Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor at Slate, has this advice for new law students. Generally good advice, except that highlighters are pure evil in my book and ignoring your grades is something a student just can't do any more. In the initial screening interview most employers demand a transcript (and an explanation of each aberration) in addition to your writing sample. You might wait until after the end of first year, but that's about as far as you'll get before you need to know them.

Not that grades have anything to do with lawyering... There's not only law and the business of law, but the average robot might be surprised that they must interact with actual people.

Actually, I do have to take issue with this piece. Dividing up law students between the psychotic straight-A total tools and students who took the LSAT because the MCAT was too hard? Please! I don't know if I heard anything as absurd during my entire first year of law school (and that's saying something). There are students with straight As who thought the MCAT was too difficult, and really driven ones who just don't get law.

If there is anyone to be criticized for zero-sum thinking, it's Ms. Dahlwick. Not all students with high intelligence are interested in the blood and guts experience necessary for an M.D. Not all students are interested in warm-fuzzy world saving. And certainly not all students are obsessed with school.

Those in Dahlwick's latter category could, of course, be there because they have no idea what they're doing (undoubtedly, I know more than a few). Or, they could put time and energy into myriad different activities that have nothing to do with law. Law students don't always fit neatly in one box or another.

One of the reasons that all students do not have straight A's is that students do have lives outside of the law school (that, and most law schools impose curves). Many law students are absolutely capable of straight A's. But many also decide that they don't want to brief every case, or (heaven forbid) work for a Reagan appointee. These things, to many students, are not keystones of an amazing life or career. Most students, even the ones that enter school with guns blazing, eventually realize that grades aren't the end all and be all of law school, your career, or your life.

The problem is in dismissing the gunner offhand. They just might be the ones that need the most advice.