Law Schools

Law Students Beware: Cheaters Never Win

You will not believe what one law student is willing to pay for on Craigslist.

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Attention law students: Law school is tough, particularly your 1L year. You are learning a new way of processing information and there aren’t shortcuts to the process — not if you want to actually learn to be a good lawyer (and of course, pass the bar exam).

Someone never broke down this reality of life to one hapless law student in Birmingham, Alabama (there are three law schools in the area, and it is unclear exactly which one our slick Sally attends), and they are using the free market to avoid learning how to actually write and think like a lawyer.

From the pages of the Birmingham Craigslist, one eagle-eyed tipster spied this suspicious ad:

I am looking to pay someone generously to write a closed memo for my Legal Research & Writing class. The memo is due tomorrow (October 21st) by 6:00 p.m. The memo will probably be 6-8 pages and I have the material that is needed as the basis of the memo. Basically need to take a short case with a fact pattern that the professor wrote up and apply it to the six factors of § 339, Restatement (Second) of Torts. I have the six factors laid out and you would need to apply the facts of the case to determine how they fit with these factors. Cross-referencing some other short cases that are in the material I have.

I have the format/outline and can provide this with the other material.

Umm, that’s cheating. You aren’t being clever, and surprisingly buying your way out of this “problem” (read: doing your own assignment) will not benefit you in the long run. And it speaks to a larger problem with our slick Sally (beside not being able to complete their own work) if s/he really believes this is a winning strategy. There’s this whole this “character and fitness” part of being admitted to the bar and, so far, things aren’t looking good.

I’m not trying to sound like an old-fashioned schoolmarm or a cheesy after-school special, but the fact remains, if two months into your 1L year (because obvi legal writing/torts = newbie) you are already looking for shortcuts you will never survive the next 2.5 years — never mind the gauntlet of law firm life that awaits.

Hopefully this is a one-off, and not a trend. I can see a worried student thinking getting an A is so much more important to their future job prospects then getting a B+ on their own and actually understanding the material. It’s disturbing that this kind of mentality may be prevalent in the latest generation of soon-to-be lawyers — and folks wonder why bar passage rates are at an all-time low.

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See the full Craigslist ad on the next page.

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