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This may seem like a stupid question, but I am deciding what to register for in my last semester of law school, I realized that I will come up just shy of the minimum number of gpa units to receive order of the coif at my school. (I did some writing classes that were graded, but oddly not gpa, as well as some experiential learning). My plan for last semester was to do a clinic (ungraded, so it wouldn't count) and only take one bar class. Coif would likely require one more 4-unit class. So, would order of the coif matter, or, is it just a signal that a student was in top 10%, which graduating highly ranked and summa cum laude would also accomplish?

Do you have a job that you want lined up?

BrainsyK wrote:Do you have a job that you want lined up?

Already have a job.

BrainsyK wrote:Do you have a job that you want lined up?

In his poll it says he has an SA. I don't think your career outlook will be affected by coif. There are ~100 people in my group/office and I couldn't tell you a single person that was on law review, coifed, summa cum whatever or anything. Granted, this is in corp i have no idea what litigation people care about or do on a daily basis.

toast and bananas wrote:

BrainsyK wrote:Do you have a job that you want lined up?

In his poll it says he has an SA. I don't think your career outlook will be affected by coif. There are ~100 people in my group/office and I couldn't tell you a single person that was on law review, coifed, summa cum whatever or anything. Granted, this is in corp i have no idea what litigation people care about or do on a daily basis.

No, it says he has "summ" locked down, which I assume means summa cum laude. Summa's generally harder to get than Order of the Coif, but it appears he would be eligible for summa but not Coif because of credit-hour requirements for the latter.

My take, if OP can get summa, no need to also shoot for Coif. Coif doesn't add any additional value over summa, as both are exclusively grades-based honors (unlike Law Review).

Since everyone knows that Coif = top 10%, if you can exceed that by graduating summa, why not just note that you graduated summa on your resume/profile and indicate its meaning in parentheses to remove any uncertainty:

summa cum laude (top X in class)

Isn't silly some schools honor you but don't publish its meaning? HLS is clear about it. All schools should be IMO.

paradiselost9 wrote:Isn't silly some schools honor you but don't publish its meaning? HLS is clear about it. All schools should be IMO.

Not sure what you mean by a school not "publish[ing] its meaning"? AFAIK, all schools publish the criteria for their academic honors, whether it's cum laude/magna/summa or some other award.

I think OP is in weird position. He/she can graduate summa cum laude, which probably requires a GPA that would put you in the top 10%. But OP's school requires that you take a certain number of credits in order to get order of the coif. So OP could hypothetically graduate summa, but not graduate order of the coif, even though OP's GPA would be enough to get order of the coif.

IMO if you're going to graduate summa, it doesn't matter if you get order of the coif. People will look at your GPA and see you graduated summa, and they likely wont even realize that you didn't have enough credits to order of the coif.

BulletTooth wrote:I think OP is in weird position. He/she can graduate summa cum laude, which probably requires a GPA that would put you in the top 10%. But OP's school requires that you take a certain number of credits in order to get order of the coif. So OP could hypothetically graduate summa, but not graduate order of the coif, even though OP's GPA would be enough to get order of the coif.

IMO if you're going to graduate summa, it doesn't matter if you get order of the coif. People will look at your GPA and see you graduated summa, and they likely wont even realize that you didn't have enough credits to order of the coif.

Yea they'll probably just assume that OP's school doesn't participate in Coif.

QContinuum wrote:

paradiselost9 wrote:Isn't silly some schools honor you but don't publish its meaning? HLS is clear about it. All schools should be IMO.

Not sure what you mean by a school not "publish[ing] its meaning"? AFAIK, all schools publish the criteria for their academic honors, whether it's cum laude/magna/summa or some other award.

I don't think Penn does, but I'm open to eating my words.

I don't think Penn does, but I'm open to eating my words.

Penn does. All of the top schools do so except for Colombia and Yale:
http://orderofthecoif.org/member-schools/

legalace wrote:

I don't think Penn does, but I'm open to eating my words.

Penn does. All of the top schools do so except for Colombia and Yale:
http://orderofthecoif.org/member-schools/

HLS does not.

There's a smattering of T1 law schools that don't participate: BU, Notre Dame, GMU. And I think a lot of T2 and down schools don't have Coif.

legalace wrote:

I don't think Penn does, but I'm open to eating my words.

Penn does. All of the top schools do so except for Colombia and Yale:
http://orderofthecoif.org/member-schools/

Sorry, I was referring to Latin honors and the lack of publishing of the meaning of GPA distinctions in Latin honors.

Why would it matter if there was a confusion about the meaning of Order of the Coif or Penn publishing the meaning, when the meaning is determined and published outside of Penn and is the same for all schools?

The common sense argument aside, had you mulled over a little longer the context of my quote, which you actively cut out and thus must have seen, you perhaps would have avoided the misreading.