I know most law professors don’t like giving or grading exams. They’re busy people with many commitments that don’t have anything to do with preparing the next generation of lawyers.
But given the legal economy, given how important law school grades are right now, how can professors justify putting almost no effort into the examination process? We already had a case on an NYU Law professor using previously published questions on an exam this fall. And now we have a substantially similar situation at the University of Minnesota Law School. A professor there used exam questions that had previously been made available to some students, but not the entire class.
Details after the jump.
Here’s the explanation of the screw up:
Evidence Students -
It seems that thirty of the seventy short answer questions on the Evidence exam are, through no student’s fault, compromised. After consultation with Dean Wippman and Associate Dean McDonnell, we agree that those questions should and will be eliminated. The 70 points originally assigned to seventy questions will now be assigned to forty questions. I realized only after a student alerted me that some of the questions on the exam had been previously released to past students. I very much regret this and will make certain to avoid such problems in the future.
Prof. Stephen Cribari
University of Minnesota Law School
A student reports that the faulty exam was heavy on weak-ass multiple choice questions to begin with:
Apparently law professors everywhere have decided to be extra lazy this holiday season. The longer I think about this, the more upset it makes me. Some background on the test:
- 75 questions
- 68 were multiple choice, short answer and true/false (worth 70 points total). These questions were based upon two fact patterns.
- 2 questions were essay. These questions were based upon a longer fact pattern (worth 30 points total).
Multiple choice + True/False x Evidence = The prof. could give a s***.
Here’s a helpful hint to law professors looking to ease through exam period: write one long, complicated, unique question … and buy a dart board. Nobody has an unfair advantage when grades are based on what you needed to close out your cricket game.
Earlier: Visiting Professor at NYU Makes a Mess of 1L Contracts Exam
Last–anyone else working today?
Last–anyone else working today?
Yup, but only til noon. Obama gave us a half day!
Flase?
You, my dear sir, are the lazy one.
Thanks Obama, that means less traffic for the rest of U.S. In DC.
Minn is a shit law school. people only care when it happens to a top law school.
There was zero traffic getting to work. I take the metro, and after my transfer, I was the only person in my entire car for a couple of stops.
I’m working next week, as I always do, because it’s so nice and peaceful in an otherwise congested area. Can actually get some work done.
- 3
This story sucks.
Half a day! Less than 2 hours to go…
“This story sucks”
That’s why we’ve changed the subject.
At work, bored, and not motivated: Please someone provide helpful comments to motivate me to work.
Where ya been all your life, number 11? Listening to Mick Jagger music and bad mouthin’ your country I bet.
All I want for Christmas is a job. And to be First, for just once, on ATL.
Multiple choice + True/False x Evidence = The prof. could give a s***.
Elie,
It’s (MC + T/F) x Evidence = …
Order Of Operations Owned?
–14
“Order of Operations” I almost fell out of my chair laughing. Remember PEMDAS.
One hour!
Anyone wanting to know why first year associates are worth spit, much less $75K, should consider the fact that professors like this are all over the place in mid and upper tier law schools. It’s like graduating from high school, but not able to read and write. Now, we have folks graduating from top law schools, but can’t do anything worth jack shit.
T/F is a cop out, but MC is legit. I mean the MBE will have 33 or 34 MC evidence questions, so assuming the Prof is writing Q’s similar to the MBE he is doing his students a service.
To answer the question: the law professors keep fucking-up because they can. Too much job security.
@18, this isn’t BarBri, it’s supposed to be law school. Long essay or it didn’t happen.
–Elie
Elie’s response in the comments indicates his ignorance. Both essay and MC questions have their role in testing knowledge and undestanding of the material. With an essay, the prof can probe the depth of a person’s comprehension.
With well-crafted MC questions, there’s no bullsh!tting. A student either knows the correct answer or not. She might guess and get it right, but that’s how life works sometimes.
Elie continues the whining of law students and simply underscores why businesses are no longer paying to have first-years staffed on cases.
Elie is the worst thing that has happened to ATL.
I’ve taken this prof. His m/c are not like the MBE. 1/2 of them contain unique fact patterns with paragraph long options for answers. Yes they are easier to grade but they have to be 2x as hard to come up with.
