I just completed my 1L year, so I could be totally off. I’d guess 2Ls are likely to do better because their grades are more likely to be noticed (especially prior to offer after 2L SA). However, a jobless 3L might be more motivated, and there are quite a few jobless 3Ls around now.
All the smart 3L’s won’t need to do well by now (they should have a job lined up for them after graduation) while the 3Ls who DO need to do well is unlikely to be smart enough/work hard enough (hey, there’s a reason why their GPA was low in the first place), thus they are not a threat either.
I agree with this. Once I saw that I was pretty close to graduating in the top 1% (summa cum laude) I became pretty motivated to reach this goal even though it has zero impact on my immediate career.
It’s a tossup for exam classes, with the caveat that there are some very lazy 3Ls. Be very wary of taking classes that have a paper final with a bunch of LR folks though.