Law Schools

Another Law Professor Screws Up Exam Time

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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

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