Erwin Griswold On The Importance Of Time Limits For Law School Exam

In the New York Times v. U.S., the parties filed briefs under severe constraints.

On June 30, 1971, the Supreme Court decided New York Times v. United States. The so-called Pentagon Papers cases was rushed through the Courts. Justice Harlan's dissent lays out the chronology:

Both the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rendered judgment on June 23. The New York Times' petition for certiorari, its motion for accelerated consideration thereof, and its application for interim relief were filed in this Court on June 24 at about 11 a.m. The application of the United States for interim relief in the Post case was also filed here on June 24 at about 7:15 p.m. This Court's order setting a hearing before us on June 26 at 11 a.m., a course which I joined only to avoid the possibility of even more peremptory action by the Court, was issued less than 24 hours before. The record in the Post case was filed with the Clerk shortly before 1 p.m. on June 25; the record in the Times case did not arrive until 7 or 8 o'clock that same night. The briefs of the parties were received less than two hours before argument on June 26.

During oral argument, Solicitor General Erwin Griswold--the former Dean of Harvard Law School--weighed in on the compressed briefing schedule:

The items filed by the Post and the Times, I do not believe are marked top secret, but they are marked in-camera in the caption of the items. I repeat, all three have also filed regular briefs except not printed, only the American Civil Liberties Union seem to have the resources to produce a printed brief for this case. I am told that the law students of today are indignantly opposed to final examinations because they say that no lawyer has asked to work under such pressure that he has to get things out in three or four hours. I can only say that I think it's perhaps fortunate that Mr. [William] Glendon and Mr. [Alexander] Bickel and I went to law school under an earlier dispensation.

Agreed. All law students should learn to deal with tough time constraints.

Comments

[AtR]

So, you don't give time and a half when a random hack in the office of disabilities orders you to do so, based on zero research or understanding of your course?

[DaivdBehar]

The use of a single case to make a point about millions is the commission of the Exception Fallacy.

All pre-law students should be required to show they passed a course in critical thinking, and one in the Scientific Method. These courses should immunize them against the stupidity and the toxicity of their law education. It may help to attenuate its effect that turns intelligent and ethical young people into the stupidest people in the country.

[DaivdBehar]

Students should learn to write a motion for an extension. That way the exam can take 5 years to complete.

[DaivdBehar]

Most exam questions have 50 underlying issues to IRAC. With 3 minutes an issue, I would go in descending order of persuasion, and only provide the analysis part, with one conclusion at the end.

[Queen Amalthea]

Remember folks, April is Autism Awareness month!
https://www.autismspeaks.org/world-autism-month-faq

[DaivdBehar]

There you are, Queenie. Missed you. What is your preferred pronoun, Sweetie? I want to add it to my letter of support to help you get the less exploitive job that you richly deserve. I can't believe the abuse and exploitation of such a fine diverse person.

[Queen Amalthea]

"Every April Autism Speaks celebrates World Autism Month"
https://www.autismspeaks.org/world-autism-month-faq

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Every month is Autism Month at some blogs.

[DaivdBehar]

Hi, Artie. Woke talk is worthless. Start acting woke. You need to resign and to interview your diverse replacement. Come back after you have done so. Until then, you have zero credibility, you old, white, male supremacist. Your white privilege put you a lap ahead in the competitive race for school admission and for your job. Not fair.

[Queen Amalthea]

"Many children and adults on the autism spectrum need help in learning how to act in different types of social situations. They often have the desire to interact with others, but may not know how to engage "

https://www.autismspeaks.org/social-skills-and-autism

[DaivdBehar]

These exams and their resulting grades have no reliability and no validation. In addition, most highly successful people as measured by income did not do well on them. Their content is unrelated to any external law practice.

That is a set of much bigger problem than any time limit controversy.

[DaivdBehar]

I think spending 5 minutes on an issue with 30-50 issues in a question, each rule, an application of the rule and a conclusion would be considered legal malpractice. So these rapid fire exams, including the bar are promulgating misconduct and inadequate representation. I like the model reported by a commentator, the 24 hour take home. That is more like legal practice.

[DaivdBehar]

Diverses debate.

https://www.westernjournal.com/student-forced-hide-bathroom-woke-mob-hunts-inviting-prominent-black-republican-speak/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=WJBreaking&utm_campaign=breaking&utm_content=western-journal&ats_es=731571b3134386edfd354e86a103b590

[apedad]

I don't get this blog.

