Agree with 12:32.

This is going to make Harvard Law Review editors (hello Phil Telfeyan) the top of the food chain when it comes to firm jobs and clerkships.

I say that harsh competition should stop after college. At that point, I could no longer get A's while drinking heavily.

rightly or wrongly, i bet a lot of applicants will view a restricted grade system as better, and will thus choose SLS over HLS. also, the mere mirroring of YLS may make SLS seem more prestigious. i wonder if that had anything to do with the faculty's decision.

Am I the FIRST to think that this is just a way for the Dean of Stanford to avoid frantic phone calls and emails from psychotic low-scoring students who are having a hard time getting their dream job?

HLS TO PASS FAIL. I say that difficult competition should stop after college. At that point, I could no longer get A's while drinking heavily.

Good for them, but this fluffy grading is the luxury of schools in like the Top 5 where grades dont matter as much anyway.

If you went to a 20-somethign school like I did, you need to be able to show you were in the top-whatever %% of your class to get into BigLaw, let alone Federal clerkships.

This system is far superior to a traditional system. Grading is so subjective -- it has much more to do with how well you think like the professor than how well you actually understand the law. I shouldn't get a lower grade than someone else simply because he is as wierd as the person teaching the course.

Hooray confusing Chicago system!

This sounds like a bunch of BS.
Honors = A
Pass = B
Restricted Credit = C
No Credit = D

This is a terrific idea. Harvard had better watch out though - this will surely have an effect on the cross-admit yield

Larry Kramer is a loser.

How is the Chicago system confusing? It is just a traditional A, A-, B+, B, B-, etc. system translated into numbers.

So many teir 1 law schools have grade inflation (one student of such a school explained to me that one had to be so exceptional to get in in the first place, there was less emphasis on grades) that an "A" from a "lesser" school probably means more than an "A" at Stanford, Harvard, Yale or Boalt.

Momma is not gonna like this new Stanford system. Back here in Alabama, we still grade A-F. All the fancy rich people at Stanford and Yale are spoiled little babies who feel sad if they don't get a smiley face on their paper or get the same good grade as everyone else.

You know what I think, all the people at Stanford and Yale are just a bunch of silly pansies. They don't like grades because if you give someone a bad grade, it might make them feel sad. I bet these students' mommas never whipped their behinds or these students' teachers in their fancy private schools growing up never used red pens to mark up their tests because red makes them feel bad about themselves. But you know what, here in Alabama, if you are dumb, we tell you. You get an F. And we can stand up for ourselves now.

I guess the new system means no more class ranks?

I'm a SLS student; against grade reform because I know I won't work as hard. Oh well, more time in napa and tahoe...

Looking forward to getting that smiley face on my transcript from here on out!

Ever watched a partner go through a stack of resumes? I would not count on them taking the time to figure out the wacky grading system that your school uses.

So if your grades don't make immediate sense, you'd best be from a REAL fancy law school. I think Northeastern Law sctudents have this problem...weird essay-style grading I think.

who cares. really, who cares.

"Momma is not gonna like this new Stanford system. Back here in Alabama, we still grade A-F. All the fancy rich people at Stanford and Yale are spoiled little babies who feel sad if they don't get a smiley face on their paper or get the same good grade as everyone else."

LOL - some truth to this no doubt. On the other hand, don't Stanford & Yale law students have a median 3.9 GPA from UG or something close thereto? It would seem that they've succeeded in getting top-of-the-class grades all the way to law school. Why not chill out after so much work...

Umm...didn't Boalt do this 40 years ago?

1:06, there is still a way to calculate rank, unfortunately

12:55 has it right. abcd is just being replaced with words. (on the other hand-it might be that there is no numerical gpa associated with the grades now-that would be a change if before gpa's were calculated

I'm all for traditional grades and ranking systems because they encourage more work, prevent inflation, and put the best and the brightest in the most important jobs.

however-i also think that the more realiable the ranking (i.e the confidence level you have that the person ranked 1 is really number 1 academically) should be looked at. Is one exam at the end of a semester sufficient to rank students. a person who has the flu/financial crises/car accident during his first semester finals and screws them up might still be in the top of his class were there more than 1 test to average.

from both the student and the employer perspective-more teast and papers in a given semester is needed.

but from the academic inertia/lazy professor/snobby law revewer standard anyone calling for any kind of grade reform is seen as being a fluffy grade supporter who doesn't understand the importance of ranking systems.

i understand the importance it has for employers..i wonder if law schools care enough to make it a more reliable ranking.

