In a move that mirrored action taken at a number of other law schools, Harvard Law School decided last week to abandon its old grading system, eliminating the use of letter grades. In an e-mail to the Law School student body, Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan said the new grading classifications will be Honors, Pass, Low Pass and Fail.
The new system will apply to students entering Harvard Law School in fall 2009 and possibly current students, as well.
Yale and Stanford’s law schools have also made similar transitions in their grading systems; Yale’s new grading system has been in place for a few years, while Stanford’s new scale went into effect this semester.
According to Stanford Law School’s statement about the issue, the previous grading system “conveyed a false sense of precision in describing differences among students, especially to employers.”
In addition to changing the grading system, Stanford Law also is eliminating its “Graduation with Distinction” honors that were based on grades and will instead recognize students for outstanding performances in individual classes. This recognition will be marked on students’ transcript and will allow future employers to compare students’ performance.
At the University of Virginia, Law School Dean Paul Mahoney said officials have no intention of adopting one of the newly developed grading systems and will continue to use letter grades. Mahoney also said he also does not believe others schools will adopt the new system, adding that he is doubtful the new system will be advantageous to students in the lower half of their class.
Mahoney added that he believes Harvard’s decision to transition to a grading system similar to Stanford and Yale’s comes from a sense of competition.
“I think Harvard believes it was in severe competition with Yale and Stanford, and they must have believed they were losing some students for having a different grading system,” Mahoney said.
Yale is in a different position than Harvard and Stanford, Mahoney said, because it has always been the top-ranked law school according to U.S. News & World Report; even students with low grades at Yale Law School will be attractive to employers.
“I’m skeptical it will produce any advantage for Harvard students,” Mahoney said.
Second-year Law student Adam Richards, who completed his first year of law school at the University of Virginia and now attends Stanford Law School, said he thinks law school exams are an arbitrary measure of how well one has mastered a given material. The new grading system, he said, “takes away the pressure of putting too much weight on something that is arbitrary.”
Richards added that the new system may create a disadvantage for those students who want to distinguish themselves from their peers.
At Harvard, Robert Allen, editor-in-chief of Harvard Law Review, said he believes the change will be positive.
“Over three years you’ll still see a distinction based on the number of passes and high passes,” Allen said. “With that in mind, I don’t think employers or judges who are hiring students for clerkships will have trouble differentiating among the most qualified applicants.”
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