The "I'm just not good at law school exams" defense/Bringing up grade in an interview Forum

[thesealocust]

Your goal in every interview is to never, ever talk about grades. If they bring it up, it's because you're sunk. If you bring it up, you just sunk yourself.

Air all this out with a therapist, not an interviewer.

Find something other than law school to talk about. Your summer internship. Conversations you've had with practitioners. What you love about sailing. Anything, anything else.

+1,000,000

Your grades are your grades. Law school is infamous for not rewarding hard work or intelligence, but instead some kind of weird and crazy law-school-exam-taking something or another. It sucks, it's stupid, and most people in the industry - including hiring partners - are totally aware of that fact. They're sympathetic, on some level, and surely they know that poor grades don't imply stupidity.

Having said that, they don't have much else to go on. The 20 minutes you get in a screening interview are a chance to let your personality shine through, and make you look like not just another obnoxious law student robot. That doesn't mean a song and dance number, but it means 20 minutes of being a human being and making a connection. If you let that turn into breathless critique of the grading system and defense of your abilities despite your GPA, you're just pissing away an opportunity to actually connect and have a chance.

Realistically, the unfortunate truth is that nearly everyone works hard in law school and is smart, so having poor grades but believing you deserved better isn't at all uncommon. Firms interview and review transcripts from dozens or hundreds or even thousands of law students every year, there's no way to spin your grades that will impress them - you've got to approach it from another angle, and you've got to be realistic that the job hunt will be a long shot because of how much emphasis most employers put on grades.

[dixiecupdrinking]

IME, although they use grades as a crude screening mechanism, most lawyers really don't want to talk to you about your law school grades (because your thoughts and feelings about your torts exam fact pattern is an excruciatingly boring topic). And most lawyers really don't want to hear excuses (because they're in a business that requires results). Put it together and this is not a conversation that you can win.

[JusticeJackson]

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[Anonymous User]

I had a mediocre time as a 1L too. I totally agree with you on grades, I think that at most schools for 80% of the class grades are essentially a series of coin flips, and that if I were designing a recruitment system for elite corporate law firms from the ground up placing an overwhelming emphasis on relatively fine grading distinctions between candidates would be very low on my list.

I'd never bring up a person's grades in an interview. And if you interviewed with me and said this I'd wholeheartedly agree and we'd probably share some laughs about it. And then you'd still get a ding because (1) my firm's grade cutoff is out of my control, and (2) you still haven't told me why I should hire you as opposed to the other 19 people, some with better grades, some with worse, that I'm seeing that day.

[DELG]

Your goal in every interview is to never, ever talk about grades. If they bring it up, it's because you're sunk. If you bring it up, you just sunk yourself.

I talked to a biglaw partner in the midwest who does interviews at his alma mater. He told me that if you have a steep upward trajectory between semesters in your grades you should definitely bring it up in an interview and point out your improvement, even if averaged out your grades are median. He made it a point to tell me this when I asked him for interview advice. Is he an anomaly then?

I was just talking about OP

[Thrive]

Am I the only one still confused about just how bad the OP did? Especially in light of the A+'s?? And going to Michigan or Penn? This thread feels a bit too dramatic for me.

[Anonymous User]

I wonder if the "don't bring up your bad GPA" advice is the same when you're interviewing with reach firms. For example, if your GPA is 3.2, and you get a lottery interview with a firm whose average offer at your school is to applicants with a 3.5, isn't addressing GPA directly the only chance you have (slim at that) to clear an obvious and otherwise insurmountable hurdle?

Now, bidding on those firms isn't usually a great idea, I know. But sometimes there's a connection with your prior WE and one of their practice areas. And if there's a context for poor performance, isn't it helpful to let them know? Again, I'm only talking about reach firms where with a better GPA you'd be a shoe-in.

[thesealocust]

I wonder if the "don't bring up your bad GPA" advice is the same when you're interviewing with reach firms. For example, if your GPA is 3.2, and you get a lottery interview with a firm whose average offer at your school is to applicants with a 3.5, isn't addressing GPA directly the only chance you have (slim at that) to clear an obvious and otherwise insurmountable hurdle?

Now, bidding on those firms isn't usually a great idea, I know. But sometimes there's a connection with your prior WE and one of their practice areas. And if there's a context for poor performance, isn't it helpful to let them know? Again, I'm only talking about reach firms where with a better GPA you'd be a shoe-in.