As someone who went to a school where the median grade, REQUIRED by the school, was a 2.4, I think the H/P/LP/F system sounds cushy, but nice.

The current grading system provides a false impression of accuracy--the idea that a 3.3 and a 3.2 (or even 3.5) are actually well distinguished is nonsense. The new grading system allows distinguished work to be recognized, without attempting to differentiate where frankly no differentiation exists.

As for partners rifling through resumes, you've got to be kidding yourself if you think they care past the SLS name unless you're doing poorly. There are so few SLS grads to go around, no one is going to require a high GPA to make their decision. And for those of you idiots who gave away free labor for law review for three years, thanksa bunch, but is a scam.

1:10, GOD YES. If you're from a top 3 or top 5 school, you have the luxury of getting "non-grades" because you can trade on the name of your school alone when applying for competitive jobs.

Outside the top 5, or at the absolute most the top 10, schools with inscrutable grading systems do a tremendous disservice to their students and ultimately to themselves by making it so difficult for the best students to distinguish themselves in a clear, easily recognizable fashion.

Who is a federal clerk going to pick for interviews? Someone on law review, in the top 15% of their class, with a 3.6 who graduated cum laude? Or someone with a Teaching Assistantship appointment, who has no class rank, and whose transcript features a bizarre hodgepodge of "Excellent" "Very Good" and "Outstanding"?

My father graduated from Virginia in the late 1960s when the school was transitioning away from a similar "High Pass, Pass, Fail" system. This was gradually expanded to represent more differentiations. At some point the school called a spade a spade and used the "A, B, C, D" system. Interesting that schools are experimenting with going back in that direction.

Sadly, not true 1:05. I have reviewed or graded the work of students at HLS and SLS, as well as at four good "lesser" schools (ranked in the low twenties and thirties), and can say without equivocation that a Pass at the first two schools invariably represents better work (and often much better work) than an A at a "lesser" school. There always will be exceptions, of course, but students at the "Trinity" (and the halo schools), do great work in spite of themselves. It's as if they can't help it; they've been programmed to do that since childhood. Even blowing off an exam at HLS usually produces more and better analysis than an A effort at a place not very far down the food chain. (The concept of "blowing off" itself is situationally defined, and the definition is more rigorous at a top school.) This is not a comment on the size of the difference in quality of the work, or which schools' graduates make the best lawyers, live the most fulfilling and worthwhile lives, and are the best people to drink with. Each of those things depends upon more than being analytically quick, verbally facile, and a skillful writer. None of this should be surprising. Students at the "best" law schools have done better academic work than their peers all of their lives, or they wouldn't be in the best schools. Why would one expect the pattern to change just because they turned twenty-two? If this is difficult to accept, then think of yourself as within one of the limited exceptions to the rule.

1:41 - Thanks, that's a great defense of the HYS hegemony. I feel better about my degree now!

1:41 -- you make me feel so much better about my 3.4 from HLS. I still have bad dreams about my Bs and B+s. DAMN PROGRAMMING!!

UVA actually has to deflate their grades.

1:21, 1:38: I just love how people refer to things by post time even when there is an actual name to use. Local custom I suppose...

Boalt (err...Berkeley Law) has a HH, H, P, NP system. There is a significant amount of competition in the margins between the HH and H and between the H and P. Even though students don't have GPAs, firms got wise and can ballpark GPA and rank from the number of HH's, H's and P's on a transcript. The same will happen here. It's not like a student will be able to simply pass every class and be hotly recruited. The nice part about it is that if you're absolutely lost in Corporate Taxation, you can write off the class and give minimum effort. You won't get an H or HH, but can get a P and it won't look nearly as bad as a C- or D.

