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Without going into detail, I ended up with a B- in Crim Pro. I really don't know how it happened and it's my worst grade to date throughout 3 semesters. I'm really interested in becoming a PD and have been going down that route in terms of internships, clinics, etc.

Since Crim Pro is pretty much the crux course for DA/PDs, am I screwed? Does anyone know if this is going to reflect very poorly on me applying to PD offices for a full time job next year?

brickcity wrote:Without going into detail, I ended up with a B- in Crim Pro. I really don't know how it happened and it's my worst grade to date throughout 3 semesters. I'm really interested in becoming a PD and have been going down that route in terms of internships, clinics, etc.

Since Crim Pro is pretty much the crux course for DA/PDs, am I screwed? Does anyone know if this is going to reflect very poorly on me applying to PD offices for a full time job next year?

Lol first and foremost, a B- is not a bad grade. It is no A sure, but it isn't a C or D either. So you need to chill.

Second, I don't know what type of school you go to, or what market you're looking in, but PD and prosecutor offices are known to take the holistic approach when hiring their people. They are looking at the whole picture of the person, not simply their grades. In fact, at least in my area (South East) prosecutors and PD's are typically the folks who had considerably low grades in law school, and a lot of them had to take the BAR multiple times too. In short, you are still fine if you want to be a PD. And really the B- probably wouldn't prevent you from getting any other job either. Not only this, but public service jobs care much more about whether your heart is in it, grades are almost irrelevant.

Maybe someone else wants to weight in on how bad a B- is, but in my opinion and experience a B- is pretty decent, it is a slightly above average grade actually. This will largely depend on the school, market, and job you want etc., but by and large a B- is definitely a decent grade.

S. Goodman wrote:
Maybe someone else wants to weight in on how bad a B- is, but in my opinion and experience a B- is pretty decent, it is a slightly above average grade actually. This will largely depend on the school, market, and job you want etc., but by and large a B- is definitely a decent grade.

A B- at my lower T14 school is probably equivalent to a D in an undergraduate course, and is definitely two letter grades below median.

B- at mine is between bottom 5-20%

mvp99 wrote:B- at mine is between bottom 5-20%

Seems pretty unrealistic, but I am sure it is widely different at every school.

yea i know it sucks but its the suggested curve.. if the prof is nice, he'll only give out 5% C+

mvp99 wrote:yea i know it sucks but its the suggested curve.. if the prof is nice, he'll only give out 5% C+

So I transferred to a T25, I am not very familiar with the grading polices here yet. I just looked them up.

4.0 A
3.67 A-
3.33 B+
3.0 B
2.67 B-

The mean for upper level courses is 3.3, so yeah a B- is two grades below median at my school. I apologize for my ignorance, that seems so harsh. I guess my grades aren't as good as I thought! Seems so counter intuitive, generally when you see A's and B's you think that is pretty good. Guess not!

One of my friends got hired with me at one of the NYC DA offices with a C in crimpro. So it's not impossible, but you should speak with the professor on what you did wrong.

While I subscribe to the "grades matter a lot" - a career in crim law doesn't seem as dependent on grades as big law. i'm pretty sure everyone who wanted to work for the DAs office for free got a summer because 1. you are working for free and 2. they are normally always swamped. I think working super hard there past summer and into the school year (again, not getting paid) might mean more than a B- or a C.

I don't know for sure, I never did the DA office crap - I just know the 20 or so classmates I had that participated in those programs did it to do it. Maybe 1 or 2 were super interested in crim careers.

Current prosecutor at one of the top offices
... worst grade in law school was crim law, never took crim pro or evidence... did some internships during the year at pd/da offices and had a bunch of crim interviews and no one ever asked or seemed to care about those transcript anomalies.