Top Law Schools

So due to the curve there are going to be people at the very bottom of the class. I am wondering what these people are like. It's hard for me to imagine someone, especially at a top school, who doesn't care about their studies so they must be trying to do well. Are they just intellectually deficient? Maybe super lazy? This will probably be best answered by current law students who actually know people at the bottom...

Have you seen Danny DeVito in the Rainmaker? I think he like failed the bar 3 times in the movie, I think he was probably in the bottom of the class. The people at the bottom are probably like that, just like in the movies.

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Dennis Reynolds: Frank, we don't need the chainsaw. Is that what's in that bag?
Frank Reynolds: Oh, we do... because drawing a confession out of someone is like doing a beautiful dance... a beautiful dance with a chainsaw.

FAIL

Doritos wrote:So due to the curve there are going to be people at the very bottom of the class. I am wondering what these people are like. It's hard for me to imagine someone, especially at a top school, who doesn't care about their studies so they must be trying to do well. Are they just intellectually deficient? Maybe super lazy? This will probably be best answered by current law students who actually know people at the bottom...

At UVA, a ~3.0 is dead bottom of the class. That's a B in each class. C and B-'s are given out. Therefore you don't have to be a horrible student to be the worst. You don't need the absolute worst grade. If you don't get it better than your classmates, you'll probably come in a bit below them on average. That's all it takes to be dead last.

This is an interesting yet a very scary thread. I can't help but picture me being that guy. Oh the horror.

Ragged wrote:This is an interesting yet a very scary thread. I can't help but picture me being that guy. Oh the horror.

I know. What I was looking for were stories of how incredibly terrible and unlike me the bottom of the class people are. Thankfully I got funny pictures and a scary reminder I could be that guy. I just hope I don't end up on welfare after law school

Ragged wrote:This is an interesting yet a very scary thread. I can't help but picture me being that guy. Oh the horror.

When you're in class, look around. Half of those people will be below median. A quarter will be in the bottom quarter. Think hard about how smart you are and how much you prepare.

Doritos wrote:

Ragged wrote:This is an interesting yet a very scary thread. I can't help but picture me being that guy. Oh the horror.

I know. What I was looking for were stories of how incredibly terrible and unlike me the bottom of the class people are. Thankfully I got funny pictures and a scary reminder I could be that guy. I just hope I don't end up on welfare after law school

The bottom of the class people just spotted a few less issues than the median people on the final or spotted the same issues but allocated their time incorrectly or spotted the same issues but had a skewed analysis. I get the sense that an average paper isn't very different from a slightly below average paper. The difference in quality kicks in going from average to above average to excellent.

Kohinoor wrote:

Ragged wrote:This is an interesting yet a very scary thread. I can't help but picture me being that guy. Oh the horror.

When you're in class, look around. Half of those people will be below median. A quarter will be in the bottom quarter. Think hard about how smart you are and how much you prepare.

Yep. If there are 360 people in a class, 180 of them will be at or below median. That's a lot of kids, and kids who were the smartest and best the law school could get.

To put this differently: At UVA, if you get B+s in every single one of your classes, you've got a 3.3 GPA and you're median. If just one of those grades ends up being a B- instead, even though you've got the same B+ as everyone else in your other three courses, you drop to a 3.15 or so, which puts you around the bottom quarter of the class.

One grade can make you, but one grade can also fuck you. Isn't that a pleasant thought?

vanwinkle wrote:

Kohinoor wrote:

Ragged wrote:This is an interesting yet a very scary thread. I can't help but picture me being that guy. Oh the horror.

When you're in class, look around. Half of those people will be below median. A quarter will be in the bottom quarter. Think hard about how smart you are and how much you prepare.

Yep. If there are 360 people in a class, 180 of them will be at or below median. That's a lot of kids, and kids who were the smartest and best the law school could get.

To put this differently: At UVA, if you get B+s in every single one of your classes, you've got a 3.3 GPA and you're median. If just one of those grades ends up being a B- instead, even though you've got the same B+ as everyone else in your other three courses, you drop to a 3.15 or so, which puts you around the bottom quarter of the class.

One grade can make you, but one grade can also fuck you. Isn't that a pleasant thought?

Dear God...

