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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?

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 wrote: ↑

Sun Jan 17, 2021 12:22 am

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.

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

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.