Education / Schools, Law Schools, Legal Ethics

Is there an Epidemic of Cheating At Law Schools?

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Two weeks ago, we reported on Syracuse College of Law changing its exam guidelines in an attempt to thwart cheaters. Fordham Law School also had some academic dishonesty issues. Fortunately, this new cheating phenomenon is not limited to New York State. The National Law Journal reports:

When a Florida Coastal School of Law student last year spotted notecards poking out of a fellow test-taker’s pocket during finals, she kept her head down and focused on the exam in front of her. “I’ve never been one to rat people out,” said the student, who requested anonymity to speak candidly.
Her classmate was returning from a bathroom break during a final exam, and it was pretty clear to her that cheating was afoot. Like thousands of law students each year, the Florida Coastal student and her classmates had signed an honor code on their first day of school. Law schools rely on honor codes to keep students from cheating. The codes reflect the self-policing nature of law school academic integrity regimes, and they appeal to students’ sense of fair play to keep them in line.

Cheating at Florida Coastal? Noooooooo!
What is your friendly, neighborhood American Bar Association doing about the scourge of cheating at accredited law schools? We explore after the jump.


Sorry to get your hopes up, but the ABA is letting individual schools decide how best to combat cheaters:

The American Bar Association (ABA), which accredits law schools, does not specifically address academic integrity or student ethics in its standards for accreditation. All but two of the law schools accredited by the ABA have devised their own academic conduct and integrity rules, according to a 2006 report by the ABA Standing Committee on Professionalism. The others rely on the policies of the universities to which they belong. The ABA accredits 200 law schools, all of which report cheating to their state bar associations, the report said.

Despite our earlier protestations that making all law school exams open book would squelch the cheating problem, apparently some schools can’t even figure out how to pull off take-home exams properly:

Part of the challenge for law schools is an increased use of open-note and take-home tests instead of traditional closed-book, in-class exams. The rules for taking open-style tests can vary widely, depending on the professor’s preference. Some professors allow students to consult any books or notes, others restrict references to certain materials. With take-home tests, some professors restrict students from collaborating with others but allow them to consult published resources.
These kinds of tests better mirror real-life lawyering, said David Yellen, dean of Loyola University Chicago School of Law. But they also may create too much temptation to cheat for students. Even so, Yellen said that cheating most often occurs with written assignments. Students sometimes collaborate with other students, friends or family members, some of whom are attorneys, and do not realize that they are committing an honor code violation. “People have very different expectations of what’s appropriate,” he said.

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Collaborating with other students? On test? Where there is a curve? What kind of hippie commune style law school are some people running?
Soon enough, we will live in a world devoid of meaningful grades anyway. Then students will test to better themselves, instead of some outdated concept of “grades” or “objective standards of excellence.” Then law students would only be cheating themselves, and who would do that?

CHEATING 2.0 [National Law Journal]
Earlier: Cheaters Never Win, Winners Never Cheat

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