C- in Torts... Forum

[worfsonofmogh]

I'm devastated to be honest.. I studied my ass off, went to office hours, got a tutor, took four practice exams and I still ended up with an abysmal C- on my final torts exam.

The worst part is I thought that my torts exam was the best exam I wrote.. Now i'm afraid to get the rest of my test scores tomorrow. Excuse my french, but am I fucked career wise? Suppose I end up with C's all around for my first semester, but I really pull through and end up with A's and B's for the rest of my law school lifespan, could that overwrite my monumental fuck up last fall?

I've never been this depressed in my life.

Any advice is welcome and needed..

[crazywafflez]

Do you like law? Do you want to be an attorney? What are your career goals (i.e., do you want criminal law, cause if so, the DAs office in Tucson won't really care you did poorly in torts)? What range rank of school do you go to?
These questions will be the most important. If you are at like a T2 school where median is 2.8 or something, you'll be fine on that front (and I assume you already knew that your chances of biglaw were limited anyways from entering that rank of school). You'll need to rub elbows with folks regardless unless you were top of your class. The small firm in Biloxi, MS, wasn't gonna care if you got a C- in torts or a B; they want to know you're from the sipp, plan to stay and are a decent human being.
If you are at a T14, you're also still fine, you'll probs still land biglaw even bottom of your class as long as you didn't fail courses.
I got a C+ in a class my first semester at law school. I'm graduating median from a T1 school and have a job lined up. I bombed OCI- no biglaw firm looked at me. I had a lot better success back in my hometown/state.
I'll be honest though, a C won't kill you, but if your overall GPA is weak, it is going to be an uphill battle. I don't think the median student at a T1 is any better off than the bottom 25% tbh. It will be about connections, talking to folks; and, barring that, specialize!

[cavalier1138]

First things first, your perception of how well you did on exams has nothing to do with your actual grades.

But as wafflez mentioned, the rest of your questions can only be answered if we know what your goals are and where you're in school.

[nealric]

It would be a good idea to sit down with your professor and go over the exam (if they will allow it). If you thought you did well, there may have been either a significant substantive misunderstanding or you may not have understood correctly how to write law school exams.

Often, how a law school exam "feels" when you take it has little to do with how well you did on it. An exam may feel hard because you have identified a tough issue and wrestled with it. An exam may feel easy because you totally missed a tough issue. So I wouldn't assume your other grades will be the same.

It's also worth knowing what the median at your school is. A C- at a school where the median is a 3.5 is very different from one where the median is a 2.5. Poor grades may foreclose some employment options (depending on school), but grades may be irrelevant for others.

For what it's worth, I was disappointed in my first semester 1L grades as well, but ended up with straight A/A- grades my second semester. Some of it was just figuring out how to study and how to write exams.