This screw-up doesn’t even come close to the Property exam fiasco that was caused a couple years ago by the lunatic “professor” Pamela Bridgewater at American University, Washington College of Law. Clearly an affirmative action hire, Bridgewater created an exam that was replete with typographical errors, incomplete sentences, and just plain nonsensical questions. This was the fitting culmination of an entire semester of her rudeness and incompentence. It’s a testament to WCL’s commitment to “diversity,” at whatever the cost, that she remains there to this day.
Saw these posts on another board. Hey ATL, why aren’t you covering this story?
“PHLA here. Amusing board. Here’s the scoop on the credit line. Negotiations continue, but the bank is now demanding personal guarantees from the partners. As expected, many are balking. We shall see where this goes.”
“PH NY here. There’s a rumor in the pharma/ip group that O’Malley and Wexler may jump if they have to give personal guarantees to the creditor. God help the NY office if this comes to pass.”
I had this guy for Evidence. The exam was actually pretty good – on the short answer questions you have to explain your reasoning succinctly, as if you were explaining your answer to a judge in court (the prof was a former federal defender, and he doesn’t get overly caught up in theory and instead concentrates on practice). I’m not a MC fan, but his were well-crafted. I thought the exam captured a student’s knowledge and ability better than most law school exams.
And I’m sure he feels awful about this. He is a good professor. I retained more from his style of teaching that I did from most other classes.
I had a similar issue in law school for my criminal law exam. There were 3 sections, 2 essays and 1 m/c and the professor told us to pick 2 sections. i discovered in the old exam database that there was one exam that contained multiple choice questions and so i answered them in a study group to prepare. on the day of the exam, the dean came in and said that the professor didn’t know that those questions had been released and that they were the exact same questions that would appear on the exam.
Since it was pretty much only my study group that had discovered these questions, other students were complaining that they didn’t want the m/c section taken away because they thought they would perform better on m/c than essay. the dean put it to a vote and the m/c section stayed in.
Not only did I know all of the m/c answers, but because i didn’t have to spend time thinking about the answers, i had nearly double the amount of time to do the remaining essay.
Easiest A i have ever received in any class.
I had a similar issue in law school for my criminal law exam. There were 3 sections, 2 essays and 1 m/c and the professor told us to pick 2 sections. i discovered in the old exam database that there was one exam that contained multiple choice questions and so i answered them in a study group to prepare. on the day of the exam, the dean came in and said that the professor didn’t know that those questions had been released and that they were the exact same questions that would appear on the exam.
Since it was pretty much only my study group that had discovered these questions, other students were complaining that they didn’t want the m/c section taken away because they thought they would perform better on m/c than essay. the dean put it to a vote and the m/c section stayed in.
Not only did I know all of the m/c answers, but because i didn’t have to spend time thinking about the answers, i had nearly double the amount of time to do the remaining essay.
Easiest A i have ever received in any class.
Um, 68 mc/tf questions + 2 essay questions = 75 total questions? I know how _someone_ got into Minnesota Law…
This is an evidence exam, not a con law exam.
1. Evidence is all about rules, so T/F and MC can play a role in this type of exam.
2. In real life (I know, this is law school) you don’t go into court and at the end of the day, go through a long fact pattern figuring out all the evidence issues. When the issue comes up in court, you decide right away what you want to do on the one issue before you.
3. When listing points, you should always list three so that 1. you don’t seem lazy, 2. you don’t bore people, and 3. you have enough points.
Elie,
Why can’t law school teach you how to pass the exam required to practice law? Is that too much to expect from our 150k? The fact that we have to spend another 3k on a review course after three years to be taught the law just shows what a crock the whole system is.
-18
I think evidence is particularly amenable to MC testing. Lots of “admissible/non-hearsay, admissible/hearsay exception, inadmissible/hearsay, inadmissible/prejudicial” type stuff.
Also, Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally.
This is retaRded mystal
This is retaRded mystal
Multiple choice questions on a law school exam??? Remind me why we even go to law school, instead of just taking fucking Bar Bri!
