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So my 1L year has been bad in a Top 20 school. I ended 1L year with a 3.281 (below 50%). This semester, however, I increased my GPA to 3.43 (Top 35ish% and Dean's List; A+, A, A-, A-). My target is south florida and I think I've exhausted all the mid-size and larger firms in applications. They do not have my 2L grades yet. How do I go about telling them what I did this semester? If I just send an updated transcript, would that be too subtle and they may look over it or ignore it? How can I take advantage of my improvement?

Mid-size and larger firms won't care.

I doubt they'll care or acknowledge the change (only source of that opinion is these boards, so take it FWIW), but that being said, I think a better strategy would be to continue to improve grades spring and then go crazy applying and re-applying for 3L OCI/3L hiring.

I feel that if any of them are going to care, sending an updated transcript is perfectly sufficient - if they're still considering people for this summer and they care about grades, they'll look at the thing that the school issues that tells them your grades. Whether they will care, I have no idea, I'm afraid.

This happened to me from 1L to graduation, going from 3.3ish to 3.8ish. No firms really cared for the 2L summer; however, I was able to craft my progression into a (I thought) good cover letter which segued into an associate position with a biglaw firm despite not summer associate-ing with that firm.

My advice would be to send updated transcripts now but also to keep gunning hard. Work with a small/mid firm this summer and continue to apply/mass mail/cold call/etc.

I'd probably also include an updated resume at the same time as the updated transcript; in part, they're different levels of detail for looking at the same thing.