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TheodoreSmith-SecondPaper 8 - 24 May 2008 - Main.TheodoreSmith
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The Role of Grades in Law Firm Hiring | |
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< | -- By TheodoreSmith - 04 Apr 2008 | >
> | -- By TheodoreSmith - 23 May 2008 | | | Table of Contents | | | The Wheel of Suffering | |
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< | In addition to providing a way to identify externally motivated individuals, an emphasis on grades provides a way for law firms to use the preexisting grading structure to capture and hold these students as associates. By emphasizing grades as a vital piece of the hiring process, the firm is using the anxiety and insecurity that the school has created through the grading process as a tool to play on the identical weaknesses that the grades are testing. A student who has accepted the law school’s grading system as an indicator of value is likely to jump at an offer by a law firm that purports to only hire top GPA students. Students that have “barely made the cut” or who have been turned down and later accepted are even more likely to take the job – allowing the firm to hire associates both insecure about their own worth and overly grateful for the chance to produce work. | >
> | In addition to providing a way to identify externally motivated individuals, an emphasis on grades provides a way for law firms to use the preexisting grading structure to capture and hold these students as associates. By emphasizing grades as a vital piece of the hiring process, the firm is using the anxiety and insecurity that the school has created through the grading process as a tool to play on the identical weaknesses that the grades are testing. A student who has accepted the law school’s grading system as an indicator of value is likely to jump at an offer by a firm that purports to only hire top GPA students. Students that have “barely made the cut” or who have been turned down and later accepted are even more likely to take the job – allowing the firm to hire associates both insecure about their own worth and overly grateful for the chance to produce work. | | | This functional purpose of the grade allows us to explain an additional feature of the system’s development. A strong emphasis on grades in law school is essential to create the artificial value metric and conditions of insecurity that the firm uses to capture new associates. Law firms advertise their reliance on the grading system in order to enhance their leverage over new graduates. The schools recognize the purported value of grades in law firm hiring, and, seeking the donations made by large firms and wealthy alumni, increase their emphasis on grades in an attempt to gain more influence. This increased focus on grades within the school creates more anxiety among the students, which increases their willingness to rely on grades as a rational value metric and sell their futures to the firm. The cycle persists as a feedback loop - law schools and firms interacting to produce an ever stronger emphasis on grades, and placing the student in a position of increasing anxiety as the external signals echo and grow.
Conclusion: But Do Grades Matter? | |
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< | Although the above analysis may provide be a plausible explanation of
the use of GPA in firm hiring practices, it is important not to
overstate the role that grades play. Regardless of the substantive or
functional characteristics of the grade, firms may simply be looking
for some quantifiable metric in order to make their jobs
easier. Indeed, it seems inconceivable that a firm would miss its
hiring target simply because it could find students to meet a grade
cutoff. While it is probably not accurate that grades have no
substantive meaning to law firms, and while they likely perform some
functional role in the process of attracting and retaining associates,
it is important to note that these characteristics are largely the
result of the role of grades in the hiring cycle itself. The actual
value of the grade is not a fundamental, or even largely significant,
factor in the overall purpose of the firm hiring process: to acquire
associates able to produce a standard product at a fraction of their
billing cost.
- I've little to say in substantive criticism of this essay. I presented something of the same analysis myself along the way, as your headings demonstrate, so my skepticism may be underperforming in this context. You didn't, in my view, make a sufficient effort to show why "insecurity" is a character advantage to the leveraged law firm, though you suggest the answer at several points. The use of grades to substitute for personal recommendation in an elite society outgrowing face-to-face relationships and the death of the old-boy network might have gotten a moment's attention, as might the particular incentives of the low-quality intermediaries--once placement bureaucrats rather than deans, professors and partners begin doing the bulk of the diplomatic business of brokering employment. But in general, given that you're a non-repeat player at the start of your acquaintance with the system, I think you've gotten to most of the accessible insights.
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> | Although the above analysis may provide a plausible explanation of the use of grades in firm practice, it is important not to overstate their significance. As increasingly institutional law firms outgrow personal recommendations and old-boy networking, grades may simply provide the bureaucratic intermediaries in charge of candidate selection a quantifiable, chartable, and defensible metric to measure and validate their own performance. Indeed, it seems inconceivable that a firm would miss its hiring target simply because it could not find students to meet a grade cutoff. While grades are likely to have some substantive meaning to the firm, and while they probably serve a functional purpose in attracting and retaining associates, it is important to note that these characteristics are largely a result of the role of grades in the hiring cycle itself. The actual value of the grade is not a fundamental, or even largely significant, factor in the overall purpose of the firm hiring process: to acquire and hold associates able to produce a standard product at a fraction of their billing cost. | | | \ No newline at end of file |
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