UGA Law Students

First-year grades are important -- very important. Your 1L grades at University of Georgia School of Law will not only determine your eligibility for law review and other honors, but will dictate what job opportunities are available when you graduate. This is because the most selective legal employers recruit law students at the beginning of their second year, and they often will only interview law students who finished at the top of their 1L class. Given the staggering cost of a legal education, and a highly competitive legal hiring market, adopting a trial-and-error approach as a 1L is a flawed strategy. Learn why preparing for the challenges you will face during your first year of law school can help protect the substantial investment you are about to make in your legal education.

UGA Law Administration

"Because many legal employers interview during the fall semester of the second year for their summer associate programs, 1L grades are often the only thing they have to go on when deciding whether or not to grant an on-campus interview. So, frankly, a student's first-year grades do carry a lot of weight -- especially for students hoping to land a job at a large law firm in New York, Washington, DC or Atlanta. Even if you don’t want to end up at a large firm, though, because most schools use first-year grades to determine honors like law review and journal participation -- honors and activities that almost every legal employer (large and small) value -- top grades will help open doors down the road to jobs like judicial clerkships, academia, governmental agencies, etc. While we obviously have students outside the top 10% of the class who find legal careers that they enjoy, the fact remains that top 1L grades open more doors early, providing students with more options."
-Paul Rollins, Associate Dean for Student Affairs, University of Georgia School of Law