Do law schools really think that lawyers are stupid? Apparently, yes. Won't lawyers realize law schools are inflating grades?

Do law firms read the newspapers?  How about an article on lawyers in the New York Times?  Do you think that lawyers talk to each other about this large sudden grade inflation?  All these are obviously rhetorical questions.  So why would anyone believe that lawyers would look at a student's grade and not his ranking?

So my question is why do law schools think lawyers would fall for this trick when everyone knows that the trick is in place?  What is it that law schools know about how dumb lawyers are?  (Just kidding, I don't really think that lawyers are dumb.  I think that this tells us more about how dumb law school faculty are.)  From the New York Times:

In the last two years, at least 10 law schools have deliberately changed their grading systems to make them more lenient. These include law schools like New York University andGeorgetown, as well as Golden Gate University and Tulane University, which just announced the change this month. Some recruiters at law firms keep track of these changes and consider them when interviewing, and some do not. 

Law schools seem to view higher grades as one way to rescue their students from the tough economic climate — and perhaps more to the point, to protect their own reputations and rankings. Once able to practically guarantee gainful employment to thousands of students every year, the schools are now fielding complaints from more and more unemployed graduates, frequently drowning in student debt. . . . 

Some schools bump up everyone’s grades, some just allow for more As and others all but eliminate the once-gentlemanly C. 

Harvard and Stanford, two of the top-ranked law schools, recently eliminated traditional grading altogether. Like Yale and the University of California, Berkeley, they now use a modified pass/fail system, reducing the pressure that law schools are notorious for. This new grading system also makes it harder for employers to distinguish the wheat from the chaff, which means more students can get a shot at a competitive interview. 

Students and faculty say they are merely trying to stay competitive with their peer schools, which have more merciful grading curves. Loyola, for example, had a mean first-year grade of 2.667; the norm for other accredited California schools is generally a 3.0 or higher. 

“That put our students at an unfair disadvantage, especially if you factor in the current economic environment,” says Samuel Liu, 26, president of the school’s Student Bar Association and the leader of the grading change efforts. He also says many Loyola students are ineligible for coveted clerkships that have strict G.P.A. cutoffs. . . .

Baylor Law admissions data leaked

See Ted Frank's discussion here.

But Baylor itself does see a big disparity in another metric. I sorted the 431 students with "LSAT Index" scores. (An LSAT Index adds the LSAT to 10 times the GPA.) The top quartile is above 202 (e.g., 3.9/163 or 3.5/167); the median in 199 (e.g., 3.3/166 or 3.8/161), the bottom quartile is below 197 (e.g. 3.6/161 or 3.3/164). Baylor did not vary from the LSAT index often, only 2% of the class was below 193 and the lowest index was 189. In the top quartile (and stretching down to the top 128 admittees), there was a single African-American. So it's not accurate to say affirmative action makes little difference. The 4.0/170 white with a 210 Index gets a full scholarship to Baylor Law. The 4.0/170 black with a 210 Index might get the same offer, but doesn't accept the full scholarship to Baylor Law: she presumably has better options available to her. One would expect a 4.0/170 African-American to end up at a top-14 law school. Moreover, the 3.7/167 African-American generally isn't accepting the offers to attend Baylor Law, either. If we expect the top 10% of the class and the editorial board of the Baylor Law Review to be much more likely to come from the top quartile of applicants, African-Americans are going to be even more underrepresented than that 3%. If nothing else, larger bumps of affirmative action are having an effect on Baylor Law's diversity. But the real difference was in the scholarship money. Though non-Asian minorities had slightly lower Index scores on average, they averaged $24,231 in scholarship money; whites and Asians averaged under $20,000. It's unclear to what extent Baylor Law considers financial need in scholarship money, but it's clear that merit makes a big difference. Over 90% of students with Index scores above 206 got full scholarships (the three who didn't were white); less than 3% of students with Index scores below 202 got full scholarships, and all seven were African-American or Hispanic. . . .

ABA doesn't like competition between lawyers for business, nix that advertising

At least in North Carolina (and I presume many other states), the ABA has released a finding that advertising through Groupon is an ethics violation.

Groupon is known for its great deals on everything from restaurant meals to oil changes, but can it ethically be used by law firms seeking new business?

An ethics subcommittee of the North Carolina State Bar will be considering the issue, according to assistant ethics counsel Suzanne Lever. She tells the ABA Journal the matter was sent to the subcommittee at a meeting Thursday.

Groupon allows consumers to pay one price up front for a service that is more valuable. A restaurant, for example, may offer a $50 meal for $25 that is paid immediately. One law firm that used Groupon, the Law Offices of Craig S. Redler & Associates in St. Louis, offered to provide a will and durable power of attorney for $99. . . .