3.7 at Michigan Forum

[Anonymous User]

Thinking in light of ITE I should pretend my GPA is something more like a 3.6. Is this shrewed? Where would those with experience or knowledge recommend I bid?

[thesealocust]

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[pasteurizedmilk]

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[thesealocust]

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[NYAssociate]

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[invisiblesun]

Wow... the amount of speculation in this thread is just awful. I hope OP doesn't take thesealocust seriously.

Not taking sides, but why don't you enlighten us?

[Anonymous User]

This GPA docking business is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

First of all, you can't do it anyway. At Michigan, the law school sets up the interviews...interviewers can't screen out anybody. After that, the interviewers get your transcript at the screening interview. Unless you're planning on doctoring your transcript (which is a bad, bad idea) they're going to know your GPA anyway.

If you have the opportunity, talk to people in last years class. People don't tend to just go around talking about it, but they will tell 1Ls what they think and what their experiences were if asked.

Generally...better grades = better odds at OCI. Shoot for an appropriate range of firms and things will be fine.

This business of docking more points if you have a lower GPA is plain retarded.

[awesomepossum]

whoops...I hate the anonymous reply feature. the above poster was me.

[thesealocust]

nm

[NYAssociate]

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[thesealocust]

nm

[invisiblesun]

Sorry for not responding sooner. Was at work.

I sometimes feel like people here place a lot of emphasis on GPA. And it's not really surprising. We go through the law school admissions process, which is largely number-determinative. On top of that, we want certainty, and being able to predict these things based on some quantifiable factor gives us great ease.

The problem is that interviewing rarely turns out the way people expect it to. People really underestimate the importance of the interview. I think there are a few firms for whom high grades are necessary (WLRK, SullCrom, Covington, W&C, etc.), but for the rest of the firms, it's really a wash if you're "somewhere in the range." By that I mean that I don't think there's any material difference in interviewing with DPW with a 3.6 as opposed to a 3.7. It'll really come down to other factors (especially for DPW). So docking GPAs or whatever won't really work out. You also risk underestimating your potential by playing it too safe. And I do think that some people played it too safe last year.

I think if you're below median at a T10ish school, you can pretty much write-off biglaw. Participate in OCI, but interview at the least selective firms. Same for median. Things change at the top 40-30%. At that point, I'd be targeting the upper-end of the Vault spectrum, with safeties from the lower-end. Higher than 30% and I'd recommend the same strategy, but with a higher quantity of higher end firms. Higher than 20%, adjust accordingly. At 15% and above, you're looking at all but a handful of firms. At that point, what's going to hold you back isn't your GPA. It'll be other factors.

But it's just worth recognizing that firms didn't get that hugely selective on hte grades front last year. I thnk many of the top firms kept their grade guidelines as is (but keep in mind they were still pretty selective from before), and many of the students I know at the top firms weren't exactly top 20% top 10 law school types. Pretty funny. I think firms just got selective based on fit. At this point, I'd just focus on mastering the interviewing process.

And people will tell you that all firms are the same, so one interview style should work for them all. Not true. Definitely not true. Every firm has its own personality. Some are known for being really gentile and uppity, others for down and dirty and aggressive. Some will assign you work as an SA. Others will expect you to seek it out on your own. Knowing the personalities of these firms tells you what qualities you should convey about yourself. Obviously, if you feel like there is a conflict, you should take that as a sign and not go for the firm. But I realize that in this economic climate, you might not have much of a choice.

Helpful post, and thanks. Could you highlight what you think important non-grades factors are? (LR is an obvious one.) Is it more about pre-LS WE and 1L work or is it more about your personality? If it's the former, which of the two are more important in the OCI process?

[Anonymous User]

Going to chime in here (anonymously) because I was in the same spot last year and everything went great for me personally, but not everyone in your situation ended up happy with how OCI went and that is shame. Here are the things I would focus on if I had to do it again. Apologies for the length, but I see a ton of terrible advice about OCI strategy from 0Ls/1Ls on this site and just wanted to put this out there as someone who went through the process recently and had a lot of experience in sales/interviews in a previous job.

1) As mentioned previously, your grades won't really keep you out of any firm (except WLRK, maybe W&C but not sure on that). So you should really focus on fit and dominating your interviews - this advice honestly applies to anyone regardless of grades though. This is shockingly easy to do and I couldn't believe how many people thought their grades were all that mattered last year during OCI and ignored this aspect of the interviewing process. First, take a long time to look at your resume and personal history and come up with absolutely fantastic reasons for choosing whatever region/s you are shooting for. Ignore OCS's advice about one market, go where you have reasons to go, but don't expect to get a call back from San Diego firms if you grew up on the east coast and spent a weekend in LA once. You have to be realistic with choosing your region/s. The sole caveat to this is if you want to do corporate in NY, and have great reasons for wanting to do corporate, then feel free to pick NY. That might be one of the times where you want to just pick one market to overcome any suspicions that you aren't committed to the region though.

2) Once you have chosen your region, then take an even longer time thinking about your personal history and pick out what type of law you want to specialize in and what your image is of the firm you would be happy working at (formal v. casual, established v. scrappy, etc). Maybe you legitimately have no idea yet, and that is fine, but look at your resume and see what would make sense for you to be interested in if you were stranger looking at your resume. The more concrete your experiences have been the more specific you should be picking a specialty. If you don't have any 'hard' experience, relying on your personality will suffice as long as you have engaging stories that illustrate what you are talking about. Just be sure your reasons make sense by consulting with professors/3Ls/alumni you have talked to and don't say things in your interview that run contrary to what your resume/history is screaming to the interviewer. This is where being on a journal can really help you. Take the journal note writing process as another chance to enhance your story (even if you change your topic after OCI). Even if not on a journal, you can highlight other things you have done that show a persistent interest in your chosen specialty, think back to why you choose to go to law school in the first place. Picking a specialty now might seem limiting, but you can easily change it after you get the offer and at this point it isn't really you picking a specialty for you, it is you picking a specialty that will help sell you to a stranger so that stranger will go back to their firm and say, "we gotta get this guy/gal, they are focused and excited about X practice blah blah blah" as opposed to, "yeah this kid had a 3.7 but seemed rudderless and unenthusiastic about actually practicing law, let's take the guy with a 3.5 who was awesome in the interview."

3) The most important reason for both #1 and #2 is that if you put those two together, a region and a specialty, you should have no trouble at all picking thirty firms to bid on, the only issue is ranking them. Spend tons of time on this. Don't rely on vault, instead use Chambers, firm websites, read the Amlaw Daily and other professional publications (yes, ATL and xoxo can actually help a lot with this as long as you never admit it to anyone). The firms are actually incredibly different and if you don't take the time to get a general idea for which ones are more stuffy or which ones are more laid back then you are putting yourself at a tremendous disadvantage both for interviews and because you may end up at a firm you don't 'fit' with. Above all, don't try to game the bidding process. Rank the firms based on which ones you want to work at, not based on vault rankings or gpa profiles of the past (and most definitely not on whatever terrible advice OCS is giving you).

4) If you can passionately talk about why you want to work at every firm you have an interview with, and why they should want you to work at their firm, you're going to be fine, but don't forget the little things like clothing, body language, etc. Stuff like that.

5) Once you have your image prepared, both physically and personality-wise, you will dominate as long as you don't do anything strange in the interview. Don't ever talk about salary, how 1L was difficult, how you're nervous about getting a job, and anything else that might set off warning bells that you are anything but the image you are projecting. Never ever ever say anything negative about anything. Let's say you have a 3.7 but dropped a flat B in crim. DO NOT make excuses or blame it on a lack of interest in the subject, own it 100% by saying something like, "yeah that test caught me totally unprepared. I met with the professor afterwards, she's awesome isn't she, and we went over the test and now I know what I did wrong so it won't happen again." Just remember at all times that they aren't interviewing you to be your friend and they are fully aware of how easy it is to slip up and eat a poor grade occasionally. The interviewer is mainly trying to decide whether or not this is the kind of person they can call at six on a friday with an tedious assignment that is going to take all weekend and have confidence that not only will you do the assignment perfectly, but that you aren't going to bitch and moan about it (because nobody wants to hear it).

Best of luck to you.

[98234872348]

Going to chime in here (anonymously) because I was in the same spot last year and everything went great for me personally, but not everyone in your situation ended up happy with how OCI went and that is shame. Here are the things I would focus on if I had to do it again. Apologies for the length, but I see a ton of terrible advice about OCI strategy from 0Ls/1Ls on this site and just wanted to put this out there as someone who went through the process recently and had a lot of experience in sales/interviews in a previous job.

