Grades

The Wussification of Legal Education Continues

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Instead of grades, maybe we should just give law students boxes of tissues? One box if you did really well, five boxes if you stink but nobody has the heart to tell you.

As we mentioned in Morning Docket, there is a law professor running around arguing that C’s should no longer be given to law students.

Because getting C’s makes law students sad. Eliminating C’s would improve the ““psychological well-being” of law students.

…

How do you say “how did I beat you” in Mandarin?

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Morning Docket: 05.13.13

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Ted Ullyot

* Given the name and origins of the Tea Party movement, it actually makes perfect sense that their groups got grief from the IRS. [Washington Post]

* Wachtell Lipton weighs in against the practice of shareholder activists offering special compensation to director nominees. [Dealbook / New York Times]

* A law professor, Joshua Silverstein, argues that schools should embrace grade inflation. (But haven’t most of them done this already?) [WSJ Law Blog]

* Facebook shareholders might not “like” this news, but Ted Ullyot plans to step down as general counsel after about five years. We’ll have more on this later. [Corporate Counsel]

* The Brooklyn DA’s office is reopening 50 murder cases that were worked on by retired detective Louis Scarcella (who looks oh-so-savory in the NYT’s photo of him). [New York Times]

* In news that should shock no one, Nicholas Speath’s dubious discrimination case against Georgetown Law has been dismissed. [The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times]

* Not long after leaving Cravath for Kirkland, Sarkis Jebejian is putting together billion-dollar deals for private-equity clients. [Am Law Daily]

* Professor Jeffrey Rosen reviews an interesting new book, The Federalist Society (affiliate link), authored by Michael Avery and Danielle McLaughlin. [New York Times]

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Gunner Storms Out Of Class, Sends Pissy Email To His Law Professor

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I’ve got better things to do than be in this class right now.

The douchebag has a point. It’s going to be hard for some people to see, what with the kid huffing and puffing and doing all the things that make people hate gunners who spend half of class with their hand in the air. But trust me, at the heart of this story, this kid is making a reasonable point about law school and the value of in-class lectures.

Luckily for us, he’s making that point by acting like a petulant, entitled law student, one who drew the ire of his professor and the ridicule of his classmates.

So, this should be fun for the whole family… .

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Fordham Con Law Clusterbleep

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Here are some subject lines on emails currently floating around in my inbox:

“Unfair Grading Policy at Fordham Law (due to Professor negligence!)”

“Constitutional Law Exam at Fordham Law School (One wrong move after another by the Administration)”

“Fordham Law Fiasco”

Here’s a text message I received yesterday:

“Elie, how can you write about the Michigan douchenozzles when we’ve got a professor who screwed up the basic integrity of our law school transcripts?”

Without reading any of these emails, what would you guess happened? I’d say that a constitutional law professor at Fordham School of Law got lazy when it came time to write exams, made a mistake that gave one group of students an unfair advantage, and when it was revealed, the administration came up with a solution that most students feel is unfair.

That’s what I would guess. But I could be wrong. I’m not an expert or anything, I’m just a guy who has gotten very used to the way professors treat law school exams. Let’s read the emails to find out what happened….

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Would You Like To See The Grades Of All Your Classmates? Then You Should Have Gone To This Top Law School!

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Now that we’re done yelling at all the law professors in America who couldn’t bother to submit grades for their classes in a timely manner, it’s time for our other semi-annual tradition of covering total grading screw-ups by esteemed legal academics. Exam period isn’t truly over until at least one professor adds to the misery of current law students in some odd way.

The screw-up in this instant case is a doozy. We’re looking at a large 1L class, a massive administrative failure, and a loss of privacy for the students.

You know your screw-up is noteworthy when the official administrative “solution” to the problem is “wait, don’t read that email…”

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Non-Sequiturs: 01.28.13

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* The latest bombshell in the Chevron / Ecuador litigation: an ex-judge cops to participation in a bribery scheme. [Fortune]

* I wish this “defense” of posting one’s law school grades on Facebook were more full-throated and “in your face.” [Virginia Law Weekly]

* I suspect Professor Stephen Bainbridge is in the minority here. Most of my law professor friends enjoy all-expenses-paid trips to the Cayman Islands. [Professor Bainbridge]

Elie Mystal, or Somali pirate?

