I thought we had a pretty good grading system at Berkeley Law (not sure if grade inflation has crept in there these days). A limited number of people got the top grade HH (10%) and 30% got the next grade H, so 60% of the students got a Pass (unless they really screwed up). I don’t remember anyone who got straight HH’s. Most of the “top” students got mostly HH’s and H’s but also a few P’s. As long as you had a few HH’s and H’s, it was not hard to say you were in the top half of the class for job recruiting purposes. So you had to work your butt off for an HH or H, with class participation a real factor, but unless you were gunning for a prestigious clerkship or a super-selective Big Law firm, a few P’s did not matter.