1:41: So an average HYS student is "analytically quick, verbally facile, and a skillful writer"?

Yep, that describes Phil Telfeyan to a tee.

If you went to Boalt, and didn't fail out, and can't get a job, it's not for want of HHs, its because you can't interview to save your own life.

1:28 - Jeezus. I thought we were getting bent over when we went to a mandatory 2.72 "non-curve."

2.4?!

The knee-jerk response of the people who have a huge emotional investment in where they went to law school is amusing.

AU allows you to grade yourself.

2:11 do you expect even 1 person reading that to find it either a) true or b) funny?

2:08, I agree, to a point. Everyone with a pulse will find a job, but you are not talking your way into Cravath with straight P's.

Let's call it YSH hegemony. Harvard's retrograde "numeric" evaluation system pushes it to the back of the line, for sure.

Sadly, not true 1:41. I have reviewed or graded the work of students at HLS and SLS, as well as at good "lesser" schools (ranked in the low twenties and thirties), and can say without equivocation that a Pass at the first two schools invariably represents suckier work (and often much suckier work) than an A at a "lesser" school.

I have no idea why anyone thinks this change at Stanford will make Harvard grads look better. Clearly, Yale's grading system hasn't been holding them back and HLS will never move above Yale in the ranks.

Second, people who think this will hurt Stanford grads don't understand how hiring works. Judges will continue to hire eagerly and disproportionately from the top few schools regardless of their grading structures. Regarding other employers -- over 300 employers come to Stanford every year to fight to hire the 170 students per class. Few of them care about our grades, and the ones that do won't care if we get an A or a high pass.

2:11 -- Not funny and very mean spirited. I do not think AU students grade themselves. Your comment is obnoxious.

2:19 is right on the money. Not only are there only 170 students per class, many go into non-profit jobs or take on clerkships (also competitive). Law firms have perhaps 100 to 120 students left to pick through when you take out non-profit and various gov't work. On a regional basis, California gets perhaps 20 to 30, and New York takes 40 or 50. If you want ONE SLS grad, you need to be prepared to recruit hard. When firms like Skadden need 200+ new associates just to maintain their size, it hardly matters whether you're an A or B student at Stanford. If you have other credentials, such as engineering degree, the situation is even more lop-sided.

Law students, for some reason, are some of the most risk averse cowards in the professional world. They actually beleive the law firm spew that you need to have a 4.0 GPA, do law review, and play back up for the Bulls to get an offer. They don't have the liberty of being this scrutinizing.

Speaking from the perspective of someone who goes to a school with a similar grading system, Stanford students might want to get some clarification if the school will calculate GPAs for clerkship purposes. Generally how it works is you assign a number to each grade, (i.e., High Pass = 3, Pass=2, Cred=1), multiply that number by the number of credits a class is worth, and divide that number by the total number of credits you've earned and woila, you have a GPA. The school can now figure out what your class rank is.

Of course, if you go to a school where there are no grades (Yale, Boalt, Stanford) then its questionable how much grades matter in the first place. I think it comes more into play when a Judge has the opportunity to choose between multiple Stanford grads, and has to make a decision based on something.

Interesting crosssection of lawyers and law students around here that the tribulations of Stanford Students vs. Yale students, Federal clerks vs. Big LAw associates etc are worthy of serious discussion.

Not saying its a BAD thing, and perhaps reciting the obvious, but I think the bulk of law students and young lawyers are in a vastly different boat. Huring the prestige of Haaaaahvahd as opposed to Stanford? Please.

IPgeekNYC,

It's true that most law students are not in the HYS boat, but the reason the discussion seems to be focusing on that trio is because that's where the impact of Stanford's grade change will be most felt. Those three schools compete with each other the most for students, and YLS has long had the advantage of being gradeless, an advantage that is now no longer unique (or at least won't be when Stanford implements this grade change).

I think an interesting potential consequence that this grade change might have is on recruitment, which hasn't been discussed very much so far. I'm having difficulty making a prediction of my own, and keep alternating between thinking that the change will have a significant impact to thinking it will have almost no impact on recruitment.