At most large firms, a hiring committee will decide on your candidacy. They will review your resume, transcript, and feedback forms filled out by everyone who interviewed you. A significant portion of the time, the people holding your fate in your hand are thus not the people you interviewed with, especially at the screening stage. You get the job by convincing the person or people you talk to to give you enthusiastic and glowing recommendations to the hiring committee, and I can all but guarantee you nothing you can say about your grades will help you in that endeavor. Even assuming you can tell a compelling story, that doesn't make a strong impression, it just partially negates the absence of a good one - it's not enough.

Now, if you're interviewing with THE hiring partner, or somebody you know is actually on the hiring committee, you at least have the ear of the person who matters. But once again, what exactly are you hoping to accomplish? Let's say you have a 3.2, and the firm generally doesn't hire people with less than a 3.5 from your school. The reason they do that is because they want talented capable lawyers, and they have little else to go on. They do not think you're incompetent, untalented, or incapable of success if you have "bad" grades - your grades just aren't independently vouching for you. That means you have to get around the obstacle of your grades, not somehow reverse it.

I think that's the key: most people understand that law school exams are difficult and results often don't align with effort or ability, but they fail to follow that line of thinking through and realize employers know that too. Your bad grades aren't hurting you nearly as much as they are simply the absence of an advantage. You have to accept two things: (1) there's no way to gain the advantage by addressing it, because you can't talk your way into straight As even if you can talk your way into being an impressive candidate, and (2) "bad" grades aren't a negative mark beyond being the absence of a positive mark. From there, the futility of discussing your grades should be obvious.

None of that is to say you have a good chance of getting around GPA cutoffs and securing a position - you don't. Hiring is hard, and a firm looking to hire 10 people out of 1,000 applicants isn't even really going to be rejecting people so much as they are going to be limiting offers to their absolute favorite applicants. The numbers are against you; you don't have to do anything wrong or mess up to fail to get a particular job out of OCI.

[Anonymous User]

Thanks, SL. Great explanation.

[El Pollito]

i would avoid drawing attention to the fact that you apparently study very hard but not smart

[Anonymous User]

i would avoid drawing attention to the fact that you apparently study very hard but not smart

[NotMyRealName09]

I'll quickly add my perspective as a junior attorney who interviews people during callbacks at the firm - trying to justify away poor grades will always fail with me. I generally like what Sealocust said above, but quite simply, the world is now full of law students who had great grades and those are who I want to hire. I had great grades in law school, so anything you say to try and explain away your less-than-stellar grades will always just come out as "there are better students out there than me." So like others have said - if your poor grades come up in an interview, that interview is going badly and there is nothing you can do about it.

[Anonymous User]

So are what a lot of people saying is that if your grades ever come up in the interview, then it's pretty much sunk?

[Ron Howard]

So are what a lot of people saying is that if your grades ever come up in the interview, then it's pretty much sunk?

I guess unless it is something like, "Wow, you have have amazing grades."

[pancakes3]

So are what a lot of people saying is that if your grades ever come up in the interview, then it's pretty much sunk?

Sounds like bad grades are bad grades and only those who are legitimately charismatic and good at interviewing get a shot at redemption. So yeah, you're pretty much sunk.

[thesealocust]

So are what a lot of people saying is that if your grades ever come up in the interview, then it's pretty much sunk?

Not necessarily - just that you shouldn't bring it up yourself, and you shouldn't linger if they do bring it up. They may just be curious and making conversation, I wouldn't read too much into it.

[rpupkin]

So like others have said - if your poor grades come up in an interview, that interview is going badly and there is nothing you can do about it.

Although I agree with the advice that an interviewee should never bring up his or her grades spontaneously, I disagree with the bolded. Some screeners might ask you about your subpar grades because they like you; they want to be able to sell you to the interview committee even though your grades are below the firm's standard hiring threshold. And they want to see what you'll say when asked about your relatively poor grades because they know that others at their firm will care.

Don't bring up your grades spontaneously. But if asked about grades, answer honestly and non-defensively, and don't assume that the interview is going badly.

[Anonymous User]

Any anecdotes about a single bad grade coming up during an interview (preferably success stories)? I plan to own it, but I want at least some hope that if it comes up I won't be dead in the water.