Law School Grades... feel free to comment and rant along with me!

So much has happened since my last post: but the most obvious topic, to go over (Briefly) would have to be 1L Grades….

                Some of us are happy, some not so much, and although these grades, are very important to our future, I would say they were only in the front of our minds for about 48 hours.  I believe Law students, have a short attention span.  Once grades came out, people that you may have barely talked to during the year were inquisitive to what the grade distribution was like, and how everyone thought they did.  But now… less than a week later… not so much.

                This is not a bad thing at all, honestly, it is probably the healthiest thing, because no matter how much we want to look at our previous exams, and talk to professors, the chances of our grades changing, are  low.  So we must just learn to cope.  A wise man said (and by wise I mean very person that has ever given us a speech about grades in law school) “very few of us have ever been in the bottom 20/40/50% of our class and now some of us have to be.” Then they go on to say… “this is not fair… but this is law school.”  This is where I always shake my head.  When something is not fair, not right, or not what people think should happen shouldn’t we just change it (insert random amendment to The Constitution or a random judicial interpretation joke here).  This is Law School, and most of these speech givers are administrators…. If anyone can change it, I would believe they can.

                Yale’s grading system in which they do not necessarily give “grades” is interesting to say the least.  They do give Honors, and no pass, which could be considered the same, but I do not believe they have a curve on it.  I am not ignorant to the fact that these kids are super smart, however this University may have paved the way for how law schools should judge us in the future….. just a thought.

                Personally, I don’t have a huge problem with how the grades are done, except the length of time it takes to get our grades back, and the lack of an appeals process.  It is kind of ridiculous that we do not get our grades back until we are well into the following semester.  I personally know some of us, myself included, that were unable to apply for certain internships because application deadlines were January 15^th, and they would not accept them without law school grades (yes I thought about sending college grades, and trust me, I would have loved to!).  This length of time hurts our future job search tremendously.  I think the lack of an appeals process goes without saying.  A teacher has graded 99 exams and gives you a bad mark, because they are tired, they have a deadline, it is 3AM, they just came back from a banger(insert any random excuse here)… shouldn’t you be able to have a second opinion, or some type of appeal?  I mean this is Law School!  And for the record, to get ones grade changed there has to be some type of transmission error, or an addition error.  Currently, teachers cannot “reevaluate” the exams.

There goes my rant, I think I am done with talking about grades… but it had to be done



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