Law Schools

Majority Of Incoming Law Students Think They'll Be In The Top Half Of Their Classes

Sorry, 1Ls, but this math just isn't mathing when it comes to class rank.

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‘I hope I get good grades!’

In about a month’s time, law schools across the country will be welcoming scores of bright-eyed, first-year law students, each with dreams of earning grades that will help them soar to the top of their classes. Unfortunately, some of these fresh-faced 1Ls may be a little too confident in their curve-busting abilities. But how overconfident are incoming students about their ability to excel in their studies? Wildly so, apparently.

According to a new study by University of Illinois College of Law Professor Jennifer Robbennolt and Illinois Law graduate Sam Barder, incoming law students aren’t able to accurately predict their grades in the slightest. Reuters has additional details:

The vast majority of incoming law students think they are going to land near the top of the class after their first year—and the students with the lowest grades tend to start off with more confidence than their higher-performing classmates….

When asked to predict their class rank at the start of law school, the average new student expected to end up near the top 25% after the first year, according to the study that appears in the University of Illinois Law Review. Nearly all of the more than 600 surveyed students—95%—believed they would end up in the top half of the class, while more than 22% of students predicted they would be in the top 10%.

In Robbennolt and Barder’s study, “Optimistic Overconfidence: A Study of Law Student Academic Predictions,” we learn that students who wound up in the top quarter of their classes underestimated their ranking by a tad, while those who landed in the bottom quarter hyped up their academic abilities to the extreme.

So, does it help if 1Ls are cockeyed optimists? A bit. As noted in the study, optimism can help motivate students to work hard, but law schools need to step in and bring some realism into the picture to help their new would-be lawyers appropriately level their expectations.

Best of luck as you embark upon your law school journeys, incoming 1Ls — you might need it!

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Incoming law students are wildly overconfident about their academic performance, study finds [Reuters]

Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter and Threads or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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