Legal Commentary

Folks are talking (Brooks beat me to it) about the article in today' Times on law schools altering their grading curves (sometimes retroactively) to bump students' GPAs, making students look stronger and thus more attractive to employers.

We just altered our curve, although not retroactively (one of my colleagues was part of a retroactive revision at his previous school and said it was a nightmare). We previously had a strict, fairly harsh curve containing both a mean (2.47-2.67 in 1L classes, 2.58-2.88 in upper-level) plus a mandatory distribution at the top end. In fact, our continued adherence last fall to the curve put us against the trend. But no more. Our new system (modeled after several other Florida schools) eliminates the mean, imposes a more-generous high-end distribution, and establishes a bottom-end distribution. Although, for what it is worth, I could have satisfied the new curve in my Civ Pro class simply by bumping a couple of Cs to C+s. The new curve still leaves professors with a range and broad discretion.

Jon Siegel suggests that employers opposed to this sort of grade inflation could fight back by ignoring GPA and focusing on class rank. I agree it would be great if firms would shift their focus. The problem is an (anecdotal) strong resistance in the legal market to do so. Part of the push to change here came because our dean's conversations with people in the hiring market convinced him that GPA was the be-all-end-all and class rank did not matter. As a relatively new, lower-tiered school, firms are interested only in our very top students. But many firms seemed to say that a 3.3 GPA was not high enough for them to look at, even if that person was # 3 in the class.