<p>According to either someone on this site or someone on TLS (I can’t remember which), law school grades are unpredictable. The students in any given law school are supposedly equal in motivation and ability, yet some students finish in the top 5% of their class and others finish below median. Are law school grades really random? Do other things such as an advanced degrees give people advantages over others? Will someone who got into a law school with numbers below the 25% be less likely to suceed than someone with numbers above the 75%?</p>
<p>Could someone who got into HLS (not off of the waitlist) but decided to go to Georgetown Law instead expect to finish in top 10% of their class and get the same big law job as they would from the top quartile at HLS? Could that same person forgo both T-14 schools and go to the University of Richmond (just a random 50-100 school) and finish in the top 5% and expect to get the same big law job?</p>
<p>A lot of questions here, so I’ll try to answer one.</p>
<p>Are law school grades random?</p>
<p>No. In most law school classes your entire grade is based on the results of one final exam. You learn and study all semester, but you are, in essence preparing for one test. Some people excel in this environment, and it’s absolutely brutal for others, but the outcome is not random. You have to demonstrate your mastery of a large amount of material in a single examination.</p>
<p>The outcome is not entirely random. It’s true that HYS admits would be much more likely to finish in GULC’s top 10% than somebody who barely made it into GULC at all – but not necessarily. So the strategy you describe would be unbelievably risky.</p>
<p>Also, it’s more like top 5 people at Richmond. But from what people say the problem is that you can’t know how you are going to do because it is a completely different style of work and grading than you have ever been a part of. Therefore, you may be more intelligent than others but not be able to take the exam as well as the others. Also, often the difference between the person at HLS and GT is 4-5 questions on the LSAT. 4-5 questions on a test like that is insignificant in determing someones intelligence as there are so many others factors. Basically, you’d be taking a huge risk that is probably not going to be worth it in the long run. The name of Harvard is going to help you in jobs long after just your first job. This may not be true in other professions but it is true in the legal profession.</p>
<p>What about the effects of PHDs and masters degrees? I feel that my avarage TA would be better prepared for law school than my average senior classmate.</p>
<p>“The students in any given law school are supposedly equal in motivation and ability”</p>
<p>No, they aren’t – not even supposedly. They’re only supposed to exceed a certain threshold. Granted, for the most competitive schools, there’s a relatively narrow band of motivation and ability compared to the population at large. But even within that band, there’s a lot of variation. Then throw in the fact that some students’ motivation changes drastically once they’re in law school – I worked much less hard in law school than I did in college, because I enjoyed the work less and because I knew I only needed to be in the middle of the class at HLS to get the clerkship I wanted. You just can’t tell for any one individual.</p>
<p>It’s conceivable that there’s some loose trend where students with extra education do a little better. But this is not enough that it makes law school grades predictable. They’re still a fairly subjective exercise.</p>
<p>IMO, I think that the grades are somewhat random as I understand the OP’s question. There is no guarantee that someone at the high end of the number-range will be at the top of his or her class, or a guarantee that someone at the low end will be at the bottom of a class. It is, however, more probable that someone who did well on the LSAT will also do well in law school since the LSAT allegedly measures the type of reasoning abilities that are required for law school success. </p>
<p>Law school exams are different than exams taken in undergrad or in other programs. First, there’s the whole issue of having your grade determined by only one exam which throws some students for a loop. Second, law school exams don’t necessarily require you to just regurgitate everything that you’ve learned to reach a right or wrong answer. Some students never “get it.” The exam is more likely to be graded on how well you identify all of the issues (including identifying issues that don’t apply, and explaining quickly why they aren’t relevant). If your mind is stuck on “black and white, right and wrong” or if your college experience taught you that Professors want a particular type of answer that doesn’t match up to the law school expectations, your grades will suffer.</p>
<p>There are obviously also the students who did well in undergrad due to natural intelligence, who never needed to develop the work habits that are required in law school. Those students go through the painful process of learning that you can’t slide through law school as easily as college. There are also students who get caught up in bar crawls each week and start falling behind.</p>
<p>This answer is based on my own law school experience, although my kid is another example. My stats looked great going into law school, but I was in the middle of the pack gradewise (I fell into that group of really smart kids who had never really learned good study habits). My kid’s 1L numbers were at the bottom of the schools’ stats (got in off a wait list), but grades were very, very good. Kid’s roommate came from an Ivy with a full scholarship, and roommate’s grades were lower in every class.</p>