Being ranked according to GPA is a way of life for law school
students, as legal recruiters use the standings to help sort
through resumés of prospective employees quickly.
Starting at the end of their first semester in law school, students in
each class are ranked by percentile. At the end of each year, each
student is ranked individually against his or her classmates.
The degree to which rankings are important depends in part on
where a student plans to work, as different legal professions look
at the rankings in varying ways.
Some private firms, such as the corporate and tax law firm Stoel
Rives, LLP, usually select new hires only from the top 10 percent
of a class. With offices in Portland and Seattle, and 47 of its
attorneys listed as some of the best lawyers in America, Stoel
Rives is an attractive local option for law students.
But the firm’s recruiting coordinator, Michelle Baird-Johnson, said
Stoel Rives interviews below the top 10 percent if the prospective
lawyer has remarkable experience outside the classroom, either
work-wise or in the community.
Other private firms focus on the top third of a class and look at
overall GPA, not where that GPA ranks among other students.
The Northwest firm Miller Nash asks for a transcript from every
prospective new hire, even attorneys who have been out in the field
for four or five years, to get a better idea of their strengths and
weaknesses, said the firm’s director of recruiting, JoJo Hall.
Some employers in the public sector have no cut-off for rankings
and look at all applicants.
One is the Lane County District Attorney’s office. Chief Deputy
District Attorney Kent Mortimore said that although his office takes
academic performance into account, it also weighs heavily factors
other than grades, such as participation in a prosecution clinic at
law school, an internship with a district attorney or a clerkship for a
judge. He said grades do not reflect the degree to which an
individual is able to work with police, judges, witnesses or crime
victims.
Baird-Johnson also said ranking and GPA are not “the be-all and
end-all,” in spite of their importance. Community service, past work
experience and discharge of civic duties also matter, she said.
Law school administrators say they are trying to defuse some of
the competitive elements of law school and build
student-to-student interaction to help each student succeed.
The Academic Choice for Excellence program for first-year
students, now in its third year, is “designed to promote
community,” said Assistant Dean for Student Affairs Richard
Ludwick. He said students learn to work together through
bi-weekly formalized study sessions and casual mixers during the
law school’s orientation week before fall classes.
“The law curriculum does not often lend itself to [community
building], though the pedagogy is changing,” Ludwick said. “So we
make an extra effort to build community here.”
He added that mixing among students here at the University
“tends to be more collegial and kinder” than at other law schools,
even in simple gestures. Last year, students brought in doughnuts
for classmates and sent out reminders on key deadlines.
Third-year student David Floren, who said he was near the top fifth
of his class his first year, said class ranking is “something to be
concerned about, but not worried.”
Although his ranking has helped him search for jobs, he said
using the system is a handy tool only to an extent.
“It’s a natural advantage in hiring. But that’s all it is — an advantage
— and you can lose that advantage easily. People with no social
skills are discriminated against in the workforce, no matter how
well they know their stuff,” Floren said.