"designing metrics for evaluating student work"

You mean "designing metrics to avoid having to evaluate student work."

The dean misspoke.

3:21

Agreed %100 that the impact will mostly/only be felt among HLS or the top 5.

Im not saying the conversation is illogical or evil, just being amused out loud that the people frequenting this board seem to be unusually aware of what is going on at HLS. Or at least the ones who care about this topic are.

New topic of conversation: Cravath vs. Skadden, which is right for me??? Best Circuit Court to Clerk for? =)

Oooops, switch HYS for HLS above. Hehe.

As a former Stanford student, I think this is a bad idea. It may make life better for the majority of the SLS class, and it may well allow the school to land a numerically greater number of clerkships. But it will make it harder for SLS students to land the most competitive clerkships as it will be harder to differentiate between the top students.

2:19 and 2:32 partly correct, but wrong for the most prestigious positions. I think that most of the top vault firms will not care (the most selective will, which differs somewhat from the top of the vault rankings), but judges will. Having gone through the hiring process for COA on both sides, I can say that grades do matter even for HYS--my degree is from T10, but not HYS. Just because you go to HYS, you are not entitled to a federal clerkship. At least for Yale and Stanford, you probably need to be in the top 1/4 or top 1/3 for COA and top 1/2 for federal district to be safe so that your other attributes can be evaluated--I realize that there are exceptions.

I'm actually pleased with this change. I'm the only clerk on my circuit this year from my T10 school that has a draconian curve for a T10 (lower-ranked schools are more severe). I think this helps top students applying from my school and I'm all for decreasing the HYS domination of COA clerkships.

Doesn't matter- if you're graduating Stanford Law nobody really looks at your grades except a very small minority of obbsessive compulsive jerkoffs you wouldn't want to work with anyway.

4:01 -- If the judges for the most competitive clerkships care, they can do a rough conversion in their heads just like they must have been doing for years for Yale students. It's not rocket science to figure out the difference between a "high pass" and a "pass" on a transcript. Further, for the most competitive clerkships of which you speak, people who have been through the process know that the most important factor is being connected to the judge through a professor or someone else that the judge knows and trusts (and then the judge obviously looks at grades and resume before offering an interview). Stanford professors will continue to be able to distinguish among their own students as they have always done.

Also, Stanford doesn't release rankings of its students to anyone, including judges. It seems like judges have done just fine hiring from Stanford without officially knowing if the student was in the top 25% of 50% of the class.

4:15. correct me if I'm wrong, but although Stanford doesn't release the rankings, can't the students put the rankings on their resume?

4:15--
I agree in part re: Yale students. It will remain to be seen the extent to which the new grading system mimics Yale or Boalt where a certain percentage are given P, H or HH.

It has been since September that I have closely evaluated Stanford transcripts. However, one is able to get an idea where someone in the class ranks. I seem to recall being able to get information on general class rankings, which do not change from year-to-year, like my T10 school. So no, I did not know that John was #14 out of 170, but I did know that he was around the top 10%. Under this new system, who knows, John could be top 10% or only top 50%?

Of the COA clerks in my class, very few got it through professor connections. I am aware that this happens, but I think that you overstate it.

I did not mean to suggest that Stanford students will struggle to get COA clerkships because of this. My point was that it will benefit the top students of my school since they actually have concrete grades. All things being equal, I think judges will take someone from my school who a GPA that is historically in the top 3% then someone from Stanford, who has a mixture of H's and P's and the judge can't tell where this person fits into the curve. My guess is that Stanford professors will do what Yale professors did in their recommendations--John was in the top 10% of my very difficult and large class when I taught him last semester.

However, when you have 600-800 applications from very accomplished people, I think this is a problem for ya'll. Stanford is not the only top law school out there and I think there will be a backlash against this arrogance. Like I said before, I'm pleased because I'm all for weakening the HYS domination in COA clerkships.

4:01

1:41--wtf is "verbally facile"? That phrase does not translate to at ease with words. Perhaps the adjective you were looking for was "deft" or "adept." By misusing a ninth grade vocab word, you have undercut your argument (especially if one is correct to assume that you also hale from HYS) and revealed yourself to be pretentious as well as verbally clumsy.