Prof. Blackman is using a case from the 1970s to discuss time constraints lawyers face?!?

Aren't there computers and internets and databases and cell phones and Zooms and blogs (e.g. SCOTUS blog, Volokh Conspiracy, etc.), that vastly increase the productivity of today's lawyers (and law students)?

[Don Nico]

none of those time saving devices accelerate careful analysis and composition or consultation with colleagues.

[SimonP]

I don't get this blog.

It is perhaps easier to understand once one notes that these are law professors writing largely for one another. Josh in particular is only really speaking to law professors like himself and law students in the Federalist Society.

Once this is understood, you can recognize that much of their commentary centers on "controversies" that are barely observed outside the realm of legal academia but are still resounding in the various echo chambers of legal academia itself. Just as Shapiro's tweet on KBJ launched weeks of commentary about "cancel culture," Josh seems to be commenting obliquely on controversies and issues that no one has really been paying attention to for weeks or months. His post the other day, for instance, about Tinker, was probably intended to be some kind of commentary on the display at Yale several weeks back (i.e., where students attempted to shout down a speaker they disagreed with, and where the Dean later came out to condemn what they did, but apparently not with the vehemence that some here would have preferred, etc.). This one seems to be a reference to COVID-era accommodations made for exam administration as well as efforts to ease exam administration for certain disadvantaged groups (e.g., there was some talk about students needing accommodations in the context of the George Floyd/BLM protests, due to stress).

I mean, there's a throughline. Chances are, if you don't know what it is, it's little more than gossip for culture warriors in the legal academy.

[Publius_2020]

All of that is true, but I think you left out the part where many posts are intended with a somewhat light-hearted tone. Certainly, EV's posts often have that "I find this amusing" note at their heart.

[James Pollock]

" I think you left out the part where many posts are intended with a somewhat light-hearted "

Like whining that Uber costs more and takes longer than it used to?

[Rossami]

Prof Blackman is citing a famous case from the 1970s to show that calls to eliminate the time limits are not new. He is also arguing by implication that those calls to eliminate the time limits are as ill-conceived now as they were back in the 1970s.

However it's worth noting that to the extent that computers, cell phones and blogs really do improve lawyer and law student productivity(an unproven premise), that would be an argument to shorten the exam time limits, not to extend or eliminate them.

[santamonica811]

Yeah, I'm not understanding the reaction to this particular post of Blackman. It seems to fall into the 5% of his posts that are apolitical.

Seems absolutely appropriate for a law professor (or a law student, or a judge) to argue: "Lawyers almost never have to work under a huge time rush. But it *does* happen. And lawyers should know how to deal with it. So, having at least some law school exams reflect this is a good thing."

When I went to UCLA (88-91), most exams were 3-4 hours. But there were also 6 hour "at home" exams we had to take for a handful of classes, and the same amount of overnight exams. Those last ones were brutal, since they took about 12-16 hours of work, which you had to cram into the 24 hours you were given. After law school; as a trial lawyer, it felt good to have the confidence that, on the rare occasions where I had to drop everything and rush out a brief or writ in a day, I had the ability to do so.

[santamonica811]

[And yes, I understand and recognize that me defending Josh Blackman is one of the signs of the Apocalypse.]

[DaivdBehar]

Santa did you have any course with the denier, Volokh? Did he mention the plagiarism of the catechism by American statutes, and that could be unlawful in our secular nation? Or did he stick to disputes about crosses in city flags, even if the cross was a tourist attraction?

[Kazinski]

That's just so they don't have to hire as many secretaries.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Unfortunately the skills needed to do well on a time limited law school exam are the opposite of the skills needed to write an effective emergency brief.

[James Pollock]

Meh. There are some skills that are detectable under law school exams that are the same as writing an effective brief on short notice. Most people who are rushed begin to make more mistakes, spelling and grammar and the like. It takes time, effort, and practice to develop the ability to write well when hurried.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Getting a good grade on a law school test requires writing a lot of words about as many issues as possible. Worrying about being organized gets in the way. Writing an effective emergency brief requires economy of language, focus on a minimum of key issues, and being tightly organized.

