As someone who has mediocre marks but exceptional work experience, marks only matter if you're choosing the RCC route. I got in a firm in my 2nd year through LinkedIn, stayed there for 2 years, the guy helped me get into a t-1 in 4th year now. Never really cared about marks as I never wanted to go through the RCC route (due team and location issue)

I have something to contribute here.

As a senior member of my team in a tier I practice, I have had my share of recommending candidates for hire. As someone coming from a bottom tier NLU who was academically mediocre I detested the system of hiring based on ranks. While my academic credentials were nothing to write home about, I did fairly well in moots and publications. Nothing ground-breaking though.

When I was in a position to change things, I pushed a lot of associates for hire who demonstrated hard work in internships irrespective of college attended, academics or rank. 6/8 times this has bitten me in the rear. All 5 times, the candidates did not perform close to what they did during the internship and lazed around like anything. The other 2 kids were top notch. This taught me the futility of trying to gauge the quality of a candidate through internships + interview. Its a hit or miss.

However, 4/5 candidates hired during the same time (campus placement) from top 4 NLUs were fantastic. All these candidates were academically high achievers. They may not have been the sharpest tool all the time, but they had tremendous work ethic. Their ability to put their head down and get the work done was fantastic. In a couple of years they are/were by far the best associates in the team.

Now, my policy is simple. I just ask HR to hire any kid which is from a top NLU and is a ranker or a topper from any other college. Of course, the kids are grilled for basic level competence in interviews. This does not mean that good kids are not available else where. Its just that the risk involved in hiring such kids is higher.

Good academics demonstrate the ability to do an undesirable activity consistently for a long time and achieve excellence. A skill highly sought after in law firms. Comparatively, its easier to keep focus in short term interesting activities like publications / moots. That's why it is preferred to hire academically sound kids.

I wasted too much time on this. Bye.

To be honest no. They don't know how "dumb and ineffective" these people are, even if they indeed are so. That is your view. When they are presented with several 100 CVs of potential interns, what other way is there to select? Its like saying why should a law college select on the basis of the toppers of CLAT and not see all rounders who excel in other areas. This is an entry. Once in, prove yourself.

shouldn't the objective be to get good candidates who can be trained by putting fewer resources of the firm? these people aren't just going to be associates, some of them will go on to become partners as well. Have you seen the attrition rates at law firms, don't you think a lot of it can attributed to the "objective" selection criteria?

And if GPA is the only criterion why do they talk about so much about moots, publications, ADRs, etc.? Let's just all focus on one thing i.e., grades, and forget about holistic learning. Why should I slog my ass off for all these inconsequential things?