1) As mentioned previously, your grades won't really keep you out of any firm (except WLRK, maybe W&C but not sure on that). So you should really focus on fit and dominating your interviews - this advice honestly applies to anyone regardless of grades though. This is shockingly easy to do and I couldn't believe how many people thought their grades were all that mattered last year during OCI and ignored this aspect of the interviewing process. First, take a long time to look at your resume and personal history and come up with absolutely fantastic reasons for choosing whatever region/s you are shooting for. Ignore OCS's advice about one market, go where you have reasons to go, but don't expect to get a call back from San Diego firms if you grew up on the east coast and spent a weekend in LA once. You have to be realistic with choosing your region/s. The sole caveat to this is if you want to do corporate in NY, and have great reasons for wanting to do corporate, then feel free to pick NY. That might be one of the times where you want to just pick one market to overcome any suspicions that you aren't committed to the region though.

2) Once you have chosen your region, then take an even longer time thinking about your personal history and pick out what type of law you want to specialize in and what your image is of the firm you would be happy working at (formal v. casual, established v. scrappy, etc). Maybe you legitimately have no idea yet, and that is fine, but look at your resume and see what would make sense for you to be interested in if you were stranger looking at your resume. The more concrete your experiences have been the more specific you should be picking a specialty. If you don't have any 'hard' experience, relying on your personality will suffice as long as you have engaging stories that illustrate what you are talking about. Just be sure your reasons make sense by consulting with professors/3Ls/alumni you have talked to and don't say things in your interview that run contrary to what your resume/history is screaming to the interviewer. This is where being on a journal can really help you. Take the journal note writing process as another chance to enhance your story (even if you change your topic after OCI). Even if not on a journal, you can highlight other things you have done that show a persistent interest in your chosen specialty, think back to why you choose to go to law school in the first place. Picking a specialty now might seem limiting, but you can easily change it after you get the offer and at this point it isn't really you picking a specialty for you, it is you picking a specialty that will help sell you to a stranger so that stranger will go back to their firm and say, "we gotta get this guy/gal, they are focused and excited about X practice blah blah blah" as opposed to, "yeah this kid had a 3.7 but seemed rudderless and unenthusiastic about actually practicing law, let's take the guy with a 3.5 who was awesome in the interview."

3) The most important reason for both #1 and #2 is that if you put those two together, a region and a specialty, you should have no trouble at all picking thirty firms to bid on, the only issue is ranking them. Spend tons of time on this. Don't rely on vault, instead use Chambers, firm websites, read the Amlaw Daily and other professional publications (yes, ATL and xoxo can actually help a lot with this as long as you never admit it to anyone). The firms are actually incredibly different and if you don't take the time to get a general idea for which ones are more stuffy or which ones are more laid back then you are putting yourself at a tremendous disadvantage both for interviews and because you may end up at a firm you don't 'fit' with. Above all, don't try to game the bidding process. Rank the firms based on which ones you want to work at, not based on vault rankings or gpa profiles of the past (and most definitely not on whatever terrible advice OCS is giving you).

4) If you can passionately talk about why you want to work at every firm you have an interview with, and why they should want you to work at their firm, you're going to be fine, but don't forget the little things like clothing, body language, etc. Stuff like that.

5) Once you have your image prepared, both physically and personality-wise, you will dominate as long as you don't do anything strange in the interview. Don't ever talk about salary, how 1L was difficult, how you're nervous about getting a job, and anything else that might set off warning bells that you are anything but the image you are projecting. Never ever ever say anything negative about anything. Let's say you have a 3.7 but dropped a flat B in crim. DO NOT make excuses or blame it on a lack of interest in the subject, own it 100% by saying something like, "yeah that test caught me totally unprepared. I met with the professor afterwards, she's awesome isn't she, and we went over the test and now I know what I did wrong so it won't happen again." Just remember at all times that they aren't interviewing you to be your friend and they are fully aware of how easy it is to slip up and eat a poor grade occasionally. The interviewer is mainly trying to decide whether or not this is the kind of person they can call at six on a friday with an tedious assignment that is going to take all weekend and have confidence that not only will you do the assignment perfectly, but that you aren't going to bitch and moan about it (because nobody wants to hear it).

Best of luck to you.

awesome post thank you.

[Anonymous User]

Going to chime in here (anonymously) because I was in the same spot last year and everything went great for me personally, but not everyone in your situation ended up happy with how OCI went and that is shame. Here are the things I would focus on if I had to do it again. Apologies for the length, but I see a ton of terrible advice about OCI strategy from 0Ls/1Ls on this site and just wanted to put this out there as someone who went through the process recently and had a lot of experience in sales/interviews in a previous job.

