When do grades stop mattering Forum

[Anonymous User]

Title about sums it up. I have really bad grades from a really good school - managed to eke my way into a fancy lit boutique. If I want to switch firms down the line, will they ask for my transcript? Even 4/5 years out?

[Anonymous User]

A very small handful of firms will care about your GPA, but after your first job, how much experience you have will matter a lot more.

[Anonymous User]

Title about sums it up. I have really bad grades from a really good school - managed to eke my way into a fancy lit boutique. If I want to switch firms down the line, will they ask for my transcript? Even 4/5 years out?

4th year associate here who recently went through the lateral process from a V5 to a v10 (NYC). In my experience, all firms will request your transcript as a component of your application. How critically will your grades be looked at when you’re making a lateral move as a mid-to-senior level associate? Not very, as you really should have strong case / deal work under your belt by that point and that should be the focus of interest, but I will say that at least one interviewer at every firm I interviewed at (~9 firms total) casually referenced my grades as having been “strong” when discussing my candidacy. It was a 5 second comment, however, and I was not grilled on why I got a B in con law II.

In other words, they’re going to look at your transcript but it becomes more of a tick the box exercise on the firm’s end than anything else once you have more experience. Assuming you’re still in school, I would discourage you from completely phoning it in from now until graduation because there’s a chance you’ll want to lateral earlier in your career than you might think, but take comfort in knowing that grades won’t ever matter as much as they did during OCI.

[Anonymous User]

OP here. To the question above, I’m not in school anymore, so that ship has sailed.

Does anyone have any experience with transitioning to nonprofit/impact lit organizations, ACLU, NYCLU, etc? Do those guys care about grades for hires 3/4 years out of law school

[kaiser]

I made a lateral move from 1 biglaw firm to another after about 2 years, and they requested transcripts. That was expected, since there isn't much substantive work experience to assess in the first 2 years of biglaw. I made a move in house after about 6 total years in practice, and none of the companies I interviewed with asked for transcripts. They only cared about work experience at that point.

Can't say for sure whether that is because I had more work experience to judge, or whether companies care less about school grades compared to firms. Probably a combination of both. Not sure if a firm would have asked for transcripts if I had sought to make another firm jump after 6 years.