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Hi all. I'll be clerking for an A3 USDC judge in the Southeast after I graduate but will be SA'ing at a V100 firm in NYC. I'm thinking I may want to stay in the Southeast (the district where the clerkship is, specifically) rather than returning to the firm in NYC post-clerkship. How important will grades, law review, publications, etc be when I'm applying to local biglaw firms post clerkship?

I have an opportunity for a couple of publications (my law review note and another short piece in another journal), and am considering setting up my 3L schedule to give myself a considerable grade bump/have an outside shot at Coif. Just trying to get a handle on how I should go about all of this. Thanks in advance.

It seems like you're more talking out your anxiety than really asking for advice. I mean you just posed the question of how important are grades for big law. Especially after 2L, all hiring is a little finicky. I don't see what someone can say more than "do the best you can do." Obviously having this clerkship in the area where you want to practice is great, but yeah, try to publish and get better grades, that'll help. But it seems like you already knew that.

Yes...publish and bust your ass for coif. These things will help you.

MarkRenton wrote:It seems like you're more talking out your anxiety than really asking for advice. I mean you just posed the question of how important are grades for big law. Especially after 2L, all hiring is a little finicky. I don't see what someone can say more than "do the best you can do." Obviously having this clerkship in the area where you want to practice is great, but yeah, try to publish and get better grades, that'll help. But it seems like you already knew that.

OP, here. I actually have/had no idea if publishing really matters to firms or not (I knew it mattered to careers in the academy) and wasn't sure how much grades mattered after a clerkship.

Absolutely do everything you can to put honors on your transcript. This stuff really does matter for early-career hiring. In every non-OCI interview for which I ultimately received an offer (three times, firms & clerkships), an interviewer specifically mentioned that I had received a particular academic distinction. It was an arbitrary-as-fuck distinction that I could have easily missed had I taken more difficult classes - and, if I'd received an B+ instead of an A in one of my classes, I very likely would not have been interviewed for one or all of these jobs because I would have lacked the identifiable honors on my resume. It's that silly and arbitrary...So, yeah, you should gun for Coif.

Anonymous User wrote:Absolutely do everything you can to put honors on your transcript. This stuff really does matter for early-career hiring. In every non-OCI interview for which I ultimately received an offer (three times, firms & clerkships), an interviewer specifically mentioned that I had received a particular academic distinction. It was an arbitrary-as-fuck distinction that I could have easily missed had I taken more difficult classes - and, if I'd received an B+ instead of an A in one of my classes, I very likely would not have been interviewed for one or all of these jobs because I would have lacked the identifiable honors on my resume. It's that silly and arbitrary...So, yeah, you should gun for Coif.

Tangential Rant: Isn't that so incredibly dumb? Really, a .02 GPA difference can end up being the difference between clear interview candidate and probably going to the recycle bin.

Citizen Genet wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Absolutely do everything you can to put honors on your transcript. This stuff really does matter for early-career hiring. In every non-OCI interview for which I ultimately received an offer (three times, firms & clerkships), an interviewer specifically mentioned that I had received a particular academic distinction. It was an arbitrary-as-fuck distinction that I could have easily missed had I taken more difficult classes - and, if I'd received an B+ instead of an A in one of my classes, I very likely would not have been interviewed for one or all of these jobs because I would have lacked the identifiable honors on my resume. It's that silly and arbitrary...So, yeah, you should gun for Coif.

Tangential Rant: Isn't that so incredibly dumb? Really, a .02 GPA difference can end up being the difference between clear interview candidate and probably going to the recycle bin.

They gotta draw the line somewhere. Too many law students/lawyers, etc. Complain to the ABA.

Citizen Genet wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Absolutely do everything you can to put honors on your transcript. This stuff really does matter for early-career hiring. In every non-OCI interview for which I ultimately received an offer (three times, firms & clerkships), an interviewer specifically mentioned that I had received a particular academic distinction. It was an arbitrary-as-fuck distinction that I could have easily missed had I taken more difficult classes - and, if I'd received an B+ instead of an A in one of my classes, I very likely would not have been interviewed for one or all of these jobs because I would have lacked the identifiable honors on my resume. It's that silly and arbitrary...So, yeah, you should gun for Coif.

Tangential Rant: Isn't that so incredibly dumb? Really, a .02 GPA difference can end up being the difference between clear interview candidate and probably going to the recycle bin.

I missed magna by .05. Frustrating as f, especially because there's no way to indicate it or anything on a resume or transcript.

I mean, this isn't to say that someone with awesome grades at a good school who barely misses the highest possible academic distinction is screwed, just that a little gold star makes a significant difference at the margins. Grading systems are confusing to judges and, to a lesser but still significant extent, firms - they like something they can grab onto.

Anonymous User wrote:

Citizen Genet wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Absolutely do everything you can to put honors on your transcript. This stuff really does matter for early-career hiring. In every non-OCI interview for which I ultimately received an offer (three times, firms & clerkships), an interviewer specifically mentioned that I had received a particular academic distinction. It was an arbitrary-as-fuck distinction that I could have easily missed had I taken more difficult classes - and, if I'd received an B+ instead of an A in one of my classes, I very likely would not have been interviewed for one or all of these jobs because I would have lacked the identifiable honors on my resume. It's that silly and arbitrary...So, yeah, you should gun for Coif.

Tangential Rant: Isn't that so incredibly dumb? Really, a .02 GPA difference can end up being the difference between clear interview candidate and probably going to the recycle bin.

I missed magna by .05. Frustrating as f, especially because there's no way to indicate it or anything on a resume or transcript.

Person who missed magna by .05: what school was this at? HLS, by any chance?

.

ajax adonis wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:

Citizen Genet wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Absolutely do everything you can to put honors on your transcript. This stuff really does matter for early-career hiring. In every non-OCI interview for which I ultimately received an offer (three times, firms & clerkships), an interviewer specifically mentioned that I had received a particular academic distinction. It was an arbitrary-as-fuck distinction that I could have easily missed had I taken more difficult classes - and, if I'd received an B+ instead of an A in one of my classes, I very likely would not have been interviewed for one or all of these jobs because I would have lacked the identifiable honors on my resume. It's that silly and arbitrary...So, yeah, you should gun for Coif.

Tangential Rant: Isn't that so incredibly dumb? Really, a .02 GPA difference can end up being the difference between clear interview candidate and probably going to the recycle bin.

I missed magna by .05. Frustrating as f, especially because there's no way to indicate it or anything on a resume or transcript.

You can't put this?

GPA: 3.76 (order of the coif: 3.78)

Or is that too desperate?

You can do it, and it probably is a good idea to do it, but you may want to list it as "top 10%: 3.78." I know some honors that schools give out are discretionary (even if they almost always give them to students with a certain GPA unless you told the dean to fuck off or something), so it might not be technically correct to say that you would have been coif at that GPA.

Too desperate. You either got it or you didn't. 3.76 is a great GPA