Grades

Well, the grades for the first year came out today.  I can’t say I’m all that surprised at my results, which were, again, in the middle of the pack - a hair lower in some places, but nothing disastrous.  That leaves me with a first year GPA lower than anything I’ve ever gotten, any semester, post-High School, which earns a resounding “Eh” from me.  I think its half annoyance and half contempt. 

For the layman my reaction might seem somewhat shocking, given the amount of money I’m spending here, but my reaction is grounded in my conviction that not only is law school one of the most fraudulent “educational” institutions with a “grading” system that’s just plain whacked.   

A quick primer – in law school, your semester’s worth of knowledge of legal doctrine and argumentation is supposed to be displayed in a single 3 or 4 hour exam at the end of the semester; that’s one single exam for your entire grade.  There’s no warm up exam, no practice exam, no official training on just what the professors are looking for (they’re looking for a specific type of structure to the student exams, IRAC, which is not in fact taught).   It’s really all about speed - fast typers are rewarded when the final grades are applied on an all-encompassing curve.  (If you’re a deep-processor who gets brilliant flashes of understanding in the shower the next morning, well, too bad.)

The grades are supposedly blind, but the professors must have access to them since they all rather overtly say at the beginning of the class that they can move the grades up or down for “class participation” – i.e., raising one’s hand to “chip in” with the particular response the professor was looking for to move them to the next point in their outline (there are students who get old outlines and use them to anticipate the professor’s lectures and offer “insightful” segues to the next bullet point).  It’s sort of an ass-kissing game – just the right amount of thoughtful introspection on the student’s part to make the professor feel as though they’ve really educated them, right there on the spot.  Some students play Bingo by trying to work particular words into their responses; I am still impressed by one of my classmates who somehow heroically wedged “Communist” into his response, which was one of the words on my sheet.  I was awfully close to filling in my card.  But I digress.

My contempt for the grading structure arises from the fact that it’s rather transparently for the firms (who pay the salaries which allow the law schools to charge such high tuition and thus rake in cash) and not for the students.   There’s literally no feedback on the exams themselves, no marks on the paper which might indicate why a professor might choose to grade any effort any particular way.  Basically, as a whole, they say, “this student has absorbed the material to a pretty good degree (make no mistake, you can’t make As without knowing your shit, and I don’t mean to suggest otherwise) – beyond that they’ve taught themselves the hidden system of ‘law school’ exams, which means they can probably function in whatever environment, rife with unwritten rules, that you’d care to throw them into.”   And that they’re probably very fast typers who can take an abstract set of pre-packaged arguments and drop them into a fact pattern. 

There’s a sort of faux-Darwinian justification in setting up arbitrary hurtles, I suppose, in that we’re expected to crack the system, play to it, and parrot our professors.  I also suppose the pressure might mimic some types of litigation, both in how much is riding on a single trial, and how you have to basically adopt whatever arguments might most please the court.  However, beyond my general suspicions, it’s also patently self-validating;  those students who score high within the system are the ones who are given the strongest opportunities to milk it later on. 

Most of our professors are self-styled reformers, radicals, and crusaders (heh). That very well might be, but in the end, they’re also whores to the system, taking our coin in exchange for completely sub-standard educational practices – worse, they implicitly validate that system at every turn, and despite their liberal hand-wringing in private, they eventually knuckle under to the accepted and traditional system.   I should point out that they’re also former “A” law students from the more elite schools, meaning that they’re certainly sharp cookies who did very well in undergrad and who also managed to score very high (among the top 2000 scores?) their year on the LSAT, which in a way is its own mini-lawschool experience in terms of cramming and learning some arbitrary and subsequently useless skills. 

