employment at all. </p>
<p>That said, most law students will end up with a mix of grades. Given the high academic standards and intelligence of your classmates, the dedication with which most law students approach their law school coursework and testing and the fact that in most cases, your entire grade depends on one 3-24 hour exam, most students do not get top grades in every single class.</p>
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<p>I would argue that the best thing for them to do may be to just start their own law firm as quickly as feasible. Yes, you may have to spend some time at some mediocre firm to pay off your debts and learn the true practice of law. </p>
<p>But as a graduate coming out of an elite law school such as Harvard or Yale, you can garner clientele by leveraging the brand. Regular people aren’t going to ask for your grades. All they’re going to see is your school’s name brand. </p>
<p>I know a girl who recently graduated from a top law school that shall remain unnamed who didn’t do particularly well academically. No matter, as a few years after graduation, she’s already started her own law firm with a full book of clientele. She spent the intervening years running her own small personal tutoring/advising business teaching aspiring students how to score highly on the LSAT and SAT - she’s very good at scoring highly on standardized tests - and the income was good enough to pay her monthly loan payments and provide startup capital for her law firm. She almost certainly makes more money now than many of her classmates who graduated with far better grades.</p>
<p>Personally, I think that’s one thing that law school curricula sorely lacks: how to start your own firm. Many, probably most, law school graduates have no idea how to do so. If the problem is that such knowledge is not sufficiently theoretical to be included in a rarefied law school curricula, then fine, have the business school teach it via cross-registration credit (most law schools are affiliated with a university that also has a business school). I believe that starting a firm is something that many, probably most, law students would like to know how to do. Even if they never start their own firm, they would still like to know how to do it.</p>
<p>But established law firms probably don’t want law students to know how to start their own, and perhaps that’s why they’re kept in the dark.</p>
<p>Berkeley’s grading system has been in place for a very long time - it hasn’t changed since I went there in the early eighties. 10% of each class received high honors, 30% honors, and 60% pass (minus those who actually didn’t).</p>
<p>A small number received “pass sub-par,” which didn’t appear on the transcript; too many of them resulted in academic probation, or flunking out.</p>
<p>The system was designed to identify academic stars without differentiating much between the rest of the class.</p>
<p>Not all honors/pass systems are alike. They really do vary among law schools. For example, at Yale, no grades except Credit/Fail are given first semester. You can’t get honors at all that first semester. At some law schools, there are no guidelines as to how many of each “grade” a prof can give–especially a tenured prof. At others, there are.</p>