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or is it only the 1l grades that matter?

I've actually wondered the same thing. As a probable (or should I say hopeful) transfer student I will not have grades at my new school. I wonder if I graduate at the top 10% of my class or some other great feat like that if it even matters for purposes of getting a great job.

Depends. For Biglaw, pre-ITE, where SA offer rates were very high, people didn't care too much. Now, when a significant portion of SAs will be no-offered or deferred, I imagine you'll want to take advantage of every possible way to outshine your fellow SAs, so keeping your grades high is TCR.

Of course, 2L grades are always important for anyone who is applying for a job that is not obtained through 2L OCI. This applies to anyone applying for judicial clerkships, government, and non-OCI firms. Yes, this applies to those of y'all who (horrors) strike out at OCI

I imagine that transfers have extra special reasons to keep their 2L grades high, as they need to prove that they can run with the best at their new institution.

Esc wrote:Now, when a significant portion of SAs will be no-offered or deferred

First: There's really no evidence that is going to be true going forward. It had to happen as the crunch hit, but now there's no reason to expect firms won't just hire a number of SAs that more closely aligns with their desires.

Second: Since it's unclear whether OP has any idea how law school recruiting works, it's probably prudent to lay it out from scratch:

For jobs with big firms, you get hired during an interview period after your 1L year. They hire you to be a summer associate between your 2L and 3L year, and if all goes well that summer turns in to an offer of full time employment. Hooray!

If you're successful in that pipeline, you will have your offer before you've even taken your first exam as a 2L. In good times, firms were VERY competitive about having high 'offer' rates - i.e. the percentage of summer associateships that turned into full-time offers. They tried to one up each other. You could say 2L grades didn't matter and you would be largely correct.

ITE, a lot of firms (at least in the past) took on more SAs than they needed. While I haven't seen DIRECT evidence suggesting that lower-grade SAs are the one who failed to receive an 'offer' of full-time employment, it stands to reason that one would want to keep grades up to avoid even that possibility.

Now, if you're talking about anything OTHER than big firm jobs (to be fair, what 90%+ of law grads wind up getting) your 2L grades matter because you won't be looking for your first job out of law school in the formalized, early manner that the big firm job pool operates in. Your 2L grades will matter, but there's something important to point out: the legal industry is obsessed with prestige and rigor and sorting, and the fact of the matter is many (but hardly all) employers will put disproportionate weight on 1L grades. They justify it in a lot of ways: Some schools have more lax curves for 2Ls, some successful 1Ls have so many obligations as a result of their success that grades drop, some think that the only 'fair' competition is when everyone is a 1L, etc.

Worse still, your grades will often come up even if you attempt to lateral to a new job position a few years out of law school.

So the moral of the story is, you can never outrun your 1L grades. That being said, for every employer who fawns over your mastery of Tort law before you even fully understood how the court system worked, they'll be an employer who only cares about the work product you've produced as an attorney, or at least doesn't disproportionately weight 1L grades. But the sentiment of 1L-idolatry exists, and you should at least keep it in the back of your mind as you approach the law school beast.

FWIW - One of my neighbors is a recruiter at a V50 firm in DC. She told me the other day that her firm (and all firms with which she's liaisoned) are being really careful to get offer percentages upwards of 100% this summer. Therefore, disco_barred probably has it right when it comes to offer rates. That certainly doesn't mean SA class sizes are going to be as large as they were in 08 (or even 09), though, so 1L grades are probably even more important now.

That being said... don't F up and give your firm [strike]an excuse[/strike] a reason to no-offer you in case they overestimate their hiring needs. I wouldn't ease up until you have a concrete start date.

jchoggan wrote:FWIW - One of my neighbors is a recruiter at a V50 firm in DC. She told me the other day that her firm (and all firms with which she's liaisoned) are being really careful to get offer percentages upwards of 100% this summer. Therefore, disco_barred probably has it right when it comes to offer rates. That certainly doesn't mean SA class sizes are going to be as large as they were in 08 (or even 09), though, so 1L grades are probably even more important now.

That being said... don't F up and give your firm [strike]an excuse[/strike] a reason to no-offer you in case they overestimate their hiring needs. I wouldn't ease up until you have a concrete start date.

Upwards of 100%? How does that work?

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amped wrote:

jchoggan wrote:FWIW - One of my neighbors is a recruiter at a V50 firm in DC. She told me the other day that her firm (and all firms with which she's liaisoned) are being really careful to get offer percentages upwards of 100% this summer. Therefore, disco_barred probably has it right when it comes to offer rates. That certainly doesn't mean SA class sizes are going to be as large as they were in 08 (or even 09), though, so 1L grades are probably even more important now.

That being said... don't F up and give your firm [strike]an excuse[/strike] a reason to no-offer you in case they overestimate their hiring needs. I wouldn't ease up until you have a concrete start date.

Upwards of 100%? How does that work?

Ya... approaching 100%, rather. You know what I meant.

When you guys talk about "offer rates" you are talking about post-graduation, correct? If so, and if a firm's offer rates are like 90+%, you basically just have to not f up right?

A'nold wrote:When you guys talk about "offer rates" you are talking about post-graduation, correct? If so, and if a firm's offer rates are like 90+%, you basically just have to not f up right?

Basically, yes. They'll certainly feel free to no-offer you if you do F up, though... Btw, "F'ing up" does include being really really sh*tty at your job.