Law School: First Grades & The Legal Atmosphere

Not only have I now survived the first round of law classes, but I have also survived the first round of grades!  Grades came out yesterday evening and I was pleased with the outcome.  Everyone says the first year grades are really important to getting your foot in the door for scholarships, internships and jobs.  Not to mention getting good grades for my first two classes from the summer reaffirms that I can handle law school and master legal material. 

The funny thing about getting law grades back though is how all the students handle it.  A handful took to Facebook, like me, announcing their relief and happiness.  One brazen student even announced her actual grade on Facebook.  I personally am not a fan of that method of expressing your thoughts on grades, but the thing is everyone wants to know everyone's grades.  They go around cryptically asking about thoughts on grades hoping the other will spill the actual letter grade.  They didn't announce our class rankings yet because it was only one group of us doing 2 summer classes, so this is how everyone pieces together the rankings.  No one wants to be inferior to any other classmate, so it's like a game.  I don't really like to announce my actual letter grades, and I even don't need to know others.  I do wish there was a general graph of score distributions without names on them so I could compare myself though.  In several of my undergrad and even a couple masters classes there was an anonymous graph like that through an online log in component where grades posted.  I'd much prefer that to the scheming and dealing of law students trying to figure each other out for their own benefit. 

In just the couple months of experience I have had with law school so far it seems that the school aspect does nothing but perpetuate the stereotypical lawyer-like scheming and game playing.  The competitive nature of curved grades pits students against each other, each looking out for ultimately their own interest rather than the interest of all students and thus the future benefit of the entire legal profession.  The high school like atmosphere with separate sections, classes picked for you, lockers, even a bell that signifies the start and end of class engenders cliques, gossip, and distractions from studying.  Law school is full of scheming, lying, figuring out how to "win" or beat the others or get ahead.  I don't see why law schools can't take the first step in breaking down this structure of competitive lying to better the legal profession as a whole.  By the time students graduate, all they know is this life and work style they've been bred into, so naturally it spills into the professional realm. 

At the end of each day and the end of law school, I have two ultimate goals.  Get a quality job that makes me happy, but more importantly, to still be myself.  I want to follow my values and stay true to myself each and every day of law school and my career, despite the scheming climate of law school and the legal world.  Good grades or not, I just want to be myself each day.