The Shark

shame on you, law school cheaters! shame on you.

[julie anne ines]

Sometimes, I imagine law students, law school and the lure of high grades akin to throwing a bunch of hungry, ugly-cute baby sharks into a small tank with a juicy piece of red meat.

Besides being fiercely competitive over-achievers, these Type-A sharkies have been told their survival in the law school tank depends on them being able to get those yummy ‘As’ and ‘Bs’.

Which is why it came as no surprise when we wrote a couple weeks ago that the Syracuse University College of Law would be taking measures to flush out cheaters who used their bathroom breaks to cheat on exams.

It is also no surprise that the National Law Journal recently reported that students are seeing more gray areas between honesty and dishonesty, and are using technology and changes in testing administration to get ahead.

What is surprising, to me at least, is that law students still see cheating as a viable option.

We’ve all been told since kindergarten that “cheaters never win, and winners never cheat,” and that “the only person you cheat when you try to cheat is yourself.” Call me square and naive, but I think both quotes are true, especially in law school exams.

Yes, law schools use exams to gauge how you fare against your classmates. But students should also take advantage of exams as an opportunity to reflect on material learned and possibly predict how well they’d do on the bar exam.

If you cheat in law school, you may be able to stay afloat and keep swimming. But when you get into the bigger ocean out there, you’ll be eaten alive if you fail to know your stuff.

grading issues you didn't even know existed, maybe.

[brian lauter]

Let me interrupt my string of rankings related posts to discuss with you another subject of paramount importance to law students: grades.

Last Wednesday, PrawfsBlawg posted the first in a series of grades-related posts, critiquing the "seminar exception."  For the uninitiated, most law schools exempt seminar classes from the forced grading curve. PrawsfBlawg argues that the exception "gets the goat" of many law students because some students load up on seminar classes to pad their GPAs.

Maybe PrawfsBlawg and I run in different circles, but I have never heard any law student complain about this seminar exception.  First, most students take advantage of seminar classes at some point in their law school careers.  They're usually interesting courses and it's refreshing to be able to really get into the material instead of having to focus on a grade for the entire semester.  Second, a forced curve just doesn't make sense in smaller classes.  If professors already have a difficult time accurately distinguishing students enough to fit them into a forced curve for large classes, doing so for smaller classes must be even more difficult.  I could go on, but I've got more grading items to discuss.

Last Thursday, PrawsfBlawg posted an item discussing the virtues of "flex courses."  These are courses where students can elect to receive 2 or 3 units depending on how much work they want to put into the class.  

As PrawsfBlawg points out, flex courses, also known as variable credit courses, give students scheduling flexibility without really diminishing academic value.  Sounds like a good idea to me.  Some schools (such as Davis) essentially offer flex courses by allowing students in paper-based courses to conduct further research and write longer papers for extra units as part of an independent research project. Professor and dean approval is required and the independent research grade is the same as the course grade.

Finally, yesterday, PrawsfBlawg posted an item asking whether professors should be allowed to change student grades after discussing them with students.  Apparently, many law schools flat out forbid professors from making changes to grades based on qualitative considerations after they've handed them in.  These schools will only allow professors to change their grades based on computational errors.  

I don't see any problem with giving professors the discretion to change their grades, and the argument that "law students like to argue" seems particularly weak.  I doubt these policies deters students from pestering their professors about grades, since most law students, like me, probably don't even know about their school's policy.  

There you have it.  Three grade issues tightly wrapped with glib analysis.  The PrawfsBlawg items, of course, contain in depth theoretical and statistical analysis of each topic, so check them out if my musings aren't enough for you.

reading law professors the riot act: get those grades in, ma'ams and sirs.

[brian lauter]

The first thing I noticed, 1L year, about law school grades was how long it took to get them.  The second thing I noticed about law school grades was how bad they were.  Just kidding...

Finals usually end in mid-to-late-December, and grades at most law schools don't come in until mid-to-late January.  Fair or not, this is just a fact of life for most law students.  George Washington University Law School, however, is pushing its students' patience (and anxiety) to the brink this year.

Yesterday, the Blackbook Legal Blog reported that some GW students have still not received grades from last semester.  That's right, an entire section of 1Ls has been waiting for Crim grades for over 100 days.  As a Blackbook commenter noted, second semester finals at GW start in three weeks.

