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So, I lucked out and got offers from some great firms despite my 1L grades being pretty bad. Additionally, I don't plan to try very hard the next two years. What I am wondering is: will many future employers request my transcript? If I work as an associate 5 - 10 years at a firm, will my grades ever be a factor again? I can see it mattering if one graduates with latin honors, as that goes on the resume, but, if employers see you have no latin honors, will they still be interested in your transcript 5 - 10 years out of law school?

Also curious whether others who have gotten jobs plan to work hard the next couple years.

Yes, some firms request transcripts from laterals and do indeed consider them. I know of at least one specifically and I'm pretty sure there are many more.

This has been discussed many times before and I don't think any objective truth has been reached. Some people argue staunchly that experience trumps grades by a country mile. Others argue that no experience in the world can save you if you don't meet a firm's grade cutoff even years down the road. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Nobody can tell you exactly how much grades will matter to the employers you apply to down the road. All that can be said is that they will all be somewhere between a lot and not at all.

OP you will probably work 3-5 yrs at the firm hth

bk1 wrote:This has been discussed many times before and I don't think any objective truth has been reached. Some people argue staunchly that experience trumps grades by a country mile. Others argue that no experience in the world can save you if you don't meet a firm's grade cutoff even years down the road. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Nobody can tell you exactly how much grades will matter to the employers you apply to down the road. All that can be said is that they will all be somewhere between a lot and not at all.

This.

I've seen some lateral job postings that explicitly say "must have graduated in X% of class." And from what I've gathered, it's a strict cut off. As with OCI, firms use it as an arbitrary measurement to weed out the 100000s of applications they get.

I work for the gov't and we generally don't care about grades unless they're bad. If you're median or above, that's fine. Coifbros are nice, but no one cares. My office--where we all do the same work--ranges from coif at HYS and 9th Cir clerkship to no latin honors at the local non-ABA-accredited school. And it's because there is simply no correlation between high class rank and quality of work product in our office. (Maybe there is in other fields, but I have seen the entire field of interns and grads across the school/class rank range at 2 gov't jobs, and there's no telling who will do good work based on their pedigree.) We do, however, put a strong emphasis on demonstrated ability and experience that is relevant to our work.