As always, law school admission committees will carefully review your transcript for your overall areas of academic success and any discrepancies that appear in your academic history. This could include a semester/semesters in which you dropped multiple classes or withdrew from an entire semester, or a semester in which you performed poorly. In normal circumstances, we encourage students to submit a letter of addendum to directly address those discrepancies. However, the Law School Admissions Council will include a “Dear Colleague” letter in the Credential Assembly Service report (the report that law schools receive when students apply) of any student who enrolled in spring 2020 courses. This will serve as a reminder about the effects of the pandemic for law schools who will review applications in the near future or several years from now and will make the addendum generally unnecessary for the Spring 2020 semester.
The Office of Pre-law Advising generally recommends that students choose letter grades for classes that they know they will earn a C or higher for in those courses. If you choose a P for the final grade, it will neither improve or negatively affect your GPA. However, it is difficult to prove the level of academic effort with a P grade when compared with a letter grade, especially when considering the rigor of upper level courses and courses in your major. Additionally, if your goal is to improve your GPA, the P grade will not help you. You will still earn credit for the hours but not the quality points necessary to improve your GPA.
For the Spring 2020 semester, if you chose the P/F option for a course or two, remember law schools know that students will have the option to choose P/F for final grades. This means they will heavily rely on all aspects (your resume, personal statement, letters of recommendation, LSAT score, the breadth of your academic history, etc.) of your application when considering the strength of your application. A few P grades generally will not make a significant difference in that aspect.