And this isn't the first time GW has tested it's students late-grade tolerance.  Back, in February (week six of second semester), Nota Bene reported that two elective classes had yet to receive their grades.

I know that professors are busy people, and that it's important that they grade carefully and accurately, but that argument only goes so far.  Most professors teach one, maybe two, classes a semester.  How long can it really take to grade 50 finals?  Even 100?  And why does it take so long to report Scantron tests?

Late grades hurt students' employment opportunities, but what they say about professors' priorities is the real slap-in-the-face.  Student tuition pays professors' salaries; grading should be their first priority, from the time students finish the final, until the last grade is reported.

I think most professors take their grading duties seriously and approach them with the reluctant diligence we expect, but maybe it's time to start punishing those that don't.  A few years ago, Florida State set strict grading deadlines and (illegally?) started fining professors $10 for every grade they turned in late.  The plan seems to have worked there.  Something for GW to consider?

multiple choice exams aren't necessarily the preference of multiple kinds of law students.

[brian lauter]

Choose the best answer:

1. Which do you prefer, multiple choice tests or written tests?

a. Multiple choice, because you always have at least a 20% chance.

b. Multiple choice, because they’re way easier for professors to grade.

c. Written, because they give you the opportunity to regurgitate an entire semester’s worth of information (or one outline) in three hours.

d. Written, because if you don’t know the answer you can write something tangential and hope for a few pity points.

e. A and B only.

f. All of the above.

g. All of the above, but not C.

h. None of the above.

Sorry if that question was worded poorly; I’m sure you did just fine.

Yesterday, an item on PrawfsBlawg asked about the pros on cons of multiple choice law school exams. It ended up being a pretty polarizing question.

Some of the commenters focused on the nature of the material. Those who favored multiple choice questions said that many questions of law are more discrete and are better suited for multiple choice exams, while others argued that the law is inherently gray and reasoned answers should be required.

Other commenters focused on the practice of law. Those who favored written tests argued that writing well under pressure is an important skill for practicing law; others argued that being able to make quick decisions on points of law is also important.

The multiple choice/written test debate is about as polarizing in real life as it was on Prawfsblawg. I know people who say they always do horribly on multiple choice tests (here are some tips) and don’t think they’re fair, and others who love them.

Personally, I prefer multiple choice tests. For me, having the correct answers on the page makes having a good foundational understanding of the subject matter more important and deemphasizes memorization, which isn’t really my thing.

I’m glad to see that professors do think about this stuff. And if you’re wondering how a multiple choice question should be worded, don’t use mine as an example, check this out.

pass/fail: coming to a fourth tier law school near you.

[brian lauter]

Ready for a bold, largely unsupported prediction?

Within the next 10 the majority of U.S. law schools will switch to non-letter grading systems.

Yesterday TaxProf Blog mentioned some statistics from Law Quadrangle that highlight the results of law school grade inflation in the last 50 years. Check out the TaxProf Blog link for colorful charts and Garrison Keillor references, but here are a couple of highlights indicative of the trend:

· In the 1950s, the mean law school GPA was 2.53. In the early 2000s, it was 3.28.

· In the 1950s, 1% of law school students graduated with a 3.5 GPA or higher. In the early 2000s, 26% did.

· In the 1950s, 18% of law students graduated with between a 3.0 and 3.49 GPA. In the early 2000s, 61% did.

A while back, when top ten law schools were one by one switching away from letter grading systems, I joked about transposing my law school transcript into Super Honors/Honors/Pass/Low Pass/Substandard Pass/Restricted Credit/Fail format (I think I ended up with a Pass + GPA).

The joke was that my law school would never be able to switch to non-letter grading because it isn’t ranked high enough. The conventional wisdom is that only high ranked schools can afford to switch to non-letter grading systems because employers already assume their graduates are of superior quality. Lower ranked schools still have to find ways to allow employers to differentiate the good students from the bad.

My question is: At what point do law school letter grades become so inflated that they convey even less information to employers than non-letter grading systems?

If nearly a third of law school students graduate with a 3.5 GPA or higher, and 61% graduate with a GPA between 3.0 and 3.5, it seems unlikely that letter grades really help employers sort out good and bad prospects any better than non-letter grades.

