Dear 1L: Take Comfort from Justice Kagan’s Experience with 1L Fall Grades

Dear 1L, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan reportedly was unhappy about her 1L fall grades.

True, she was at Harvard, but her B and B- grades from her first fall were not something she was eager to “write home about.”

Her story should inspire you.

Why?

She turned things around in the spring, earning three flat A’s and one A-.

She then:

🔸 became a supervising editor on law review,

🔸 graduated magna cum laude,

🔸 clerked for Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall,

🔸 became dean of Harvard Law School & U.S. Solicitor General, and

🔸 eventually took her own seat on the high Court.

You can’t all be Elena Kagan, but you CAN turn things around.

I’ll have ideas for you on how to do that coming up in the following weeks.

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You should also know that the grading curves vary WIDELY among accredited U.S. law schools.

— A handful of top schools are entirely pass/fail, and at others, no one gets below a B.

— Yet at many other schools, a large percentage of students fail or lose scholarships after 1L fall. The “average” is B- or below.

— The remaining bucket of schools fall somewhere in between.

How does one make sense of it all? And how do you know how to feel when evaluating your own grades?

👉 My take is that you should forget about all of it and focus on getting as much training as you can to become an excellent lawyer. That’s most important.

Your grades will NEVER AGAIN matter as much to you as they do now.

🟦 But I understand that many seek answers/a way to understand and gain control over matters, and many simply want to be more informed.

So I’m passing along 2 articles I found informative about law-school curves & grades (links in comments).

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🟩 Finally, if you’re a lawyer or 2L/3L with an inspiring story about how you turned your grades around, or about how your grades did not deter you from becoming a successful lawyer, PLEASE do share!

—> Our 1Ls need all the support and encouragement they can get right now!!!

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1Ls, I’m wrapping my arms around all of you from afar.

Fondly,
💌 Amanda