Academic success in law school is critical, especially during the first year. Top grades during the first-year can advance a legal career unlike success in any other year because the most selective legal employers often start recruiting so early that first-year grades are all that they see. First-year grades also typically determine a student's eligibility for law review and other prestigious scholastic activities, including moot court, journals, and assistantships with professors. Since many top employers refuse to interview candidates without these honors, a student's academic performance during the first-year dramatically impacts the professional opportunities available upon graduation.
Top grades, however, are very difficult to achieve. When you begin law school, you will quickly learn that great grades in college and a high LSAT score will not guarantee success. Even worse, you will learn that you cannot distinguish yourself academically merely by being smart and working hard. Virtually all of your classmates will possess the intelligence and work ethic needed to succeed, but only a select few will end up at the top of the class.
To ensure your place at the top of the class, you must develop and execute a strategy for academic success in law school. That is where Law Preview can help. We provide students with the tools they need to succeed in law school.
The law school experience is unique in its method of instruction. Professors typically teach by using the "case method " -- they analyze and discuss individual cases in isolation. Often, it isn't until the end of the semester -- or the end of the year in some courses -- that students begin to understand the interrelationship between the legal rules derived from individual cases in each course.
Law Preview students learn to see the big picture in each one of their courses - before classes begin. Through pointed lectures from the nation's leading law professors, our students acquire a conceptual framework for the material they will study, eliminating for them the frustration their classmates will experience by having to analyze case law in a vacuum. Law Preview also teaches proven success tactics that show students how to attack law school efficiently and effectively from the very first day.
Without proper preparation, students find themselves in the highly competitive law school environment, experiencing teaching and testing methods that are drastically different from those they encountered as undergraduates. Moreover, competition in law school is fierce. Virtually all of your classmates will possess the intelligence and work ethic needed to succeed in law school, but only the top ten percent will be eligible to serve on law review in most schools.
Law Preview is designed to teach a recipe for success in law school that goes beyond intelligence and hard work. We provide students with a candid and full overview of the law school curriculum, as well as the necessary tools they'll need to excel in law school.
Join us this summer and see why thousands of students have chosen Law Preview to help them conquer law school. Make Law Preview your first step to law review.
First-year grades largely determine law review selection and your future employment prospects:
A law degree can offer ample financial rewards for a select few. Some partners at corporate law firms now bill north of $1,000 an hour and earn more than $2 million annually. But to get to those exalted heights, they have to ace law school, land one of the dwindling number of jobs at a corporate firm, and then perform years of often grueling grunt work to make partner. It's far from a sure-fire bet.
[T]he legal market has always been obsessed with academic credentials, and today, few students except those with strong grade-point averages at top national and regional schools can expect a come-hither from a deep-pocketed firm. Nearly everyone else is in for a struggle.
One of your best insurance policies toward future employability is to earn the best possible grades you can. . . . [T]he better your transcript, the better your chances of landing a coveted clerkship for your second summer which in turn could ultimately lead to an offer for a post-graduation associate position. You have 0.00% control over economic factors that may affect the availability of jobs, but you have 100.00% control over the energy you put into your law school academic responsibilities.
At North Carolina we definitely stress the importance of first-year grades and the importance of doing well during the 1L year. In fact, we consistently try to impress upon folks the importance of focusing on academics above pretty much anything else, because many firms want to see people in the top 10%, 15% or 20% of the class. Those 1L grades are going to be critically important for students who hope to compete for jobs with large firms. I mean, now that we are in this new job market or “new economy,” or whatever you want to call it, the rules have changed. First-year performance is really critical. That is certainly something that we consistently stress to our incoming students -- the importance of getting the best grades you can during the first year.
Making Law Review may not be a sine qua non with the very best law firms, but it comes as close as any requirement can, with the exception of top grades. Why? Because earning top grades, at the majority of law schools, almost automatically translates into being on Law Review. Thus, the employer’s assumption that if a candidate made Law Review, that candidate most likely finished in the top 10-15% of the class. . . . There is another assumption about Law Review; namely, that anybody awarded this distinction knows how to, in a legal sense, write. Moreover, the student’s writing has received extensive mentoring and ongoing critique from professors. This two-edged aspect to Law Review membership—top grades and exceptional writing ability—understandably operates as a powerful lure for legal employers everywhere.