Law Schools

Law School Screws Up Final Exam, Students Have To Restart Halfway Through

Remote exams get a vote of no confidence at this school.

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Imagine sitting down to take your crim law final, and about halfway through you find out the professor gave the wrong exam. That finals nightmare scenario is all too real for some law students.

As reported by Legal Cheek, that’s exactly what happened to final-year law students at the University of Oxford. What takes it to next level f-up is that halfway through that the exam they were told it was the wrong one, as students have complained:

“Not only that the faculty could be so monumentally stupid as to have given us the wrong paper in the first place, but also to send us an incoherent email about it halfway through the exam, and fail to apologise for the mistake”.

And it isn’t the first law exam mistake this term at Oxford. During the land law final there was a problem with the instructions. Before the test began, they were told to answer four questions including at least one problem question. But when they got the exam it said to answer two problem questions. Oh, and only some of the students were even notified about the snafu, as students in the class have complained:

“It’s disappointing but not unprecedented that an exam should contain a typo. What is shocking is that the fact of the mistake wasn’t immediately communicated to everyone taking the exam and clear instructions given about whether to follow the conventions or the exam. That is what would have been done in an in-person, invigilated exam.”

Another noted:

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“It is even more surprising that only some candidates were told that there would be no penalty for breaching the exam rubric. Forcing students to work out, in the middle of an exam, whether they should ‘break’ the rules to perform best, while only some are told that there will be no consequences for doing so, ironically raises some interesting jurisprudential questions about obedience to law. I would have preferred to deal with those in the jurisprudence paper, rather than in the land paper.”

In both instances, students impacted were told to fill out a self-assessment of mitigating circumstances form. A spokesperson for the University of Oxford said:

“We will not comment on individual papers while the exam process is ongoing. However, the University has always had process in place so errors can be flagged in the conduct of exams. This process has been adjusted for this year’s open-book exams and communicated to all students sitting these exams. Exam boards will take any errors into consideration when finalising marks.

Definitely a bad sign for remote exams.

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headshotKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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