* Professor Glenn Reynolds: “As the GOP looks for issues it can win on, how about lowering the drinking age?” I’ll raise a glass to that. [Instapundit]

* Ahoy, mateys! Did the Supreme Court grant cert in that piracy case out of the Fourth Circuit? [FindLaw]

* Not all liberals hate guns. [New York Times]

After the jump, the dashing and handsome Ryan Chenevert — Cosmo’s reigning Bachelor of the Year, and a Louisiana lawyer — offers his thoughts on dating….

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Law School ‘Recalls’ Grades, Because Apparently They Were Too Low

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Would you like to go to law school, receive your grades, be sad, and then have your administration turn around and “recall” them because maybe they weren’t high enough? I mean, sure, you’d be annoyed that grades were late and that they teased you with something and then took it away… but if the end result was that your professors were not fully aware of opportunities to inflate your grades, you’d be willing to wait for everybody to take another look.

That’s what seems to be happening at a law school out west. The 2Ls and 3Ls received their grades over the long weekend. But almost immediately, the administration sent out word to disregard the grades because not all of the professors were aware of the opportunity to adjust the curve upwards. Would that make you happy?

Or, would you just like your grades now?

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Should You Brag About Your Law School Grades On Facebook?

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In a way, I’m surprised we don’t have more stories about people posting their grades on social media sites. The kids are already using Facebook and Twitter as a running diary of their lives, so you’d expect there to be more instances where people throw their law school transcripts up on the internet.

In fact, let me ask the question this way: why wouldn’t you post your grades on Facebook? They’re clearly important to you. If you did well, you can brag about them just as surely as one of your friends is bragging about the exploits of their kids or dogs. If you did poorly, you can seek the solace of friends who you don’t actually like well enough to have a beer with. Why wouldn’t you post them?

The obvious answers seem painfully old-timey. “It’s in poor taste to brag about your grades.” “Your transcript should be private.” “You got an ‘A’? Go f**k yourself.” These are the thoughts of a previous generation. For the Facebook generation… I mean, have you seen what people post? This is nothing.

A law student decided to post his solid grades on Facebook. I bet you can guess what school we’re talking about. Let’s just say that it’s a school that seems to admit students who like to draw attention to themselves when things are going well by subtly upturning their collars….

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Time For Our Semiannual Reminder To Law Professors to SUBMIT YOUR GRADES ALREADY

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We talk about this twice a year. Sorry, I should say we are forced to talk about this twice a year. Every year. Because every semester, there are law professors out there who refuse to submit grades in a timely fashion.

I don’t know why. Professors have to work like nine or 12 hours a week, maybe eight months a year, and write a final exam and grade it. That’s what the students are paying them for. The rest, the research, scholarship, whatever glad handing they do on their path to tenure, is something they can do on their own time. On the student’s dime, they have to lecture, write exams, and grade them.

WHY DO SO MANY OF THEM FAIL TO DO THIS?

I don’t know the answer to that question. I may never know. Last semester, Columbia Law School threatened to fine professors who handed in late grades.

Columbia’s plan seems to be working, so maybe other New York area schools should give it a try….

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Top Law School Finally Commits To Getting Grades In On Time; Will Fine Late-Grading Faculty

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How long does it take to do this anyway?

I’ve repeatedly said that law school faculty members need to do a better job of taking exams as seriously as their students. Every semester, we have a spate of stories about law professors who are too lazy to write novel exams for their students. And then, weeks later, we have to start doing stories about professors who are too lazy to grade their exams in a timely manner.

And you’ll note that I don’t think we’ve done a story on a law school giving anybody a refund because it couldn’t get its act together to provide deliverables to students.

Well, one law school seems to be willing to hold their faculty to a standard of basic competence. And they’re doing it the only way that it can be done. The school is willing to punish faculty — publicly — for late submission of grades….

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