Multiple choice questions on a law school exam??? Remind me why we even go to law school, instead of just taking fucking Bar Bri!
you got my vote 35
Greatest prof I’ve ever had. Though, this story is mind-numbing. Probably only a 1L could give a shit… or alumni.
Are U of Minn law students literate enough to frequent ATL?
Is MinessoTTTa Law ABA accredited?
My Torts prof. read a bunch of her old multiple choice questions (and reviewed the correct answers of course) at our last class before the Final. And a few of the MC questions on the actual exam were the exact same. What’s the big deal?
lulz at people ripping on Minnesota who probably went to even shittier state schools. If you had shit worth of a life/career you wouldn’t be tripping over other people’s exams.
lulz at people ripping on Minnesota who probably went to even shittier state schools. If you had shit worth of a life/career you wouldn’t be tripping over other people’s exams.
Had Cribari myself a few semesters ago. He was pissed because people were checking email and surfing the net during his class, so one of the questions on his final was “Have you used you computer to check email during evidence.”
Problem was that he had this question on a Con Law final. It would seem that, for Cribari, this laziness was not a one-time event, but rather part of a pattern of half-assing his job.
“Rigorous. Relevant. Ready” is their new slogan? Try “Public Interest. Pay Loans? Pissed Off.”
Halfway through our Con Law exam there, the Prof had to “correct” the fact pattern because it was nonsensical as it was written. All the activism has left its academics pretty bootleg.
SOHCAHTOA.
If you graduate from U of M I think you are licensed in Minn without taking the bar
If you graduate from U of Minn I think you are licensed in Minn without taking the bar
If you graduate from U of Minn I think you are licensed in Minn without taking the bar
45, 46, 47 you are wrong.
You’re thinking of Wisconsin.
MC tests can be a real bitch. My torts professor gave only MC and they were, by far the most difficult exams of law school. When it came time to take the MBE, I realized his questions were harder than the MBE.
As to careless professors – my 1L civ pro professor was going through a personally trying time. I tried to be understanding when she was late or canceled class or seemed scattered and unprepared but her final exam was the biggest load of crap in the history of exams. It was MC, short answer, and a couple essays. She’d clearly cobbled together the exam from past exams as the font changed mid-question. It was distracting that she used students’ names as the parties. It was more distracting when some of the answer choices referred to parties not mentioned in the fact pattern. (A friend told me he spent more than ten minutes reading and re-reading to find out where the party mentioned in one choice was in the fact pattern). The piece de resistance though was in one of the essay questions. The question required the student/law clerk to advise the judge on the motion for summary judgment filed in a case. She had the expert witness making the motion. In my answer I advised the judge to ignore the motion from the witness since he wasn’t a party and then went on to answer the question I knew she actually wanted answered. People who noticed the zillions of errors (some didn’t) were flaming mad. We spent untold number of hours studying and she couldn’t proofread the flippin’ test? I complained to the dean of students which began my lengthy and heralded career as the campus squeaky wheel.
I love these morons stating that U od M is a shit law school. First off, it’s a top 20 school, is it harvard, no, but it’s a very well respected school. Second, notice how none of the retards saying U of M is shit law school say where they went, because they actually went to a shit law school.
6, 38 and 39-I am talking to you fucking morons. I can guarantee U of M is a significantly better law school than any of you retards could ever dream of getting into.
Ellie: you suck and this blog sucks. Get a fuckin life.
I took evidence from Cribari and his exams are well written and cover the material well. MC and T/F questions are preferable for a rules based class like evidence. I’m guessing Elie didn’t take evidence and has it confused with a Crim Proc class where a long, complex essay would be more appropriate. This debacle sounds like it was caused by his lack of organization with keeping track of materials he’s written, not with laziness.
GOOOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOLDEN GOOOOOOOPHERS!!!!!!!!!!!!
QED 51, QED
Whiney bitch
Adjunct status + no significant publications + tenured wife in different academic unit = spousal hire.
It was widely believed that my corporations professor at Stanford simply assigned one’s current GPA as the grade to his exam.
An alternative was that he threw the exams en masse down the stairwell, and the ones that fell the furthest got the highest grades – or maybe it was the other way around. The evidence supported the first theory – i.e., one got one’s GPA. How he got around the use of supposedly randomly assigned ID numbers isn’t clear