[Music] g'day everyone and welcome to the third episode of agony anth my collaboration with the charles darwin university law student society thanks so much for your support for the first two videos we've been really pleased with the response the question this week from one of our cdu lss members is the grades matter would the ps make degrees this student states that in their previous degree they received very high marks but they had little practical experience and they found it very difficult to attain work after graduation a long time ago i used to have a boss who would tease me while i was studying law in my lunch hours at work i was a mature age part-time student he used to say 51 is wasted effort 49 is a wasted semester he said that had always been his approach and he was my boss i'm still not sure if he was joking because he was one of those guys who seemed to have a commitment to excellence when it came to everything else so the peas make degrees like most other simple statements this one gets a lot more complex once you unpack it for one thing it's clear that if you simply pass every subject you'll end up with a law degree for some people that's the whole objective i've met students who were told all their life that they were not capable of getting a law degree and all they wanted was to be able to stand on that stage at graduation and hold their degree certificate up and tell everyone exactly where they could shove their opinion the saying ps get degrees is often actually a coded way of saying hang in there usually the phrase gets used in the context where somebody is saying i was really hoping for a distinction and i'm disappointed to just get a pass the person who says ps get degrees is not saying to put in less effort they're saying hang in there don't get too disheartened you still get the credit points as a result of your pass the other thing to remember is that every student faces different circumstances consider two students one of them is in the lucky position where they're financially stable and they're able to devote their entire time to study they can structure their entire life around study the other one is what i like to call a second chance mum she's had her kids in her divorce and she's coming back to do the degree that she wishes she'd done at age 21. she's juggling kids work study soccer practice music lessons financial challenges sick kids lack of sleep now let's imagine both of these students get a distinction for the first student that distinction is still a great result well done for the second student though that result is remarkable often academic records tell you as much about the circumstances in which someone was studying as they do about the academic capacity of the student now obviously if you're hoping to undertake post-graduate study in particular postgraduate research study then you're going to need to get the grades which will track towards honours and some of those higher degrees but let's say you're not let's say that you want to take your degree and become a lawyer or become a professional in some related field where a law degree will help you because that's really the student's question this week they say last time i got great grades but it didn't translate into a job what was i doing wrong well let me now put on my day job hat i'm a partner in a small firm we've had plt students in the past and we've employed graduates in the past many employers will take a look at a student's academic transcript it can be revealing if a student took four goes to pass contract law and they're applying for a job in a commercial law firm that might be a problem most employers will also take notice of things like whether the student obtained honours the extent to which honours is a recruiting advantage really depends on the opinions of the employer realistically though your academic transcript is going to be one small aspect of your employment suitability it's not irrelevant but it's not overwhelmingly important university places an unrealistic level of focus on that one particular metric if you want to line up for employment after you graduate then i would suggest that most employers are looking for graduates who have a law degree but who also have three other key qualities first and foremost employers are looking for graduates who can write unfortunately in recent decades there's been a trend in education to devalue the importance of things like grammar spelling and syntax in university assignments a lecturer who marks a student down because the student doesn't know how to use possessive apostrophes would probably receive complaints the student would say hang on you're not meant to be testing my english you're meant to be testing my knowledge of administrative law and to a point that's true but when you get out into a firm as a graduate lawyer you will probably be working for an associate or junior associate who has their own caseload you're supposed to help make their life easier if they have to go through and correct the spelling and grammar on everything so that it looks professional before it leaves the office they might as well write it themselves many law students underestimate the fact that the law is made of words and if you are not an expert with those words it might not matter how much you know about the law second employers are looking for graduates with experience in some ways universities have tried to respond to this need by including things like client interviewing competitions and moots i'm not really a fan of moots moots replicate a speaking appearance in front of the court of appeal most lawyers wouldn't even consider speaking in front of the court of appeal until they've been in practice at least 10 years it's not a helpful skill for a graduate to have but you do need to be able to go along to court and do a criminal call over and you do need to know what to do in order to file documents in the local registry and you do need some experience in dealing with actual clients how do you get this experience well if you're smart you get it during your degree you get it by volunteering with community legal centres you get it by volunteering with firms to do some work experience let's say you had three additional hours at your disposal and you could use those three hours in order to make your 79 out of 100 distinction essay into an 86 out of 100 high distinction or you could use those three hours volunteering at a community legal centre helping domestic violence victims prepare affidavits if you're chasing academic excellence spend those three hours on the essay if you're trying to increase your employability spend those three hours at the community legal centre the third factor employers are looking for relates to the simple fact that jobs in the law are networked most jobs in the law are never advertised employers look around for somebody they know and in the last resort they use a recruiting company even as a student you can begin to become embedded in your local legal networks most regional law associations encourage student membership and have discounted student fees if you go along to a monthly meeting you might meet 15 different people from 15 different firms any one of those might eventually become the person that you asked to take you on as a plt student and if they like you as a plt student there's every chance they'll give you a job so do peas get degrees well from a practical perspective obviously they do but the peas get jobs well not on their own they don't but there's something to be said for thinking carefully about how you use your time it might well be that in the long run you get more benefit from being a credit or distinction level student who's picked up a bunch of experience that might well make you more employable than a high distinction student who spent the last three years in the law library so i guess my answer to the question would be that grades are important but they're not everything and if you're one of those second chance mums or if you're studying law and english as your second language or if you're studying law despite a disability i'm just in war of your success bloody good on you keep the questions coming guys i'm really enjoying this and really pleased with how this new collaboration is going see you soon [Music] you