[SimonP]

Josh, since you have never really practiced law, it is perhaps not surprising that you find meaningful insight into how it's done through fifty-year-old off-hand commentary before the Supreme Court. And since you are a moron, it is perhaps not surprising that you find only confirmation, in that record, of a modern-day status quo.

But suffice it to say that the way that law students are evaluated has no real resemblance to how fast-paced litigation or corporate practice actually works. In modern practice, motions and briefs like these would be composed substantially from relevant precedents used in other matters. Substantial portions of the arguments and citations would be drawn from other work already done in the case history. The final documents would be prepared by whole teams of lawyers and paralegals, overseen by experienced, senior lawyers guiding the work of junior associates and paralegals performing discrete tasks concurrently. Assigning an appellate brief to a junior associate in the kinds of circumstances that typify a law school final exam (or even the bar exam) would be borderline malpractice.

If law professors were interested in inculcating in their students the skills they would need in practice, they would take a very different approach to teaching and evaluating their students. The way it works now, law students are largely on their own to draw the right lessons from course readings, and are expected to study for exams by taking "practice exams" and reviewing "answer keys," from which they are to glean how a professor expects an exam to be tackled and addressed. They are then expected to perform, in class, in a time-constrained exam with only an outline as a resource. Exams are deliberately constructed to snow students under with fact patterns and "issues" to spot, so as to require them to make judgments about the most salient issues and how most expediently to address them within the time constraints. It's just a monkey show, which unfortunately rewards a kind of empty ambition and lack of creativity - which aptly enough explains the stultifying discourse of legal academia and the apparent success of prolific morons like yourself.

To be sure, law students need to learn how to do high-stakes work on compressed timelines. But in practice they learn to do that kind of work with ample support and senior guidance. An appellate brief is not treated as some kind of arbitrary means of selecting a handful of students for a professor's highest grades.

[And I am bracketing the fact that timing expectations in the industry now border on the preposterously inhumane. Some work needs to be done to re-establish the space for legal professionals to "recharge" and not be billing automatons - which serves neither the lawyers nor their clients particularly well. But again that is a real-life, real-practice kind of question I wouldn't expect Josh to know anything about. He's far too busy churning out citation-free op-eds for Newsweek.]

[bernard11]

Wow!

Quite a blast.

[Dan Schiavetta]

To be fair to Josh, you are also calling Solicitor General Griswold a moron.

[Kazinski]

Yes all true, Sidney. As I was just saying yesterday: "You can ask anyone, and they'll tell you why their job is harder than everyone else's."

[James Pollock]

Fact: In practice, a lawyer on a tight deadline very likely has access to Westlaw for research and at least one experienced paralegal for drafting assistance. If the subject is important enough, then there is also assistance available from other partners and associates.

It's not exactly a secret that new associates are nearly useless, because they have a law license but not experience on how to use a law license to produce billable work, nor on making sure that their billings are collectable (and thus convertible to income, i.e. student loan payments). This is why associates ARE associates, rather than the boss. Compare: A brand-new M.D. may have a lovely white coat and all, but needs guided practice in the field of medicine to become an effective physician, which is why medical licenses involve residency. The point of residency is oversight, so the brand-new M.D.'s are working under the supervision of someone who can catch their mistakes. Lawyers don't have formal residency, but their situation is similar... they need to work under the supervision of someone who can be expected to catch their mistakes before the consequences become too severe.

[KenveeB]

Do you think that all lawyering is done by big firms? Or just things with deadlines? Many lawyers are sole practitioners or work in small firms, and government lawyers are often stretched very thin. While I'll grant you the access to Lexis or Westlaw, I'm a prosecutor and have never once in my career had access to a paralegal to help draft a thing. I rarely have another attorney to help me either. I've worked on very tight deadlines to handle emergency filings, and 90% of the time it's been all alone.

[James Pollock]

"Do you think that all lawyering is done by big firms?"

Can you point to where I said anything like "all lawyering is done by big firms"?

" I'm a prosecutor and have never once in my career had access to a paralegal to help draft a thing. I rarely have another attorney to help me either. I've worked on very tight deadlines to handle emergency filings, and 90% of the time it's been all alone."

So, you're extremely inefficient, is what you're saying.

[Bruce Hayden]

I am told that the law students of today are indignantly opposed to final examinations because they say that no lawyer has asked to work under such pressure that he has to get things out in three or four hours.”

