Straight Bs 1L year... how worried should I be? Forum

[ragdollmelia]

I'm a rising 2L at a T10 school. I just got my 1L grades back and it's literally all Bs, not even a "Bs and a B+" situation, and I feel like I can't meet anyone that's getting straight Bs at my school, or maybe it's so bad that no one will even admit it... my ultimate goal is NYC Biglaw (transactional), but with my grades being the way they are I'm thinking I might be screwed if I'm shooting for a few specific firms this summer. I'm not delusional enough to go for Cravath, but how upset should I be if I'm hoping for Kirkland/Debevoise/Latham/DPW etc.? I'm not a KJD but my work experience isn't terribly impressive, either.

[Wild Card]

Why do you want to work at those firms, other than that you think they're good?

All of those firms are very or very-very selective. At NYU, you'd need to be comfortably above median (B+ average) to land them.

Your strategy should be to bid conservatively and emphasize that you want to do corporate.

Talk to your career services. They'll tell you you're crazy to waste bids on any of the firms you listed.

[lost3039]

You can still get NYC transactional. However, at my T10 basically all these firms would be out of reach for you except maybe, maybe Kirkland. I wouldn't bid on any of those save Kirkland (and Kirkland is still a stretch, but they have a big class size).

[johntchance]

Are you likable and interesting? Can you hold a steady and engaging conversation with a stranger? Don’t make the mistake of assuming it’s all about grades—it’s not. Be prepared for your interviews and follow up with your interviewers. Demonstrate your interest. Plenty of folks get great grades but are socially inept. If you’re an average or below avg T10 student but do the little things right (dress neat, follow ups, be on time to your interviews, interviewer enjoys their conversation with you) you may very well be a more or equally attractive candidate vs someone who got good grades but is painfully awkward or insufferable or weird. Remember that you got into a T10 law school—partners don’t list their grades on their bios and in my experience Latin honors have no correlation with law firm success. Clients don’t care about your grades, they care about whether you can solve their problems, and transactional work is not rocket science. Do not hold yourself back. Get after it.

Find people who went to your UG or law school and send them an email. Understand that not everyone will be willing to help you; associates are busy. If you send out 20 emails, maybe 5 (more if you’re lucky) will respond and agree to chat and perhaps one or two will offer to put in a word to recruiting (this could enable you to bypass the screener and go straight to call back). Do this before your interviews so you can mention it during screeners/callbacks (don’t name drop an associate you speak with without their permission though—just a courtesy).

I’m speaking from experience. I got a lot of Bs my 1L year. I made a similar post as you and some dork told me the firms I was interested in were all pipe dreams with my grades. Ended up getting offers from several of them.

You’ve got this.