JohnStuartHobbes

Again, if you have perfect grades but don’t get a position, might I suggest there’s another problem.

I can't speak specifically to the 1L recruit but if you have perfect grades, might I strongly suggest that if you fail to get an interview, there's another issue.

As a follow up, there are professors at Queen’s (one notable one in 1L) with whom an “A+” is actually worth a straight B when all is said and done after the curve is applied

That just means you have an A and emphasized the uselessness of midterm grades. If more than 20% of the class got an A+, then you quite literally got the equivalent of a B+

Let’s build a model. Let’s assume that if you get an A, 0% of people got a better grade, if you got a B+ then 20% got a better grade, and if you got a B, then 50% got a better grade. Let’s also assume that all classes have the same weight. Let’s also assume there is no endogeneity in that good students are not more likely to get good grades. Based on these assumptions, the mean percentile of OP’s grades puts him not much higher than 25% of his classmates. I personally think this is generous given the assumptions I made but so be it. Building back into the model the endogeneity problem in that students who get As usually get more As, OP likely is very likely not in the top 25% of his/her class. If you see any problems in this model, let me know but I think it’s fairly accurate to predict a high end estimate one’s class rank.

Eh, better than top 40% for sure but not much better than top 20%, especially depending on the school. Law school grades are screwed highly where a small percent of the students get most of the top grades - it’s not a standard distribution. In law school, I spent too much time running numbers to estimate a 3.4 GPA to be about the top 33% of the class. I’d estimate OP as being top 15%-35% of the class but no better and probably no worse (Depending on the school)

Your grades probably put you in the top 20%-40% of you class. Good enough for the 2L recruit but it will make an SCC clerkship more challenging to obtain if your grades remain the same. Beyond that, no one can tell you how well you did.

At Scotiabank you can access as much of the 130K as you want once you reach third year with a grace period up to two years after you finish articling. Scotiabank is by far the best line of credit out there imo. They also have no limits on the uses from what my rep told me, including a mortgage down payment when you are two years out. Edit: To add, I think it is prorated access to the funds until third year.

Maybe that's true, but I find I personally did better when I disliked the content of a course, and not the teacher. Hot take, but I find some areas of law to be hot garbage with opportunistic plaintiffs gaming, and often winning in, the system. It's this dislike of the area of law which I found prepared me best for exams.

As an interesting, and perhaps even useful/disturbing follow-up, I found in law school that the courses I disliked the most (because I thought the law was wrong/there was no actual law) were the courses I did best in - you might say a relationship between critical assessment of the law and good grades. Does this mean the more cynical you are, the better at law you are?

I swear this inverse relationship is real. There was a one for one inverse relationship between my 1L grades and the effort I put into the class. Some will argue there is endogenous error but I think there's a simpler explanation - Law School is weird.

I don't want to detract from your very good point, but I know I personally still groan whenever I recall one or two high school exams/assignment grades.

This is true. The only good advice is to apply, with confidence, and see where that takes you.

There are labor/employment (and I think family law firms that do divorce work) in the 2L recruit - it is not all business law. Your frustration for the difference between school vs practice might be an incendiary one but one to which I can relate. I cannot speak to family or labor law, but I personally have found law school to be of very limited use. For instance, I think I learned more about research, work skills, and the relevant law after my 2L summer position than throughout my entire legal education up to that point. Caveat: Moots and clinics (i.e. classes with practical components) are exceptionally useful and worthwhile.

Yeah my experience has been that mature students often do very well.