5:12 here--meant to write "hail" instead of "hale."

Ultimately it won't make that much difference at the top. The people who are gunning for the A now will be gunning for Honors later. If they use a strict curve like Berkoaltley, everybody else is kind of boned because Pass encompasses the whole range from "barely missed Honors" to "barely avoided failure."

I'm PISSED that they did not pass this while I was still a student at SLS!!!!!!!!

More dumbing down of America, trying to weed out all competition.

Swear to god faculty are all those chumps from high school who lost every competitive milestone in their youth and so only see value in not allowing people to compete.

yes, 6:36, i'm sure stanford faculty are all people for whom grades and other forms of academic competition have been perennial impediments.

"At least for Yale and Stanford, you probably need to be in the top 1/4 or top 1/3 for COA and top 1/2 for federal district to be safe so that your other attributes can be evaluated--I realize that there are exceptions."

Not true. Judges dig much deeper than top 1/2.

"More dumbing down of America, trying to weed out all competition."

You are right. We are dumbing down Stanford law students. With the new grading system, they will forget that they had 3.90 and 175's.

Personally, I always viewed letter grades as more useful for giving me an idea of my ability to comprehend and efficiently articulate the class material relative to other students in my class. It's sad that SLS students will be losing that feedback.

As for job prospects, I don't think it will matter except to the very top and very bottom of the SLS barrel (you know who you are).

9:06 - Don't get too carried away. SLS has really poor LSAT numbers for a school of its stature.

I knew one person in my YLS class who applied for federal clerkships but didn't get one. She was nice but extremely strange. It was impossible to know where you were in the class. I got some honors but mostly passes. It was my sense that most people had the same experience, although I could be wrong. Who knows, I could have been last in the class.

1:16. You are a joker. Undergrad grades have NOTHING to do with law school performance. A 3.9 undergrad GPA just means that most of these dumbass kids didn't have anything better to do on the weekends---read: no social skills---so they studied rather than went beer drinking like the rest of us.

haha. 1:16, you deserve an award for being a douche nozzle.

Although I am a Yale Law School graduate, I did not appreciate the greatest benefit of a simplified grading system until I joined the academy a few years ago - it makes grading a lot easier. So while many of Stanford's students may have asked for the change, I am wondering whether the faculty are secretly, or perhaps not so secretly, jumping up and down in glee as now they only have to read the first page of each exam or paper in order to assign a grade.

Clerkships are going to depend much more deeply for how well an HYS grad networks into a good circuit court position, ie. whether they go to a feeder judge. Yalies have little difficulty securing such positions, and even federal judges know you can't really compare grades across schools anyways. It won't make an Iota of difference.

I am an alum of YLS, and having done it, i really can't knock it . its not as impractical as you think.

In the real world, law is a collaborative activity. The big firms prefer to find a bunch of people who can play nicely together and share. The dog-eat-dog you see in the paper chase and in One-L is not the way to practice law in the the real world.

Even in court, of course you should stand up for your client, but the lawyer who plays fair and keeps it clean very often beats the "shark." Whether you are actually an honest broker, or merely trying to fool the judge into believing you are an honest broker, being the good guy in court is just smart advocacy. Call it "enlightened self interest."

Of course, YLS has its flaws, too. it is rightfully criticized as being too far out of touch with the real world. But here is a subtle way where I believe them to be more in touch than usual.

But on the other hand, i am not sure how well this works for other schools. To be blunt, it helps to be one of the top law schools in the US if you are going to do this sort of thing. This is true for two reasons. First, removing the pressure of grades didn't cause us to slack off. as a girl in my class often joked, we're already full of a bunch of A-type personalities anyway, so we will achieve even without immediate and obvious benefit. Second, the prestige of just being at YLS was enough to overcome any concern with the grade confusion.

It also made issues like recommendations and making the Journal (usually called making the review), even more important. I walked out with a good law review history and a nice "stable" of recommenders, and i know that gave me a bump. students worried more about their blue book tests than most of their exams.

I am starting at SLS this fall and love this news! Dean Kramer's explanation makes a lot of sense to me.