Considering that grade inflation is likely to continue, I think its going to become easier and easier for lower ranked schools to justify getting rid of inflation-tarnished letter grading systems and switching to Honors/Pass/Fail style systems.

I just picked 10 years because it sounded good, but I do think these changes may not be far off. Pass/Fail isn’t just for Yale anymore.

usc now curves to 3.3.

[cynthia foster]

Above the Law has posted some news about grade reform at USC.  The new policy is as follows:

"Under the current grading curve, the average grade in each first-year course is set at 3.2. Under the Dean's proposal, the average grade in each first-year course would be set at 3.3 rather than at 3.2. The effect of this change would be to raise each first-year grade by .1."

The change seems to have been instigated by what USC perceives as a mismatch between the school's reputation and the quality of the students.

"* The quality of students at USC law school has risen dramatically in the last decade. Nonetheless our grade curve has not changed to reflect this improvement.

* Our first-year grades and first-year GPAs appear to be lower than those at our peer schools which likely harms some of our students' job prospects."

The new curve is identical to UCLA's recently-reformed curve, and UCLA is seen by USC as a peer institution, so tit for tat and all that.

traditional grades no longer acceptable at tradition-loving harvard.

[brian lauter]

Grade reform is big these days. Yale Law School has long been famous for not grading the people who go on to become the people who grade law students. At Yale, students can earn a grade of Honors, Pass, Low Pass, or Fail. However, in practice, students apparently only receive grades of Honors or Pass, and the only way you can fail a class at Yale is by getting caught cheating.

Berkeley Law has graded on a four level scale for over 20 years, but threw in another grading option in 1997 (Substandard Pass), just for kicks. The Berkeley scale consists of High Honors, Honors, Substandard Pass, and No Credit.

In late May, Stanford followed suit, eliminating letter grading in favor a system with four levels of achievement. Stanford’s system grades students as Honors, Pass, Restricted Credit and No Credit.

Not to be left behind, Harvard jumped on the bandwagon this week, dumping its traditional grading system in favor of a four level system that assigns grades of...wait for it...Honors, Pass, Low Pass, and Fail.

I like this trend, and, after listening to her unsolicited commentary on how hard it is to give law students bad grades, I bet Greta’s pretty down too. Greta’s remarks made me think about a little more about grade inflation in law school (not to mention the ethics of KSW by harnessing level V Thetans for Xenu).

Is there any reason grade inflation has to stop with the elimination of traditional grading?

What happens when professors at Harvard start to feel bad about giving students a mere Pass and Honors becomes average? Maybe a new system: Highest Honors? Super Pass? Respectable Pass?

As long as there’s Epic Fail, I’m okay with all of this.

Needless to say, I am jealous, and I hope Davis will immediately drop its traditional grading system and retroactively apply a four level system. I’ve already transposed a new version of my transcript and if Davis doesn’t make the switch soon I think I may make it without them.

greta van susteren thinks your legal education is predicated on FRAUD!!!!

[cynthia foster]

I love TaxProf.  I know nothing about taxes (other than the fact that I pay them), but TaxProf always finds the best Internet stuff.  I don't know how he does it, but here he's done it again: Greta Van Susteren (Georgetown alumna and sometime professor) "going off" on a "four minute riff" on the more... suspect principles of law school grading.

where's bob barker when you need him? the law school ranking game

[abony holmes]

If you haven’t started your summer job yet and need to kill some time, check out the Law School Ranking Game (via Osler’s Razor) between Scrabulous moves. The game, courtesy of Jeffrey E. Stake and Indiana University School of Law—Bloomington, allows you to “create the variables and weighting, based on the factors you feel are most important.” 

One small outlier on the criteria list: "Tibetan food within 600m." 

stanford grading goes "pass/fail"

[cynthia foster]

According to an email posted by Above the Law, Stanford has officially changed its grading policy.  The Stanford Daily reported back in January that a record number of 1Ls were choosing pass/fail grading options, and this seems to have prompted the administration to implement an "honors/credit/no credit" grading system.  Further details, via the email from Dean Larry Kramer, are after the jump.

This comes just weeks after we reported on changes to the notorious Hastings curve.