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Law school GPA is important for employment opportunities, particularly for summer jobs at law firms. Class ranking is also important, and law school rankings are often used by firms to make hiring decisions. Low GPAs can be supplemented with work experience, but a high GPA demands immediate attention.
While a law school grade point average (GPA) is not the only indication of how successful a law student will be as a lawyer, it is, depending on the context, usually quite important. Particularly after the freshman year of law school, grades reflected in a law school’s GPA are often the only data employers have on potential applicants. Numbers cannot indicate whether a student will be a good candidate for a job, but they are often the basis of the first cut. A high GPA can float a resume to the top of the pile, while a low one can often sink it to the bottom. After law school, employers are often more interested in class rankings than GPA, but most will insist on seeing a transcript in any case, which makes hiding low or fluctuating grades difficult.
A law school GPA is generally more important for law students looking for employment while in school. Most law students take jobs at law firms during the summer, but these jobs are competitive. Good grades are often a prerequisite for walking through the door of a desirable company.
Landing an enviable summer job isn’t the goal of a cool career, but getting off to a strong start is important. The legal profession is fast paced and highly competitive. A lot depends on who is in the role: the school attended, the academic performance of the law education and the quality of the professional experience. A student with a low law school GPA will have to work harder to overcome bias that may be attributed to their transcript and may have a harder time finding work initially.
Upon graduation, law schools often publish a student’s ranking in the classroom along with the GPA. A top 25% ranking often trumps what might seem like a low law school GPA, since class ranking reflects overall standing. The poor grades of a student who was still placed in the first quarter of his class may indicate no more than that the school he attended had a particularly rigorous grading scheme. The reverse, however, is also true. A student with relatively high grades but placed in the bottom half of the class might raise an eyebrow about the overall quality of education received.
Law school rankings, combined with law school class ranking and GPA data, are often the three pieces of information that law firms use to make decisions about future hires even before the first interview is scheduled. For better or for worse, much of the value of lawyer training is associated with the school’s name and national ranking. Low grades from a top school can still hurt a lawyer, but not as much as low grades from a school far below the law school ranking list.
There are arguably more determinants of lawyer training and likelihood of success in the practice of law than the law school GPA. However, GPA remains an important factor in almost all law or post-law schools. Low GPAs can always be supplemented with work experience, demonstrated skills, or other career-building actions over time, but little can rival the immediate attention a high GPA typically demands.
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