This year, more than any other, law students will obsess over the grades they receive under the blind assumption that their grades are the only standing between the breadline and the winner’s circle.  They are far more attuned than lawyers can imagine to the layoffs, outsourcing and pay cuts in law firms across the country: this was the money-back guarantee of law school if only one got the grades. 

But what does a law professor think of grades?  This never makes it onto the students’ radar, since they are the Big Kahunas who know all the integral secrets of law that they, lowly students, must absorb fully to win the prize.  Dave Hoffman at Concurring Opinions shares the secret.

“A” exams validate professors’ vanity by suggesting that the exam made sense & fairly tested the course. The rest of the pile makes us feel either like terrible teachers, or gob-smacked fools who asked incomprehensible questions. Therefore, the goal of a test taker should be to write an answer that makes the exam seem like it was internally coherent. This is not the same as trying to guess the professor’s politics and bringing vomit back to the dog.

Students only consider a slice, make that a sliver, of the law school pie when they think about grades.  They only think about themselves, their future, their success.  Lawprofs, on the other hand, think about their own validation.  Grades are proof that lawprofs succeeded, or failed, the pedagogical test.  Lawprofs hate to fail.  Who doesn’t.

But it’s a bigger issue for lawprofs than the students could possibly know. It’s the way they feel about their professors when they fill out the forms that comprise the USN&WR ratings, the ones that everyone in or trying to get in to academia study in excruciating detail, hating yet secreting loving when their ranking goes up one or two places.  To the dean, it’s cash.  To the Lawprof, it’s prestige.  To all, its validation that they are winners, not losers. 

Around this time each year, it’s important to provide perspective to law students about the importance of grades.  There will be many, if not most, whose entire world will crash around their shoulders when they look at the letter across from their secret student number and see rounded lines rather than the pure, straight, beautiful angled legs of the “A”.  There will be others who can hardly catch their breath as they see the letter that they’ve been told their entire life is the payoff for hard work, playing the game properly, sacrifice and persistence.  It’s the brass ring, and it’s within their grasp.  They’ve earned it and now it’s their moment to grab it.

Here’s the bad news, students.  There are more “A”s than jobs for students with “A”s.  There are more top ten percenters than jobs for top ten percenters.  The really dirty secret, and this hasn’t changed as a result of economic circumstances at all, is that the life you thought you were promised paid very well, was never really what you wanted anyway, and your chances of surviving it intact and happy were quite slim.  Your mommies and daddies wanted you to enjoy a life of financial security, if quiet misery, but even that’s no longer on the table. 

Here’s the good news, students.  The death of the promise has opened up a world of opportunity for you that would never have been considered a mere year ago.  No one could pass up the top of the pay scale, despite facing the loss of any semblance of a life or professional accomplishment.  Now that the opportunity is gone for most of you, you are free to leave the hallowed halls and become something that you could never have done before:  Lawyers.

You can meet real people.  You can practice law the way it’s described in fairy tales.  You can be like the people on TV, going into real courtrooms and dealing with real issues and arguing for or against anything you want.  You can do all the things no one would ever conceive of letting you do in the big money jobs.  You can be a lawyer.

And what of grades?  They mean nothing.  No one, but no one, will ever ask you what your grade in torts was when you leave the shelter of the academy.  No one cares what school you went to.  No one cares whether you were law review.  No one cares about the Coif, the Note, the Moot Court or the Am Jur prize.  In the snap of fingers, they disappear.  The only thing anyone cares about in the real world is whether you can analyze a situation quickly and effectively, devise a viable strategy and put it to work to win your cause.  The kid with the “C” in criminal pro is every bit the star when he gets a dismissal, and all is forgotten.

After you leave law school, you may look over your shoulder once or twice, but that is as far as it goes.  Fond memories of the good times, but the glory days of law school are now the business of other, younger followers.  Your eyes are focused straight ahead, on the many years you will spend practicing law.  That’s all that matters now.

But those giants in the front of the classroom will still be there long after you’ve forgotten your grade.  Some will seek the validation they feel from your getting an “A”.  A few will take comfort in knowing that you are out there, in the world of practicing lawyers, capable of doing what clients, courts and society expects of you, because of the things they taught you in law school.  They gave you the only grade that really matters.

To all the 3Ls this year, shake off the fear and loathing.  You will be lawyers.  Make use of it.  And when your grades come out, ignore them.  They don’t matter at all.  Not to real lawyers.