freshman

What do you guys think about law-school in class exam

mm

Don't like it.

A professor wrote:

"Some upper level classes have abandoned exams of all sorts in favor of three short (4-5 pp.) graded memos, spaced more or less evenly over the semester.
Each memo offers a 7- to 10-day period between the assignment and the due date; each one is "open," in contemporary teaching jargon. Given my abundant use of the red pen, most memos are returned to their authors in bloody condition. My approach means that students are less likely to be evaluated on their mastery of a broad range of the material, but it also means that they are more likely to be evaluated fairly on their ability to synthesize their legal understanding with their ability to communicate thoughtfully in writing. A comment on a blog post can't convey all the nuances of the approach, but here are a few: Other downsides include the risk that students will plagiarize some or all of their memos, and the fact that I spend more time grading than I do with exams. Other upsides include my anecdotal experience that students learn to invest a substantial amount of time in producing memos that approach professional standards, and the fact that I get to enjoy concrete evidence that I am helping to teach them professional skills in substantive law courses. Of course, students have mixed feelings about actually receiving the feedback that they say that they crave.
My Deans and Associate Deans have been enthusiastic about this approach. Not only have course enrollments not suffered, but I have had to cap enrollments."

seth

My vote is to get rid of the essay on all bar exams.

That will pretty-much kill what little credibility those in law school still advocating for essay examinations still have.


Diversify the grade into several smaller, research papers, projects, and small multiple choice exams (meant to simulate the Multistate Bar Exam). Give a student more chances to succeed - or fail.
The end-of-term essay just encourages self-destructive, last-minute cramming behavior that does not serve students well when they have real clients.

If you want a real idea of what people think of the essay exam method, why not try asking over on the ABA's Solosez email listserve? I think you'll find that the only place this ridiculous issue is even a real debate is among the closeted world of law school faculty. Just about everyone else in the legal community is baffled why this is even still an issue.

Of course the essay method is ridiculous and utterly divorced from reality. Duh!


Just an aside...
I'm sorry to say that I feel like I learned more about Torts, Contracts, Criminal Law, Property, Civil Procedure, and the general landscape of American law from a two-week cram course from Pmbr than I did from 3 years of law school. I talked to a lot of my fellow law students who also attended that class. They felt exactly the same way. That's a terrible commentary on our legal education system.

laura

I hate the 3-hour timed exam, although my law school strongly encourages it for upperclassmen and requires it for 1Ls. But one useful function it may serve is preparing students for the essay section of the bar exam--if I recall correctly, in NY we had 10 essays to complete in 8 hours. So although I agree that timed exams don't provide a good test of student knowledge, they might help students pass the bar--always useful for the would-be attorney!

kerr

I have mixed feelings about in-class exams, but I'm not sure how far your arguments go.

First, in my experience as a lawyer, extremely quick issue-spotting and analysis was among the most essential skills. It was very rare to have the luxury of lots of time to work on a sustained argument.

Second, I don't believe anyone actually argues that trying to create "cheatproof" evaluation methods is designed to "teach students to be honest." Rather, the goal is to protect the integrity of the grading process because grades are so important.

Source: Drin Kerr

alex

agree with Kerr

I tend to agree with Kerr on this one. (Not that that matters much because I am at present (and perhaps forever) an anonymous nobody). Nevertheless -- I think one of the flaws in the above discussion is the idea that one type of exam fits all types of courses. A few examples:
In my constitutional litigation class (which is a "quasi fed courts class," taught at UPenn -- heavy emphasis on Section 1983, immunities, 11th Amendment, Ex Parte Young, Abstention, etc. but without any discussion of habeas) - the exam was a 24 hour take home exam. I thought that this type of exam perfectly suited the course (which in the end consisted of somewhere around 3000+ pages of unedited Supreme Court cases) because it was the own fair way to even touch upon a significant fraction of the material, . The exam felt like this: you have one day to get back to a sr. associate/partner an answer to two fact patterns that raise a host of constitutional litigation/fed courts issues (I think the test had 2 fact patterns, each consisting of 4 sub-parts). And apropos for this course, there was also third "policy" question. The exam for sure took the full 24 hours to write, re-read, edit, etc. My answer, if I recall, turned out to be around 25-30 pages. So it was a lot of work for one day. But as I mentioned, I thought this was fair because it gave students an opportunity to demonstrate mastery across some (or all) of the course, whereas an in-class exam (whether 3, 4, or 6 hrs) would have undoubtedly only touched upon a narrow portion of the class. The professor was also able to digest these long answers because the class was highly self-selective and very small (only 15 or so students).


Now, on the other hand, I thought using a hybrid of multiple choice questions and short essays for classes like evidence and constitutional criminal procedure were ideal. Both of these subject matters are almost purely "rule-orientated," and the point - or at least I think so - is to test whether you know lots of discrete rules and are able to apply them correctly in situations that are likely to repeat themselves over and over and over (i.e. hearsay objections, miranda, etc.). And so they lend themselves well to being tested vis-a-vis multiple choice questions. (Multiple choice also works well because these aren’t “doctrinal” courses per se – here I think there’s less of a focus in testing whether the student understands how the law “evolved. But I don’t want the takeaway being that these classes could not be taught in a theoretical manner, but my experience is that, at least for the introductory versions, they aren’t - which I think is appropriate because these classes severe to have a much more “practical import” than say the first year survey courses, with the exception of civil procedure). That said, the use of some short essays worked well because it simulated a motion in limine (and frankly made the test a little more fair to those who don't necessarily excel at multiple choice exams).

jeffy

As a law student I never felt that such tests presented a fair gauge of what I had learned. Of course, some tests did it better than others. I similarly shifted to writing intensive courses. As a professor I try to incorporate a number of different methods of assessing students' abilities. As much as everyone seems to hate objective (multiple choice) questions, they do help students prepare for the multistate bar exam and they also provide an alternative performance pathway (i.e. they tap different sets of capabilities). Take home tests and short writing assignments can allow those students who dont do "speed law" well to show what they can accomplish under circumstances that perhaps better approximate real life work conditions.

Source: Jeff Yates