Every year, there’s some law school exam drama. Sometimes a professor will reuse exam questions (despite knowing this is begging for trouble), or employ shocking and tragic hypotheticals, or force students to defend segregation. But another classic blunder involves accidentally releasing the upcoming exam to the class, giving students who see the test before it’s inevitably clawed back an unfair advantage.
USC Law students are dealing with that situation right now, but with the extra twist that it’s happening in their professional responsibility class. It’s like an M. Night Shyamalan plot… in that it’s both ironic and frustratingly stupid.
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Tipsters report that the exam was posted online for less than an hour, but of course that’s more than enough time for students to theoretically download it while the students who weren’t sitting on the school website missed out. The professor has since emailed students instructing them to delete the exam, obviously. At least the students have maintained a sense of dark humor under the circumstances. Here’s a slice of the section’s GroupMe (obviously with names redacted):
A meta-ethical dilemma! Would you dutifully abide by a discovery clawback? This is not what’s happening here because not every student got the early exam and there would be no way to effectively grade the students who properly deleted the exam in any event.
But it’s funny.
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The professor’s email left tipsters with the impression that there’s no plan to write a new exam. If true, that’s a bad call. Assuming every student who saw the test complied with the deletion request, there’s no way to scrub the study guidance they picked up from seeing the test in the first place.
It sucks to have to write a new exam at the last minute. Unfortunately, sometimes life sucks and it’s time to hunker down and write a new exam. Screwing up like this is embarrassing, but can be remediated. Doubling down is the only way to make this situation worse.
One might even say the ethical response requires writing a new exam.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.