Comments on: Harvard Law and Georgetown Law Make Grading Easier

By: guest

guest — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 20:57:07 +0000

Here’s a thought… maybe the GULC administration was being mindful of the sizable evening school population. Many of these peeps work in the private sector. For them, the economic downturn means that their law school studies take a distant second to staying employed. I wouldn’t be surprised if you see their performance tank this semester as they struggle to avoid the axe. These people are important to GULC for two reasons: 1) they are a cash cow (since no financial aid is offered to evening people) and 2) unlike the day school kids, they are actually employed… many by law firms. It’s also fair for GULC to recognize that the fact that these people are in a very different situation than those they’re competing against has become way more significant than it was ~2yrs ago.

By: guest

guest — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 17:30:43 +0000

George Washington is way better than either Georgetown or Harvard.

By: guest

guest — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 16:54:13 +0000

It’s about time georgetown did this. Lower tier GULC grads compete for spots in the DC market with lower ranking schools that have easier grading curves. That’s unfair. American gives you latin honors if you spell your name correctly. I know an order of the coif from Catholic who writes memos that read like a 13 year old’s book report.

By: guest

guest — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 16:30:44 +0000

Odds are that somebody in the bottom 25% at Harvard is still better than somebody in the top 25% at Emory.

By: guest

guest — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 03:34:50 +0000

It’s too bad that we can’t come up with a standardized testing system for all 1Ls at ABA accredited schools. It would be more useful for employers if entire classes were ranked against each other using one test.
Curving students at Harvard against one another is just silly – these are all extremely smart and motivated people and there’s no way, for the most part, that any of them deserve C’s. On the other hand, if someone is at the top of the class at a low-ranked school they may not get the recognition they deserve in comparison to middling students at NYU.
If I were an employer I would consider working some kind of standardized test into my hiring process. It’s the only way to know if someone from the top 25% at Emory is really better or worse than someone from the bottom 25% at Harvard.
Oh well.

By: guest

guest — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 21:01:47 +0000

This is fair. At schools like Harvard and Georgetown the great sorting has already taken place. At other law schools there are still many gems among the ranks, but they need the chance to prove themselves via grading systems that allow sorting to take place. Not so at top tier law schools.
The faux professor is a total fuckstick. We’re talking about PROFESSIONAL school. Law school academia is not like academia in the humanities or even in the sciences. If it were, you would get paid like a classics professor. Trust me, you wouldn’t stand for it. Law schools need to respond to the market because their primary purpose is to serve the market. If you want intellectual purity and to be divorced from the “dirtiness” of the capitalist system, major in philosophy or art history.
Fuckstick.

By: guest

guest — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:37:27 +0000

Doesn’t this give an unfair advantage to transfer students at GULC?

By: guest

guest — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:36:41 +0000

Why does no one mention how this gives an unfair advantage to transfer students at GULC?

By: guest

guest — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:24:29 +0000

141, not to take anything away from your clearly heartfelt sentiment but, did you really think that comment 135 was written by a law professor? I mean, what law professor do you know trolls the ATL comments with word vomit evidencing such absurd grammar as “that begin to change”? Don’t believe everything you read in anonymously posted comments.
Very truly yours,
Justice Scalia.

By: guest

guest — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:16:10 +0000

To merely be accepted into a school such as Harvard Law or GULC, a student has to have top-notch undergraduate grades from a respected school, a stellar LSAT score, and a fair amount of personal accomplishments and accolades. The student is then thrust into a 1L class with over 500 other students who are all at a similar skill level. They are then graded on a strict curve, meaning that it is simply not possible for everyone to get an A/A-, even if they try as hard as they can.
But what if these students had gone to a second-tier law school, where they presumably could have aced the exams against students who simply did not try as hard on the LSAT or as undergrads? They might be able to walk out of these schools with a 3.6 GPA, without having to try nearly as hard as they would have to walk out of GULC or any other top-15 school with a 3.2 GPA.
The grading system is flawed, because it pits students in the same school against each other, instead of rewarding them for achieving an individually high level on an exam. With such a grading system, it truly is fair to allow for a more generous curve at top schools, because these students will be competing for jobs against graduates from schools that were much easier to get into (and generally have a lower caliber intellectual population).
People who didn’t go to a top school, and who complain about these new grading scales at Harvard and GULC, are just bitter because they probably weren’t able to get into one of these schools in the first place.
And I second that GULC doesn’t really care about its graduates. Their career services office is downright pathetic. They only thing they do to help you is remind students of the importance of networking, as if we hadn’t learned that prior to starting law school.