Does law school GPA correlate with legal career success? Forum

[SDviaVA]

I came across this Google study a while back:

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-goog ... ple-2013-6

The article explains "Google doesn't even ask for GPA or test scores from candidates anymore, unless someone's a year or two out of school, because they don't correlate at all with success at the company. Even for new grads, the correlation is slight, the company has found."

Is there something about law school and the legal field that makes it different then in Google's situation? Is this study even legit? Does law school GPA correlate with legal career success?

[haus]

I doubt that GPA really correlates to much of anything, other than quality of jobs being offered directly out of school.

I am sure that there is some notable overlap of skills between what is needed to succeed in the work place from those that lead to success in academics, but the exceptions are pretty significant as well. Those with poor GPA maybe frozen out of the competition (for biglaw type jobs), but this is not proof that they would not have been competitive in the environment.

[Tiago Splitter]

I came across this Google study a while back:

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-goog ... ple-2013-6

The article explains "Google doesn't even ask for GPA or test scores from candidates anymore, unless someone's a year or two out of school, because they don't correlate at all with success at the company. Even for new grads, the correlation is slight, the company has found."

Is there something about law school and the legal field that makes it different then in Google's situation? Is this study even legit? Does law school GPA correlate with legal career success?

It's not really that different in law. GPA after a year or two out of law school isn't usually a big deal. Doesn't mean it never matters, but the Google story isn't really unusual.

[Anonymous User]

Even if there was a statistic saying it did, career success is too broad a standard and you'd have to account for the fact that law school GPA also correlates with factors that make it likelier someone will have career success.

[krads153]

In the short term, anecdotally it seems like a lot of the best associates graduated Order of the Coif. Beyond that though, I doubt GPA correlates with long-term legal career success.