I picked the wrong type of law to practice - patent law, where time limits are typically statutory, and fire drills can be common. Can’t count the number of times I was up against midnight Eastern Time zone filing deadlines - and made them. But throughout the practice of law, there are a lot of places where this is the case. You are dealing with people’s rights, and in so many areas, that is more important than your kid’s softball game.

You might say that the problem is budgeting of time. But there are a lot of times when deadlines are beyond your control. But maybe as importantly, law schools perform a sorting function, ranking 50k or so graduating JDs a year into some sort of preference list. That’s why so many of them grade on strict curves. Fast, thorough, and ultimately efficient is what you want in many cases. The slow associate is going to get his bills written down by the billing partner, and that often means not making partner. If you are going to offer a brand new associate $150k, $200k, you need someone who can consistently produce, bill, and have collected, 3x-4x that much work. That can be daunting. And in many cases, it takes several years for associates to start paying off. It takes resources to train them. That is why law schools are engaged to do this sorting and sifting process - and except maybe for a couple top schools, if they don’t participate, and help sort and sift for efficiency, their grads are going to ultimately be ignored by law firms (and ultimately, by top law professors and law students).

[Dan Schiavetta]

This may be true, but if so, it explains a lot. Faster lawyering is not better lawyering.

[Kazinski]

But it maybe all the lawyering you can afford.

I heard once that there are unlimited wants and needs I this world, and that there are limited time and resources to fulfill them. And there are people that actually study how that all works.

Anyway, it turns out pricing, figuring out how much you are willing to spend for any thing or task is how people decide to how to allocate their resources, no matter how much time you think you need to get it done in a world without constraints.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Driven by greed. There’s no reason you can’t spend twice as much time and make a little less. And also perversely by people wanting to pay more. In most businesses the rule is that people are willing to pay a little more if they know they’re getting good stuff. But most clients don’t know good lawyering when they see it.

[Michael P]

If all lawyers spent twice as much time on their work, regardless of what they charge, approximately half as much law work would get done. Some clients would lose representation, and others would be represented in fewer matters.

Some commenters would argue that would be an unequivocally good thing, but not me. Typically, the economy is improved by improving the economy of all work that is done. (Occasionally, it's improved by replacing one kind of work with another.) Lawyering, doctoring, in-person teaching, and other careers are harder to make more efficient than jobs like manufacturing, but there is still a societal demand for efficiency in those careers.

As a first order effect, if lawyers spent twice as much time on their work, we could train and employ more lawyers to compensate -- but employment, especially among the people who might be decent lawyers, is already roughly full (in the US). Other knowledge work would go undone instead.

[David Nieporent]

Faster lawyering is not better lawyering.

It is if there's a deadline.

[YepThatGuy]

Best comment of the thread.

[Dan Schiavetta]

But usually there is not a deadline.

[James Pollock]

There is ALWAYS a deadline, but sometimes nobody knows what it is (or will be).

[Dan Schiavetta]

What everyone here means by “deadline” is “tight deadline”.

[SimonP]

While you're right that an inefficient associate - with gobs of written-off time - is suboptimal, I'm not sure that it's better when an associate bills an appropriate amount of time but is "writing off" their own time in order to avoid sticking out as inefficient.

Associates need to bill their time, and if there's a problem with time management, it's the role of the supervising attorneys to set expectations. I.e., "Spend a couple of hours on this, and then let's regroup to discuss what you've found," etc. Writing off time is as much a signal of poor management (by the supervisor) as it is inefficiency (of the associate).

Essentially, what you're describing here is just the law-firm equivalent of law school pedagogy, where the desired "results" are clear, but how to get to them is left a mystery. You just throw them in and see who floats.

The irony, also, is that law school students aren't horribly efficient. They may train themselves to complete an exam quickly and efficiently. But law students engaged in that training spend enormous amounts of time studying and practicing exams, in a kind of race to the bottom for every last bit of advantage vis-a-vis their peers. For them, that massive time commitment is all about the up-front investment in achieving high grades, which they can leverage later for career success. But "efficient" isn't how I'd describe that process. They burn a ton of time on diminishing returns.

[Lee Moore]

Associates need to bill their time, and if there's a problem with time management, it's the role of the supervising attorneys to set expectations.

Good one 🙂

The voice of youth.

