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Hey all,

I'm at a T-14 with graded LRW.
How important is the LRW grade from an employer perspective - specifically for BL lit? Since a lot of legal work is writing, I'd venture to say that the grade should mean something, but wanted to get other perspectives. For example, if your doctrinal class grades are average but you have a high LRW grade, will employers infer that a person sucks at exams but could do legal work well? Or if your doctrinal class grades are very high but your LRW grade is low, would bad writing skills have a significant affect on whether firms want to hire you? Assuming that it would be a secondary consideration after overall grades and fit and such, how much will a good or bad legal writing grade affect employability? How important is writing skill as a litigator?

Is your GPA good but your LRW shit? Should be fine. That was my situation and no one brought it up. GPA not good or below what specific employers look for? LRW won't save you.

Yeah, anecdotally, was above median, with median LRW, and had no one even mention it ever. Don't really know about the reverse, everyone I know who killed LRW killed everything.

I'd say it generally doesn't matter, with one exception: you have a really bad LRW grade. I don't mean a B+ or a P. I mean a bottom-quarter of the class grade.

Every once in awhile, we'll encounter a student who: (a) is really good at taking law school exams, but (b) can't write at all. It's a rare combo, but it happens. For obvious reasons, law firms don't want to hire these people. If you've got a conspicuously bad LRW grade, we're going to be concerned that you can't write. You should have some plan to address that perception.

rpupkin wrote:I'd say it generally doesn't matter, with one exception: you have a really bad LRW grade. I don't mean a B+ or a P. I mean a bottom-quarter of the class grade.

Every once in awhile, we'll encounter a student who: (a) is really good at taking law school exams, but (b) can't write at all. It's a rare combo, but it happens. For obvious reasons, law firms don't want to hire these people. If you've got a conspicuously bad LRW grade, we're going to be concerned that you can't write. You should have some plan to address that perception.

Can you address this with a good writing sample? Sometimes a bad LRW score can be chalked up to a Legal Writing Professor with peculiar opinions of what constitutes good writing.

Anonymous User wrote:

rpupkin wrote:I'd say it generally doesn't matter, with one exception: you have a really bad LRW grade. I don't mean a B+ or a P. I mean a bottom-quarter of the class grade.

Every once in awhile, we'll encounter a student who: (a) is really good at taking law school exams, but (b) can't write at all. It's a rare combo, but it happens. For obvious reasons, law firms don't want to hire these people. If you've got a conspicuously bad LRW grade, we're going to be concerned that you can't write. You should have some plan to address that perception.

Can you address this with a good writing sample? Sometimes a bad LRW score can be chalked up to a Legal Writing Professor with peculiar opinions of what constitutes good writing.

Work on upgrading your explanation if this question comes up at an interview.

star fox wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:

rpupkin wrote:I'd say it generally doesn't matter, with one exception: you have a really bad LRW grade. I don't mean a B+ or a P. I mean a bottom-quarter of the class grade.

Every once in awhile, we'll encounter a student who: (a) is really good at taking law school exams, but (b) can't write at all. It's a rare combo, but it happens. For obvious reasons, law firms don't want to hire these people. If you've got a conspicuously bad LRW grade, we're going to be concerned that you can't write. You should have some plan to address that perception.

Can you address this with a good writing sample? Sometimes a bad LRW score can be chalked up to a Legal Writing Professor with peculiar opinions of what constitutes good writing.

Work on upgrading your explanation if this question comes up at an interview.

I wasn't planning on using it as an explanation in interviews

star fox wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:

rpupkin wrote:I'd say it generally doesn't matter, with one exception: you have a really bad LRW grade. I don't mean a B+ or a P. I mean a bottom-quarter of the class grade.

Every once in awhile, we'll encounter a student who: (a) is really good at taking law school exams, but (b) can't write at all. It's a rare combo, but it happens. For obvious reasons, law firms don't want to hire these people. If you've got a conspicuously bad LRW grade, we're going to be concerned that you can't write. You should have some plan to address that perception.

Can you address this with a good writing sample? Sometimes a bad LRW score can be chalked up to a Legal Writing Professor with peculiar opinions of what constitutes good writing.

Work on upgrading your explanation if this question comes up at an interview.

Yeah, because I can totally get what you mean, but an interviewer doesn't want to hear that. I think your best bet is to place yourself in a position of being able to truthfully say "you know the grade really bothered me because I always pride myself on my writing, so I reached out to my LRW professor and he gave me some pointers that I have been working on, and I intend to take advanced LRW next year."

Br3v wrote:

star fox wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:

rpupkin wrote:I'd say it generally doesn't matter, with one exception: you have a really bad LRW grade. I don't mean a B+ or a P. I mean a bottom-quarter of the class grade.

Every once in awhile, we'll encounter a student who: (a) is really good at taking law school exams, but (b) can't write at all. It's a rare combo, but it happens. For obvious reasons, law firms don't want to hire these people. If you've got a conspicuously bad LRW grade, we're going to be concerned that you can't write. You should have some plan to address that perception.

Can you address this with a good writing sample? Sometimes a bad LRW score can be chalked up to a Legal Writing Professor with peculiar opinions of what constitutes good writing.

Work on upgrading your explanation if this question comes up at an interview.

Yeah, because I can totally get what you mean, but an interviewer doesn't want to hear that. I think your best bet is to place yourself in a position of being able to truthfully say "you know the grade really bothered me because I always pride myself on my writing, so I reached out to my LRW professor and he gave me some pointers that I have been working on, and I intend to take advanced LRW next year."

I increased my LRW grade from a B- to B..not a tremendously promising increase but an increase none the less. I'm also doing a very writing intensive litigation internship this summer. Maybe I can say that I'm steadily, but surely increasing my legal writing skills?

Anonymous User wrote:Sometimes a bad LRW score can be chalked up to a Legal Writing Professor with peculiar opinions of what constitutes good writing.

I know you've responded that you wouldn't actually say this during an interview, but I'll just add that this explanation is particularly unhelpful for the following reason: lots of folks in law have peculiar opinions about what constitutes good writing. Part of being successful at a law firm is learning how to write to satisfy the idiosyncrasies of whomever you're working for at the moment.

If, after a full semester, you couldn't figure out your LRW instructor's quirks well enough to avoid getting a bad grade, that itself is cause for concern. Not flame.

I definitely understand the pain of some LRW grades (partly from first hand experience), in that we had no grade our first semester, and then got a single grade for the full year in spring semester. It made it hard to really improve if it was needed, because we had so little feedback.

Anonymous User wrote:

rpupkin wrote:I'd say it generally doesn't matter, with one exception: you have a really bad LRW grade. I don't mean a B+ or a P. I mean a bottom-quarter of the class grade.

Every once in awhile, we'll encounter a student who: (a) is really good at taking law school exams, but (b) can't write at all. It's a rare combo, but it happens. For obvious reasons, law firms don't want to hire these people. If you've got a conspicuously bad LRW grade, we're going to be concerned that you can't write. You should have some plan to address that perception.

Can you address this with a good writing sample? Sometimes a bad LRW score can be chalked up to a Legal Writing Professor with peculiar opinions of what constitutes good writing.

I think it's a bigger issue if you're trying to do litigation. There are plenty of objectively weak writers in other practice areas who are very successful. If you're doing well on the exams then your writing might be subpar, but outside of litigation the bar is having the ability to communicate information coherently.

I think you'll be fine. Unless it is atrocious, they likely won't bring it up, and if they do, take ownership of it. It would hurt you much more in a clerkship application, but you didn't ask about that.