The curve

Rarely has anything so unsparing been inflicted upon so many hapless and unaware human beings as the law school grade curve.

It is a zero-sum game.

Great horrors were inflicted upon my contemporaries in a seemingly random manner. Some won, most lost, and none seemed to enjoy it very much.

That’s not entirely correct, now that I think about it. There were a few that rounded out the top five at the end of 1L year that really seemed to relish their new-found status as supreme, all-knowing beings. Enlightenment has its upsides, I suppose. It was something to see. Quite a show.

The law school I attended graded on a C curve. The distribution was as follows: 15% of the class got an A, 25% got a B, 45% got a C, and the remaining 15% got a C- and below. Every class, every semester. I was once in a class comprised of a grand total of nine (9) students and it was curved. Nine. File that one under stupid.

I had no idea that this was the case until I started 1L. I really thought all law schools graded the same way. I thought wrong.

There is a rather grim justification for a hard C curve. Here in the land of low ranked law schools, they fail out people to preserve the school's bar passage rate. That’s how they roll.

And it’s baloney.

The first semester of law school always has a degree of attrition. It's the same story in every law school in the country - some folks don't come back after Christmas. The difference here is that people simply disappear from at TTT and FTT at the end of the second, third, and fourth semesters as well.

You want my advice? Properly prepare for the LSAT and get into a highly ranked school. Go to a school that curves on a B. Go to a school that has a recognized name, alumni support, and the promise of employment upon graduation.

If you can't get into a highly ranked school, don't go to law school.

Life is substantially easier at the higher ranked schools. The purpose of giving everyone A's and B's, as I understand it, is to make the students less competitive with each other and to create a more pleasant environment for all involved. If so, wow. That would just about be the exact opposite of what I recently went through. The concept could not be more alien. Where I was the last three years, people carved each other into pieces.

There is a list on Wiki to illustrate the wide discrepancy between schools: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_school_GPA_curves.

How nice would it have been to cruise through law school with a grading system like this one over at Georgetown (assuming it’s still current): http://www.georgetownsba.com/2009/12/new-georgetown-law-grading-curve.html.