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Law school GPA math is ordinary weighted averaging with two twists: the scale runs on pluses and minuses that carry real weight under a curve, and the question students actually ask in January is the inverse one, what do I need next semester. This calculator does both: enter courses, credits, and grades for the semester figure, add your prior GPA and credits for the cumulative, and use target mode for the January question.
Target mode solves the weighted average backward: the average across your next credits that lifts the cumulative to your goal. When it returns a number above the scale, the target is unreachable in one semester, which is information, not a verdict: the same target spread over two or three semesters lowers the required average, which is the arithmetic behind the trend logic in recovering from a bad first semester. What counts as a good number in the first place is school relative, per what is a good 1L GPA.
The standard law scale, A 4.0 down to F 0 in thirds, with an optional A+ at 4.33 for the schools that award it. If your registrar publishes different point values, theirs control; the mechanics are identical.
Leave the grade blank and the course is excluded from the average, which is how most schools treat credit only courses. Check your school's rule for mandatory pass fail semesters.
Credit weighting: by then the denominator is large, which cuts both ways, early semesters are volatile and later ones are stable, the decay logic in do 1L grades matter.
Use it to model, not to monitor. The useful question is what a given spring performance does to a cumulative number, which is a planning question you can act on.
Refreshing it after every grade release is monitoring, and monitoring changes nothing. The read on what those numbers mean sits in what is a good 1L GPA.
Written by Ali, Georgetown Law, founder of Lovare Institut.
July 30, 2026
July 30, 2026