I don’t mean to suggest our professors aren’t remarkable people who have accomplished some rather amazing things, or that they’re not “good” people, or witty people, or compassionate people.   But at the end of the day, regardless of what they do elsewhere, they do what they do here, and from where I sit, it’s really nothing to be all that proud of.  I also don’t mean to single out just Georgetown – from what I can tell, this pattern pretty much occurs everywhere with varying levels of justification.   It’s just particularly disappointing to see something supposedly as radical as our section buying into this.  Stamp me “Grade B, Georgetown Beef” – I’ll go moo at the employers and someone will fancy my shoulder.  "All's well that ends well, no harm done, and all that," which, I think, is rather close to the level of justification and analysis that's in operation here. 

Ideally, if someone ever thought to reform the experience of legal education to be more efficient and humane, they’d probably concentrate on overtly teaching research and rhetoric skills against the backdrop of black letter law while providing constant feedback in the forms of papers, seminars, tutorials, focus groups, and oh, just about every other educational principle that rests on over a century of empirical analysis.  I’m sure that the critics of such would use cost as a defense, but when you get right down to it, Oxford manages one on one tutorials, as does Glasgow (where I spent some time) and several other state-side undergraduate colleges – this idea of strong feedback is somewhat “pie in the sky” only in that it would simply mean GULC would become *less* of a cash cow for the university, while turning out a more educated and skill-laden student.

Believe me, I’d feel the same way about this no matter how the grades came out.  I could have played the game a bit better I suppose, but then again, I’m not into picking up stress that prematurely ages you, or sends you packing for health reasons (as it did Comrade Roommate), or sends you to wall street.  My biggest regret is that my GPA (depending on subsequent performance – there’s plenty of time yet) might limit my chances for a judicial clerkship or externship, which I think would prove to be a fascinating educational experience. 

Comments

[suzanne]

I go to a less traditional law school in New England, where grades do not exist. We get "narrative evaluations" on our performance. I found the evaluations after my first semester of law school to be thoughtful and thorough, and most definitely personalized. However, even with the lack of A, B, C, our school has found a way to create a "sort of" grading system. I see you have a blawg link over there to the right ... buzzwords. So perhaps you know about it. The professors drop meaningful (to us, and only us) words which indicate where we fall on the scale.

I have been taking issue with this. My issues lie in the fact that the point of the narrative evaluation is completely usurped by these buzzwords, and that every employer who is familiar with our school and our grading system knows how to translate our "buzzwords" into grades. So why create the extra work?

Perhaps there is a perfect world somewhere in the middle. Where an A, B or C is *accompanied* by a narrative evaluation.

But let me also point out ... one effect of these personalized reflective paragraphs is that I do NOT have my grades yet (took my last exam on May 13), and do not expect them for another 2-3 weeks!!

Another effect -- no class rank. And in some ways, these are part of the reasons I chose to attend this school, as opposed to higher-ranked schools which decided they'd allow me within their walls. Obviously this lack of class rank, lack of grades, creates a less competitive environment. And I am a non-traditional law student (raising two children who really need their momma), and don't really have the time for the competitive nonsense. Sometimes, however, I miss having the definitive no-nonsense NUMBERS or LETTERS that come with the more traditional model.

[The Pragmatist]

I think that you may be mistaken that all the professors adjust grades. As I understand it, if the professor wants to adjust grades, the professor first grades the exams blind, submits the grades to the registrar, and then gets a decode sheet, which correlates the exam numbers to the students. Then the professor can fiddle with grades. The only professors that I recall having gone on record on this matter are Profs. Peller and Heinzerling: Peller said that he does not consult the decode sheet for Bargain, Exchange, and Liability. Heinzerling said that she does decode the grades, and reserves the right to change them.

[Sister School]

I'm still sitting here giggling with the image of you mooing for employers. They: in white coats with latex gloves and plastic goggles, checking meat grading charts. You: looking coyly over your shoulder and suggestively hinting that perhaps they should take a closer look.

I'd buy.

[Scott Scheule]

And with that, Sister School, this thread has taken a turn for the creepy.

[Scoplaw]

Moo is better than Baa any day. . .