All of the Go8 law schools are pretty tough. They like to keep a pretty steep normal distribution curve: most people sit around credit, then there's a steep drop and its as if they have a policy to strictly limit number of HD's. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a concerted effort, as I know that law Deans of Go8 schools do communicate.
Personally, I think its a good thing. It's quality control, and a good way of maintaining the integrity of the school and the Law degree itself. In my previous degree D's were handed out like candy, and HD's were hard to come by either...it was like if you answere the question in a way that demonstrated that you actually listened in class, you got a D..no one really takes the course seriously when that happens.
The system in Law makes more sense to me: if your intelligent like most people in the class and do 'well', you should be given 'credit' for it, so to speak. If your producing superior work to most people and demonstrate impressive control of the subject, you should be given a mark of 'distinction', so to speak. etc. Obviously, not everyone can be special and produce superior work because that would defeat the purpose of the classification.
