My State Of The Art Wisdom On Law School Grades

Summer starters end their first year of law school after the winter quarter. Winter exams ended February 8. We got final grades in all of our classes (finally) on Tuesday.

First year grades are key in getting clerkships, which are key to getting job offers. While I will have spring and summer quarters on my transcript before fall OCI (on campus interviews), my GPA has enough inertia now that it's all but guaranteed I won't be interviewing with the big, prestigious firms that make a big deal about only hiring from the top 10% of the class.

First year grades also determine who makes law review. The announcement of who the top 15% are in my quarter should be coming soon. Odds are I won't be posting about it when it comes out. I am not going to be on that list either.

I worked as hard as I ever have my first quarter, without really knowing what to expect. After the first round of finals, I made a list of all the things I wished I had done all semester long, and my second semester I did them. I doubled my efforts, and my reward was a lower cumulative GPA by 0.03. I slacked off my third quarter by comparison and my GPA improved by 0.01.

Rumor has it that 2L's and 3L's at other law schools play golf instead of go to class or study. I had always considered that dumb, but if their reward to effort curve looks like mine, they're better off on the golf course.

Baylor Law seems to hire its former academic superstars back to teach. I've taken classes by Professors Counseller, Fuselier, Ryan, and Salzman, each a Baylor Law grad among the top of their class. It reminds me of a story I once heard where the President of Harvard was giving advice to the President of the University of Ohio. In it he said, "Be kind to your 'A' students, because someday one of them will return and be a great professor. And be kind to your 'C' students, because someday one of them will return and build you a $2 million science lab." If there is some truth to the tendency of 'A' students, there may be some to the tendency of 'C' students too. I might yet have some more achievement in me (and I don't want to teach anyway).

Yesterday I reviewed the criminal procedure exam with Professor Serr. The reason this is newsworthy where others weren't is because his final was a blend of multiple choice and essay, so I can compare the two within the same subject. I did well on the multiple choice, which indicates I know the material. I didn't do as well on the essay, which indicates my big problem is in selecting the issues to talk about. That theory seems consistent with the results of my other exams.

Based on the points I got in the amount I wrote, going down irrelevant paths isn't my problem. In a few places, I just plain dropped the ball and didn't know it well enough. But the big pattern I saw was a tendency to answer the question with the strongest argument and move on without considering every issue. I cut myself out of so many points on stuff I know...

Professor Bates said the best piece of exam advice he ever got was, "to answer the question." Professor Counseller sold me on the idea of being a "methodical problem killer." I'd blame them for causing me to focus to narrowly, but I really just didn't fully understand what they were talking about.

Which is not to claim that I will be suddenly making A's on every test now. I've always worked right up to the time limit even when skipping all those issues. Rumor has it that tests your second year are different from those your first, so it may be that none of this insight is useful after I've gone to the effort of discovering it. And it's entirely possible I'm generalizing from too little data or otherwise just deceiving myself. But I have a plan to improve that seems more likely to work than playing golf, which is more than I had two days ago.