THIS IS HILARIOUS!!!! All of these comments make me laugh my *** off. Everyone's talking about this competition or that school's prestige. Does anyone really believe for a moment that any of this matters?

Take the last person in the class of a Top 10 (or probably even Top 20) law school & you've still got a very bright and capable individual. Now, let's play a game. Let's just assume, arguendo, that this person is not as sharp as "Mr. I'm # 5 at Harvard Law." Does anyone really believe that will make a crap's worth of difference in the real world? What would Mr. I'm # 5 be doing at Big Law? That's right - the same thing Mr. Not as Sharp would be doing: rifling through ****loads of paperwork, endless researching, and then working their *** off to write a great memo that................no one will pay any attention to, anyway. They won't even start to make a substantive difference until they are a 2nd or 3rd year associate, by which time the firm could have trained a monkey to do good legal work.

Sorry to burst the bubble, but it's really not rocket science, folks, so grades, ranks, honors, pass, blah, blah, blah.....it's all just fodder for the *** dreams of people who were laying in bed at home while the cheerleaders & football players (and the other "beautiful people") were out partying....

Proof? Lawyers are at or near the top, statistically, for alcoholism, depression, divorce and suicide. Sorry, stats don't lie (but school / class rankings might). ;-)

THIS IS HILARIOUS!!!! All of these comments make me laugh my *** off. Everyone's talking about this competition or that school's prestige. Does anyone really believe for a moment that any of this matters?

Take the last person in the class of a Top 10 (or probably even Top 20) law school & you've still got a very bright and capable individual. Now, let's play a game. Let's just assume, arguendo, that this person is not as sharp as "Mr. I'm # 5 at Harvard Law." Does anyone really believe that will make a crap's worth of difference in the real world? What would Mr. I'm # 5 be doing at Big Law? That's right - the same thing Mr. Not as Sharp would be doing: rifling through ****loads of paperwork, endless researching, and then working their *** off to write a great memo that................no one will pay any attention to, anyway. They won't even start to make a substantive difference until they are a 2nd or 3rd year associate, by which time the firm could have trained a monkey to do good legal work.

Sorry to burst the bubble, but it's really not rocket science, folks, so grades, ranks, honors, pass, blah, blah, blah.....it's all just fodder for the *** dreams of people who were laying in bed at home while the cheerleaders & football players (and the other "beautiful people") were out partying....

Proof? Lawyers are at or near the top, statistically, for alcoholism, depression, divorce and suicide. Sorry, stats don't lie (but school / class rankings might). ;-)

THIS IS HILARIOUS!!!! All of these comments make me laugh my *** off. Everyone's talking about this competition or that school's prestige. Does anyone really believe for a moment that any of this matters?

Take the last person in the class of a Top 10 (or probably even Top 20) law school & you've still got a very bright and capable individual. Now, let's play a game. Let's just assume, arguendo, that this person is not as sharp as "Mr. I'm # 5 at Harvard Law." Does anyone really believe that will make a crap's worth of difference in the real world? What would Mr. I'm # 5 be doing at Big Law? That's right - the same thing Mr. Not as Sharp would be doing: rifling through ****loads of paperwork, endless researching, and then working their *** off to write a great memo that................no one will pay any attention to, anyway. They won't even start to make a substantive difference until they are a 2nd or 3rd year associate, by which time the firm could have trained a monkey to do good legal work.

Sorry to burst the bubble, but it's really not rocket science, folks, so grades, ranks, honors, pass, blah, blah, blah.....it's all just fodder for the *** dreams of people who were laying in bed at home while the cheerleaders & football players (and the other "beautiful people") were out partying....

Proof? Lawyers are at or near the top, statistically, for alcoholism, depression, divorce and suicide. Sorry, stats don't lie (but school / class rankings might). ;-)

Who cares? No matter where you go to school or what your grades are, what you make of your career is up to you. Where I live, one of the wealthiest lawyers in the city barely passed a second tier law school. I've been to competitions with "top" law schools and I haven't been all that impressed. In the end, none of it really matters. I think your undergraduate education is more important.