1) As mentioned previously, your grades won't really keep you out of any firm (except WLRK, maybe W&C but not sure on that). So you should really focus on fit and dominating your interviews - this advice honestly applies to anyone regardless of grades though. This is shockingly easy to do and I couldn't believe how many people thought their grades were all that mattered last year during OCI and ignored this aspect of the interviewing process. First, take a long time to look at your resume and personal history and come up with absolutely fantastic reasons for choosing whatever region/s you are shooting for. Ignore OCS's advice about one market, go where you have reasons to go, but don't expect to get a call back from San Diego firms if you grew up on the east coast and spent a weekend in LA once. You have to be realistic with choosing your region/s. The sole caveat to this is if you want to do corporate in NY, and have great reasons for wanting to do corporate, then feel free to pick NY. That might be one of the times where you want to just pick one market to overcome any suspicions that you aren't committed to the region though.

2) Once you have chosen your region, then take an even longer time thinking about your personal history and pick out what type of law you want to specialize in and what your image is of the firm you would be happy working at (formal v. casual, established v. scrappy, etc). Maybe you legitimately have no idea yet, and that is fine, but look at your resume and see what would make sense for you to be interested in if you were stranger looking at your resume. The more concrete your experiences have been the more specific you should be picking a specialty. If you don't have any 'hard' experience, relying on your personality will suffice as long as you have engaging stories that illustrate what you are talking about. Just be sure your reasons make sense by consulting with professors/3Ls/alumni you have talked to and don't say things in your interview that run contrary to what your resume/history is screaming to the interviewer. This is where being on a journal can really help you. Take the journal note writing process as another chance to enhance your story (even if you change your topic after OCI). Even if not on a journal, you can highlight other things you have done that show a persistent interest in your chosen specialty, think back to why you choose to go to law school in the first place. Picking a specialty now might seem limiting, but you can easily change it after you get the offer and at this point it isn't really you picking a specialty for you, it is you picking a specialty that will help sell you to a stranger so that stranger will go back to their firm and say, "we gotta get this guy/gal, they are focused and excited about X practice blah blah blah" as opposed to, "yeah this kid had a 3.7 but seemed rudderless and unenthusiastic about actually practicing law, let's take the guy with a 3.5 who was awesome in the interview."

3) The most important reason for both #1 and #2 is that if you put those two together, a region and a specialty, you should have no trouble at all picking thirty firms to bid on, the only issue is ranking them. Spend tons of time on this. Don't rely on vault, instead use Chambers, firm websites, read the Amlaw Daily and other professional publications (yes, ATL and xoxo can actually help a lot with this as long as you never admit it to anyone). The firms are actually incredibly different and if you don't take the time to get a general idea for which ones are more stuffy or which ones are more laid back then you are putting yourself at a tremendous disadvantage both for interviews and because you may end up at a firm you don't 'fit' with. Above all, don't try to game the bidding process. Rank the firms based on which ones you want to work at, not based on vault rankings or gpa profiles of the past (and most definitely not on whatever terrible advice OCS is giving you).

4) If you can passionately talk about why you want to work at every firm you have an interview with, and why they should want you to work at their firm, you're going to be fine, but don't forget the little things like clothing, body language, etc. Stuff like that.

5) Once you have your image prepared, both physically and personality-wise, you will dominate as long as you don't do anything strange in the interview. Don't ever talk about salary, how 1L was difficult, how you're nervous about getting a job, and anything else that might set off warning bells that you are anything but the image you are projecting. Never ever ever say anything negative about anything. Let's say you have a 3.7 but dropped a flat B in crim. DO NOT make excuses or blame it on a lack of interest in the subject, own it 100% by saying something like, "yeah that test caught me totally unprepared. I met with the professor afterwards, she's awesome isn't she, and we went over the test and now I know what I did wrong so it won't happen again." Just remember at all times that they aren't interviewing you to be your friend and they are fully aware of how easy it is to slip up and eat a poor grade occasionally. The interviewer is mainly trying to decide whether or not this is the kind of person they can call at six on a friday with an tedious assignment that is going to take all weekend and have confidence that not only will you do the assignment perfectly, but that you aren't going to bitch and moan about it (because nobody wants to hear it).

Best of luck to you.

This and NY associate's response makes it sound a lot like getting a regular job once you pass a certain GPA threshold (which goes against much of the conventional TLS wisdom). Does anyone have any real knowledge as to how all of this adjusts for URM candidates (particularly Blacks)?

[let/them/eat/cake]

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[holydonkey]

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