Covid-19 Grading Policy for School of Law JD/LLM Students

Dear Students,

Thanks to the many of you who reached out to share your opinions and suggestions on the question of our grading policy for Spring 2020. As I’ve stated previously, your comments were uniformly constructive and thoughtful, and they’ve been genuinely helpful to our deliberations. As your comments have made clear, there are numerous legitimate, even compelling interests at stake, implicating scholarships, employment prospects, opportunities for journal membership, and more. And the decision has been made more complex by the fact that the equities point in more than one direction.

With the benefit of your input, and after extensive consultation, I am writing to share the Law School’s grading policy for Spring 2020:

• Mandatory Pass/Fail: In light of the extraordinary and as yet not fully determined impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Law School is suspending its normal grading policy and substituting a policy requiring all students to be graded on a mandatory Pass/Fail system for the Spring 2020 semester. This means that students in all classes would receive a grade of High Pass, Pass, or Fail for their Spring 2020 coursework, whether based on an examination, a paper, or performance of skills in an experiential course.
  • The designation of “High Pass” (HP) is intended to denote exceptional performance and will be capped at 15% of grades in any course subject to the Law School’s mandatory curve. The cap may be waived with the approval of the Vice Dean for Academic Affairs based on a written explanation by the professor of the justification. The cap does not apply to courses that are not subject to the Law School’s mandatory curve.
  • A grade of “Pass” denotes successful completion of the course with credit. There is no cap on the number of “Pass” grades that may be assigned in any course. Grades of “HP” and “P” are not factored into a student’s GPA.
  • A grade of “Fail,” as in the Law School’s regular grading policy, indicates that the student failed the course and will receive no academic credit. A grade of “F” will be factored into a student’s cumulative GPA.
• Grades in Year-Long Courses: First-year students enrolled in Legal Research and Writing will receive a single grade of “HP,” “P” or “F” for the academic year. Students enrolled in year-long clinics or other courses may be assigned a regular letter grade (A, B, C, D, F) for their work in the Fall 2019 semester; their work in the Spring 2020 semester will be graded under the mandatory P/F system described above.
• Determinations of Class Rank: No class rank will be assigned to 1L students at the conclusion of this academic year. Upper-class students will be continue to be ranked, as now, on the basis of their cumulative GPA.
• Effect on Scholarship Retention and Recovery: Determinations of whether students holding merit-based scholarships have attained the cumulative GPA targets necessary to retain or recover their scholarships, ordinarily conducted in May, will be deferred until January 2021, so that Fall 2020 grades may be considered in lieu of Spring 2020 grades. As a result, students holding such scholarships will automatically retain them, at their current amounts, for the Fall 2020 semester. Students failing to attain prescribed GPA targets at that point will have their scholarships reduced prospectively beginning with the Spring 2021 semester. Rising 3L students (current 2Ls) who have previously had their scholarships reduced on the basis of 1L grades and who attain the GPA targets qualifying them to recover their original scholarships will have their original scholarships restored in January 2021 retroactively to cover the entire 2020-2021 academic year.
• Effect on Honors & Journals: For 1Ls, we anticipate that adjustments will be made to the usual selection mechanisms for participation in journals in light of this policy. For 3Ls, we will reevaluate the usual GPA cut-offs for determining Latin honors at graduation (i.e., summa cum laude, magna cum laude, cum laude) to address any risk that the exceptional circumstances of this semester would have caused a graduate to narrowly miss the mark for honors.
• Exclusions: This grading policy DOES NOT APPLY to the mini courses which were completed earlier in the semester and already have grades posted (MINI6420-01, MINI6450-01, MINI6610-01), nor to any courses for the online Master of Jurisprudence program (EMPL courses). Those will remain with the standard grade type. It also does not include the dissertation research (LAWS9990-01 and GDEV9990-01) for the doctoral candidates (SJD and PhD). Those courses will remain with the research designation.

* * * * *

In light of the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the switch to a mandatory Pass/Fail grading policy for the Spring 2020 semester, we are implementing further adjustments to our usual academic policies for this semester only, as outlined below:

Thank you once again for all your patience and understanding as we’ve navigated the adjustments necessitated by our extraordinary times. I hope you and your families are well.

Be well,
David Meyer

David D. Meyer
Dean and Mitchell Franklin Professor of Law
Tulane University Law School
6329 Freret Street
New Orleans, Louisiana 70118
(504) 865-5937
meyer@tulane.edu