Only at Harvard Law School
How do you solve a problem like length limits on law school final exams? It’s a vexing issue. If you think we’re exaggerating, read this PrawfsBlawg post (which generated an avalanche of comments, including many from frustrated law professors).
Well, fear not. The geniuses at “the world’s premier center for legal education and research” take due process seriously when it comes to exam grading — as well they should, since that Torts grade will determine the trajectory of YOUR ENTIRE LEGAL CAREER* — and they have solved this difficulty.
From: Catherine Claypoole
Date: Nov 29, 2006 5:16 PM
Subject: [STUDENTS]: Length Limits on Exams: Memo from Vice Dean Andy Kaufman
To: [Harvard Law School students]To all students:
During the investigation of several discipline cases last spring, the faculty became aware of substantial student concern that length limits on examinations were being enforced unevenly. Moreover, the faculty became aware that this concern was justified. Accordingly, the faculty has agreed that, starting this exam period, length limits ordinarily will be stated in a uniform way that is easy to enforce that is, by setting a page limit followed by a prescribed format as follows:
— font:12 point Times New Roman (including all footnotes)
— characters: normal spacing
— lines: double-spaced
— margin: 1” margin on left and right, top and bottom
There is of course no need for you to remember this format. The cover pages of exams with length limits will provide this information….
Good luck with the rest of the term.
Best regards,
Andy Kaufman
Vice Dean for Academic Programming
Our favorite detail is “characters: normal spacing.” The administration knows that within the HLS student body, there are lots of ex-college newspaper editors who know a thing or two about kerning.
Our second-favorite detail: there’s a Harvard Law School dean named Andy Kaufman.
These rules make sense, at a certain level; but the annoying thing is that someone must police them. While some violations might be apparent to the naked eye — especially naked eyes that can tell the difference between an italicized and non-italicized comma — other transgressions might be less conspicuous. Will teaching assistants have to whip out rulers to confirm that the margins are truly one inch all around, and not, say, 0.97 inches?
This is way too cumbersome. HLS profs, just adopt Dan Solove’s brilliant system for law school exam grading. Nothing could be easier or more efficient.
* No, 1Ls, we’re serious. That Torts grade will determine whether you grade on to Law Review. Which will determine whether you get a clerkship with a “feeder judge.” Which will determine whether you get a Supreme Court clerkship. Which will determine whether you end up arguing before the Supreme Court yourself, as a million-dollar partner or member of the SG’s office, or chasing ambulances in Salina, Kansas.
(Not that there’s anything wrong with Salina, for those of you who are from there. We’re sure it’s a lovely town.)
Enforcing Word Limits [PrawfsBlawg]
A Guide to Grading Exams [Concurring Opinions]
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Should we infer then, that you got an A- in torts?
Lat went to Yale, where they don't have real grades. His apparent bitterness may only imply that he got a pat on the back instead of a hug.
That's a common myth. We don't have grades for the first semester (which would include Torts), but we do get grades after that: Honors, Pass, Low Pass, Fail. In some classes, H's can be very hard to get.
I don't detect bitterness from Lat in this post. Despite the "we're serious," that footnote is clearly tongue in cheek.
Here's a better example of a bitter Lat-itude:
http://underneaththeirrobes.blogs.com/main/2004/06/article_iii_gro.html
I've heard that Low Pass and Fail are pretty hard to get as well.
That's true too. You must be brain-dead to fail.
At Yale, it's really a matter of your "batting average." I've heard that 75 percent H's is an informal "cutoff" for Supreme Court clerkships.
(But I also know of Yalies who got SCOTUS gigs with grades below that cutoff. Obviously they had other things going for them besides grades.)
Things may have changed a lot since I graduated from Harvard in 1976, but I want to note that my very best law school grades were always attached to my very shortest answers -- in "Blue Books" with lots of blank pages. [The high-tech students brought electric typewriters to their test locations.] Of course, I often spent only a few minutes on the second and third (of three) questions, which necessitated short answers.
Also as an adjunct Antitrust lecturer, I would have greatly preferred small spoonfuls of swill to large buckets of it.
Why the change?
People were cheating with word counts and then modifying their page settings to make it look like they were staying within the word limit. (A professor might be suspicious if one person's 3500 words took 8 pages, but somebody else was using 11 pages and claiming to use the same 3500 words)
So by forcing page limits (with identical margins, identical font, identical font size, and identical character spacing), it is basically a way of enforcing a real word limit (you can only fit so many words on a page with those settings).
There was major controversy coming out of one of the 1L Sections last year, I believe, including talk of expulsion. Grades did not come for that class until August.
The same controversy played out in 2003 (my 1L year) with one guy who lied about his word counts on multiple exams and then bragged about how clever he was. He had only gone over by a bit (nothing like the Prawfsblawg student), and they couldn't prove that his excuse of having done the word counts and then performing edits afterwards was false, so he didn't get the boot.
Isn't there a way to short-circuit this whole fiasco? If you're going to assume that all papers will be typed up on computer with modern word-processing software, why not simply require that the papers be submitted in a standard electronic format, say HTML or some "standardised" version of MS Word? Or even plain ASCII text.
That would make it kind of hard to lie about word counts, and if the profs want to read it on paper, they can print it out themselves. Or am I blundering about and missing something that should be blindingly obvious?