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Vol. 74, No. 6, June 2001
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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."
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