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Your GPA may go up soon! By Joshua Nave The job market for new attorneys is more competitive than ever thanks to a depressed legal economy and an increase in the number of graduating JD’s. The number of law schools is also on the rise, making the schools themselves even more eager to attract to candidates.
As further evidence of the difficulties facing recent graduates, consider reports that major law firm Baker & McKenzie confirmed this week that 11 lawyers from the class of 2009 who had seen their start dates deferred and then re-deferred have now been told they don’t have a job after all. One of the criteria students use to pick a law school is the likelihood of securing a job upon graduation, so schools are pulling out all the stops to make their graduates more appealing to law firms and other legal hiring organizations. As a result, schools across the country are reevaluating their grading policies, hoping that increased GPA’s will given their graduates a leg up on the competition. In the past two years several schools, including such prestigious law schools as Georgetown, New York University and Tulane, have all revised grading policies upwards. Some law firms track changes to grading policies and take gradeflation into account when evaluating resumes, but not every firm is paying as much attention as they should be. As more
schools engage in this practice, there will be increased pressure on the holdouts to match the higher GPA’s being produced by other schools. Firms will also have to be more aware of the changes made by various schools to grading policies in order to adequately evaluate candidates. One tool that can help students, candidates and firms alike is the guide to the top 50 law schools published by BCG Attorney Search. In addition to reviewing the top 50 schools on the US News list the guide provides a comprehensive evaluation of grading policies, noting any recent changes that could impact the GPA’s of candidates. As a student it’s important to be aware of how your school’s grading policies stack up against others when you start passing out resumes. As a potential employer, it’s also important to know how to properly evaluate the resumes of candidates.
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