Seriously, think about it. A lot of people on here (myself included) are fighting to be the "last" one in to School X. Then, there are those that easily made it into their top choice. It makes me wonder what the biggest factor in law school success really is. I guess a combination of working hard, studying efficiently, and talent? But at this point, everybody is talented, right? So does it just boil down to inner drive? This is such a stress provoking thread!!!

sundevil77 wrote:It makes me wonder what the biggest factor in law school success really is.

Let me know if you figure it out. I definitely had exams where my professor sat me down and said "Your analysis on this essay was A level but your analysis on this essay was B- level" which basically means I was able to write a best and worst essay on the same exam and I promise you that I didn't know the material on the good essay better.

Hey, that guy could end up being great in court...

I don't know if saying this will be controversial, but this may offer an explanation.
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See page 61. The data in this study are pretty old now, so times might have changed somewhat.

In the paper he says that those students work plenty hard, but have a tough time in the curve against people with higher LSAT/uGPA.

msoftceo wrote:I don't know if saying this will be controversial, but this may offer an explanation.
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See page 61. The data in this study are pretty old now, so times might have changed somewhat.

In the paper he says that those students work plenty hard, but have a tough time in the curve against people with higher LSAT/uGPA.

I remember reading somewhere that his data is less and less true as you go higher in the rankings. Moreover, just to frame it correctly, even if his data were correct and a full 50% of the black UVA students here were in the bottom decile, there would still be more than 20 non-blacks just in the bottom decile. Even making the most favorable assumptions to Sander's position, there just aren't enough of us to explain who ends up in the bottom decile/quarter/half since so few of us are in law school to begin with.

I go to a T2 school and was comfortably above the median LSAT, just a hair over the median GPA. Probably the scariest thing about the first few weeks of law school was the realization that, unlike undergrad, there were NO "dumb" people in my class. Everyone was smart, and everyone had something intelligent to say. Nobody was chronically unprepared and everyone struggled with the material just the same as everyone else. Worst of all, everyone had those fancy and super helpful supplements that I thought only I knew about.

But then I rocked exams, so I don't really know what happened. Anyways, don't let it psyche you out!

TCR is reasonabledoubt

hth

kittenmittons wrote:TCR is reasonabledoubt

hth

Hahahahaha, 180

vanwinkle wrote:

Kohinoor wrote:

Ragged wrote:This is an interesting yet a very scary thread. I can't help but picture me being that guy. Oh the horror.

When you're in class, look around. Half of those people will be below median. A quarter will be in the bottom quarter. Think hard about how smart you are and how much you prepare.

Yep. If there are 360 people in a class, 180 of them will be at or below median. That's a lot of kids, and kids who were the smartest and best the law school could get.

To put this differently: At UVA, if you get B+s in every single one of your classes, you've got a 3.3 GPA and you're median. If just one of those grades ends up being a B- instead, even though you've got the same B+ as everyone else in your other three courses, you drop to a 3.15 or so, which puts you around the bottom quarter of the class.

One grade can make you, but one grade can also fuck you. Isn't that a pleasant thought?

Again, small standard deviations FTL.

kittenmittons wrote:TCR is reasonabledoubt

hth

It's just so fitting he's got this guy as his avatar...


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I know someone who claims to be pretty near the bottom. They're plenty smart and studious, but apparently not very good at writing exam answers.

One thing to remember about grades is what you really want to get out of law school. If you want to get a job, and that's the main reason you're going to law school, that needs to be how you measure success. If what you want to do requires good grades to get you in the door, then I guess you need to worry about being in the lower rungs of the class. But if what you want to do is get a good job, and it doesn't necessarily require good grades, don't worry about that so much. Worry about making contacts and impressing those contacts. I have median grades but have lined up two legal jobs, one paid nearly full-time, and both could lead to meaningful careers. There are several people above me in grades who can't say that.

For those who aren't in law school yet, you're going to hear about the importance of networking so god damn much. But it doesn't have to be schmoozing.

But, yeah, if you want to work for a big firm and do what some of us believe would be excruciatingly boring work, don't be that dude in the bottom of the class.

And everyone in law school wants to succeed in everything we do, so your ego may be the most damaged.

Renzo wrote:I know someone who claims to be pretty near the bottom. They're plenty smart and studious, but apparently not very good at writing exam answers.

Yep. There's the answer. Being good at writing exam answers >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> being studious >>>>> being "intelligent."

There are a few people around you can't help but pick out as probable bottom of the class. Generally these are the people who consistently bring up irrelevant stuff in class. People who clearly don't get what law school is about.