<p>"Here’s a further point. Again, while I don’t necessarily agree that the Boalt indexing rating was built out of who tends to get the higher law school grades, let’s presume that that is in fact the case. And in fact, let’s presume, for the purposes of this post, that as a general principle, law schools are admitting people based on who they think will get the highest law schools grades. Presuming that all of that is true, then I have to ask, why is that desirable? Is the purpose of law school admissions to get the student body who is going to get the highest law school grades?</p>
<p>Case in point - I think that with the exception of a few law subspecialties (most notably academic law and judge clerkships), all practicing lawyers can attest to the fact that law school grades are, at best, only moderately correlated with success as a lawyer. For the vast majority of lawyers, practicing as a lawyer bears little relationship with being a law student. I don’t think I really need to belabor this point too much, because I think it is fairly self-evident."</p>
<p>There are certainly plenty of people who decry the importance of law school grades (especially those who don’t do well in law school!). </p>
<p>But law school grades certainly help tell us who learned the material well, and who can apply it. By doing so, they appear to be a decent (if imperfect) measure of who is getting the most from their legal education. </p>
<p>And adcoms presumably should be focused on those who will get the most from their legal education. </p>
<p>Moreover, if law school grades were really completely unrelated to success in the legal profession, it’s unclear why law firms would focus so heavily on them. Presumably, these profit-driven actors would make enlightened decisions. </p>
<p>Overall, I would say that law school grades reflect the same qualities indicated by LSAT/GPA: your willingness to exert yourself, and your abliity to understand and apply the relevant concepts. (This is probably why LSAT/GPA is a decent predictor of law school grades.) Both these qualities are important factors in legal practice, which is probably why firms value grades. </p>
<p>“Hard work is not really rewarded by the adcoms. If that’s blunt, then so be it.”</p>
<p>I would disagree with this statement, because the whole purpose of looking at GPA (which does matter somewhat) is to measure/reward hard work. </p>
<p>I would agree that hard work is measured very imperfectly by adcoms, though this is a very different concept. As noted, adcoms would ideally focus on class rank, undergrad admission criteria, and entering student criteria for different majors instead of pure GPA. </p>
<p>It’s certainly possible that USNews, etc., is causing schools to be more superficial in their grade examination than they should be. It’s also possible that simple logistics makes further inquiry into grade value difficult. But I do think that law schools realize they have a vested interest in producing succesful attorneys, and this is probably the key undercurrent running beneath much of their admissions policy.</p>