Employers Look Beyond top 25 Percent
"Send me your top 25 percent" is a request law schools often hear
from employers hiring new graduates, points out Howard Eisenberg, dean
at Marquette University Law School. It's not only that employers seek
the top students, but "I think there's a perception," Eisenberg says,
"that people in the lower half of the class shouldn't practice law, that
they're incompetent. That is flatly wrong. Maybe for some in the
profession that was true when they were in law school. If that ever was
the case, it's not true now."
To understand that argument, you have to look at the qualifications
of the students entering law school today. The difference between the
top and bottom of the incoming students at Marquette, for example, is
slight, Eisenberg says, "and the difference between the middle of the
class and the top quarter is virtually nothing."
Still, legal employers receiving a flood of applications from new
lawyers have to rely on some sort of criteria to narrow the candidate
field. Law school academic performance is one valid bit of information
to use. But employers should avoid focusing solely on high GPAs, law
school administrators advise. That may seem a paradoxical suggestion
coming from people who themselves use grades and LSAT scores to screen
law school applicants. But administrators say that's not all they
use.
"We try to look at those things buried in the files," says Alta
Charo, U.W. Law School faculty member and admissions committee chair.
"We look for that spark - the ones who write personal statements that
talk about their passion, not just why they deserve to go to law school.
It's that kind of fire and engagement in the world that comes through,
or some special skill or talent that you just know is going to fit
well."
With that approach, law schools say they try to recruit people who
show potential for both law school and the profession. "If hiring
employers say, 'Send us only your top 10 percent or 25 percent by
grades,'" Charo points out, "they're cutting themselves off from what
they know in their hearts to be the criteria by which they actually
evaluate and retain their own lawyers every day."
Wisconsin Lawyer
