What grades did Michelle Obama receive in her Harvard Law classes?
Executive summary
Public reporting reviewed confirms Michelle Obama earned her Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 1988 [1] [2] [3], and profiles describe her law‑school activities — notably Legal Aid — but none of the provided sources publish course‑by‑course grades or a transcript; therefore the specific grades she received in Harvard Law classes are not disclosed in this reporting [1] [3] [4].
1. The records that reporters and institutional profiles publish
Biographies and institutional pages consistently note that Michelle Obama graduated from Harvard Law School in 1988 and went on to work at Sidley Austin in Chicago [1] [2] [3], and major outlets and archives repeat that credential in background pieces about her career [5] [6], but these standard profiles do not include any itemized academic transcript or grades for individual classes [1] [3] [5].
2. What contemporary reporting and sources do say about her law‑school experience
Profiles and interviews emphasize aspects of her Harvard experience — such as participation in the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau and engagement in campus debates about diversity and hiring — and recollections from faculty highlight her focus on public‑service law rather than competitive student honors like Law Review leadership [7] [8] [4], while an anecdote reported by CNBC describes a rewritten recommendation letter from a Princeton professor during her law‑school application period, suggesting a perception that her academic record was not always perceived as stellar before Harvard [9].
3. What is missing from the reporting: course grades and transcripts
None of the supplied sources publish or claim to have obtained Michelle Obama’s Harvard Law course grades or an official transcript, and the material gathered here — from institutional bios to news profiles and interviews — confines itself to degree confirmation and qualitative descriptions of her activities and reputation rather than numeric or letter grades for particular classes [1] [2] [3] [5] [8].
4. Alternative viewpoints and implicit agendas in coverage
Sources that celebrate career milestones naturally focus on degree attainment and professional trajectory [3] [6], while profiles exploring character or public role lean into anecdote and recollection — for example, law‑school mentors praising her temperament and service orientation [8] [10] — which explains why reporting emphasizes credentials and narrative over raw academic data; the supplied coverage does not advance or substantiate claims about specific grades, and readers should note these outlets’ tendency to prioritize biography and public‑service framing over private academic records [8] [10].
5. Bottom line: the answer and the limitation of available reporting
Based on the reporting reviewed here, it can only be asserted that Michelle Obama graduated from Harvard Law School with a JD in 1988 [1] [2] [3]; the specific grades she received in her Harvard Law classes are not published in these sources and therefore cannot be stated from this record [1] [3] [5]. If detailed course‑by‑course grades are required, those would be the kind of records not contained in the biographies and profiles provided and would require access to an official transcript or reporting that cites it, neither of which appears in the material reviewed [1] [3].