The current grading system rewards those who master it in the first year and punishes those who do not. This is the traditional carrot and stick approach. While such a system has merit in forcing many students to do the disciplined work vital to proficient legal analysis, it has serious drawbacks.

Grades provide an incentive--to get good ones. They do not provide the student incentive for thoughtful legal scholarship. They do not provide incentive to think through questions presented in class unless they relate to the course material directly. They do not provide incentive to continue working once the grades are recorded. Primarily, grades provide the incentive to do well on four-hour exams and to ignore or put off other work, however valuable, that does not seem likely to be tested.

Grades do not provide an incentive to work throughout much of the first year. The prize of good grades at the end of the year is probably too remote for many law students to use as a motivation to full application throughout the school year. Gearing their entire first year's performance to six exams at the end of the year is unnecessarily unpleasant and sometimes dehumanizing. Many students decline the challenge and meander through the year, hoping only to get by." Some find themselves distracted by the atmosphere of tension and isolation, and they resent it. Others feel they have no choice but to work toward the system's goal, but they find that that goal--high performance on exams--has only a tangential relationship to their mastery of the law. They find the system of meting out rewards and punishments at the end gratuitous, even insulting.

The current grading system provides almost no incentive to develop over three years of law school. Once awarded, grades become counterproductive for a large segment of the class. For students at the top, grades cease being an incentive, for such students do not have to do as well during the next two years. They have made it into one of the honoraries and are busy with other activities. As for those in the middle and bottom of the class, the school offers little encouragement for development over a two or three year period. Last March, the editors of the Law Review took note of "the feeling that the fate of a man's legal career is irrevocably determined during two weeks of June in his first year of law school."

The present grading system encourages alienation and a sense of hostility. The first-year system fosters ex-

The present system at the Law School encourages us to compete, to score points on each other, rather than to communicate and work in cooperation with one another. cessive and sometimes ruthless competition. Everyone is taking the same courses and competing for the same positions and grades. One person's success depends upon the failure of many others. Competition is a reality in our lives, now and in the future, but the competition at the Law School is extraordinary. It is an institutionalized competition which many of us did not bargain for when we made our decision to study law. It causes many of us to compete against our mates in an atmosphere of isolation, suspicion, and hostility unmatched at almost any other educational institution. Serious students such as those in law school have a great deal to contribute to each other. It is our misfortune that the grading system and perhaps the first year structure in many instances act as a bar to such communication.

Four-hour exam grades are one kind of incentive, but they are not the only kind. To the extent that they operate as an incentive, they also tend to undermine a student's better motives. Students admitted to this law school have been trained to work hard. Most are efficient and eager to add to their understanding of any new, complex subject. Most would feel inadequate and uncomfortable unless they attempted to master the material offered in the first year.

3) A Service to Employers?

Grades are one convenient means of providing corporate firms and other employers with one relatively objective basis for making hiring decisions. They are not the only criterion now used, nor are they a foolproof means for stopping those determined to discriminate. And the current use of grades with respect to employment carries three problems. First, the heavy reliance on first-year grades constitutes a premature judgment of abilities. Second, and consequently, there is little premium on development over the three years of law school. This is especially true when much hiring for second-year summer jobs is done before Christmas and those jobs often lead to permanent employment after graduation. Third, examinations simply do not provide the full picture of a student's talents.

Any changes in the current system must retain bases of evaluation which allow employers to make substantive judgments of students. Convenience to employers, however, should not determine the educational policies of the Law School.

4) Needed for Honorary Societies?

The use of grades to select members of the honoraries is a major source of frustration for first-year students. It impresses upon those who wish to distinguish themselves (and this includes the majority of any class) that first-year exams are the most crucial part of law school. This is a major reason why the competition is so in-ordinately fierce. If success means making Law Review and making Law Review means being near the very top of the class-positions that cannot be occupied by everyone -- most first year students, by their own definition, are going to be failures for the first time in their academic lives.

The current system of selecting members for the honoraries is arbitrary, to say the least. What is the justification for assuming that the twenty-five top performers on first-year exams are those most interested in and best suited to writing for a scholarly journal or that those who score a few points lower should prepare Ames cases? Nor is it clear why grades should be deemed the sole measure of competency for most places in Legal Aid.

We submit that grades fulfill their functions very imperfectly. For too many people they tend to produce confusion and unnecessary competitiveness and, for some, a disdain for their years at Harvard Law School. First-year grades become the definitive judgment of a student's work. They open or close the doors of the honoraries. They enhance or hinder chances for jobs. They establish academic and social hierarchies which reign over the following two years and beyond. Thus, grades become fixed in the minds of many as the most important part of their law school careers. This is an unfortunate and unintended aspect of grading, but it is inherent in the present system.

Any system for evaluating law students should: