Exam Alternatives

The spring semester is over, but Facebook tells me that plenty of law professors are still grading exams. It’s no secret that grading is not the most popular part of the job, at least in part because traditional issue-spotters can get … a little tedious after reading 30 or more. Not to mention the less than stellar prose typically produced by law students rushing to cram as much of their outline as possible into a three-hour exam. But I’d like to share an alternative approach to the end of semester exam that I used this past semester in my Nonprofit Organizations class, as well as my other classes.

After teaching law for several years, I began to notice that many law students had remarkably few opportunities to practice formal legal writing. In fact, when I asked one class of about 35 2Ls and 3Ls how many had written a memo or brief since their 1L year, only a few raised their hands. Of course, the writing requirement for graduation means that they all have to produce some form of long-form legal writing before graduating. But for most, that means a research paper, a form of legal writing they are unlikely to produce in practice. Writing memos and briefs is an important skill, and a skill that students can only develop with practice, but most get very little.

So, rather than write a traditional 3-hour issue spotter exam, I wrote three questions based on real-world events – i.e. news stories, real organizations, or pending litigation – and asked the students to provide a 1000-word memo answering each one, from the perspective of a law clerk or junior associate. The exam was open-universe, and I encouraged them to do research, talk to the research librarians, talk to each other – anything a real law clerk or junior associate could do. The students had 3+ weeks to write their memos and were told that they would be graded on the basis of how helpful and useful their memos would be to a real partner or judge. 

I’ve found that this approach to the exam has several benefits. As noted above, it forces students to practice critical legal research and writing skills. In addition, it also provides them with an additional writing sample that they can use when applying for jobs, at least if they put a meaningful effort into writing it. During the semester, it (hopefully) encourages students to approach the class more holistically and focus on ideas, rather than trying to cram every doctrine point into their notes. And – in my experience anyway – it rewards creativity and critical thinking.

It also has a lot of benefits on my end. The exams are much more varied and interesting to read, because different students take different approaches to answering the questions. Because the questions are based on the real world, there isn’t one right answer and one wrong answer, but more and less helpful ways of answering the question. In a pleasant surprise, students routinely turn up facts, cases, and ideas that I didn’t know about or hadn’t considered. And the varying levels of effort and skill make the (unfortunately) mandatory curve typically easy to maintain.

I suspect that this approach to exams wouldn’t work for all classes or teaching styles. But I have found it very effective, and many students have mentioned – with some surprise – how much they enjoyed taking the exam.

Brian L. Frye