Meanwhile, cui bono is your friend here. The dozy associate has a strong interest in being thought less dozy than he actually is, the smart associate has a strong interest in being thought even smarter than he actually is, and the billing partner has no interest at all in writing off gobbets of time. He has an interest in finding just exactly the amount of time on the clock that he thinks he can get away with billing.

The only people with an interest in the true answer are "the management" who want to know who to fire and who to promote. But you have to be a very young manager to imagine the associate is writing down on his timesheet how long he really spent.

So it was when Cicero was an associate, so it will be when the world ceases to turn.

[SimonP]

The voice of youth.

More, the voice of a rising class of senior lawyers who see the mistakes of the Boomer generation and understand how mismanagement produces churn in the junior ranks, particularly with the Millennials and Gen Z-ers coming up now.

[David Nieporent]

Associates need to bill their time, and if there's a problem with time management, it's the role of the supervising attorneys to set expectations. I.e., "Spend a couple of hours on this, and then let's regroup to discuss what you've found," etc. Writing off time is as much a signal of poor management (by the supervisor) as it is inefficiency (of the associate).

This assumes that the only reason an associate might take "too long" is inefficiency, rather than inexperience. I can churn out a memo on a topic quickly because I've been practicing for more than twenty years, I know a lot off the top of my head, and I know enough to know where to look to guide my research quickly down the path.

The young associate isn't in the same boat. If I want him/her to prepare a memo on the topic, the associate may be starting from a zero baseline. The associate may need to do some basic background research that the client would not be willing to pay for, to get up to speed, and then explore the topic further. Sure, I could spoon feed the associate, but that's not a good use of my time and of course doesn't help the associate develop. It's better to let the associate go (within reason) and then write off some of the associate's time.

[bernard11]

The associate may need to do some basic background research that the client would not be willing to pay for, to get up to speed, and then explore the topic further.

I have occasionally found myself paying for some of that time.

[SimonP]

Well, that's implicit in what I'm trying to say here. Associates need training; clients don't want to be billed for it; and even the most micro-managey of managers aren't going to get perfect results even with a big time investment holding the juniors' hands through it. That's not a question of "efficiency," I'll agree.

What I'm responding to is the comment above mine, which takes the position that law schools help to select for associates who can do good work, quickly. I would counter that the actual path for most junior associates begins with "training time" that has to be written off, transitioning eventually to more "managed time" (per my comment) if the associate is still "overbilling" for things they shouldn't need "training time" for, any more.

[Dan Schiavetta]

One thing I learned quite early.

If you don’t know something. . . .

The worst thing to do is . . .

A S K !

If you ask, then your boss knows you don’t know it . . . which puts you in his mind in a lower position than the other new associates . . . who did not ask . . .

They didn’t know either . . . but your boss doesn’t know that . . .

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Griswold was, in this context, a cranky old white Republican male on the wrong side of history, offering a snide aside about 'kids today' (and his figurative lawn) during his efforts to thwart progress.

That appears to qualify him as a Volokh Conspirator (in memoriam).

[Cal Cetín]

I love your qualifying phrase "in this context."

Checking Wikipedia, it seems he was an expert witness in civil-rights cases, pressed for the admission of women to Harvard Law School, accused President Kennedy of not doing enough for civil rights, denounced Senator McCarthy, hired the first woman in the Solicitor General's office, helped get RBG on the circuit court, compared her to a pioneer of civil rights...

To be sure he advocated for censorship in the Pentagon Papers case, but I thought censorship was the wave of the future. Without censorship, how are you going to stomp the clingers into submission? How are you going to shove things down people's throats if they have free speech?

[James Pollock]

"Without censorship, how are you going to stomp the clingers into submission?"

By letting them advocate for themselves, as best they can, which is not great.

[Bored Lawyer]

The best law school exam I had was a take home. You could pick it up (from some secretary) any time you wanted during the exam period, but had to return your answers within 24 hours. Professor expected you to give citations in your answer (although you could cite cases in the case book.) That was the closest to actual practice any exam I had was.

[Zarniwoop]

Agreed. I thought the 24-hour take-homes where one submitted the answer via computer document, were far preferable to a 3hr handwritten "vomit as many thoughts as you can quickly scrawl into a test booklet" style exam.

Neither are "real practice of law", and no one should even pretend they are. But the former is a far better testing method.

[AtR]

24-hour take-homes are just begging for cheating and plagiarism ... in-person exams are the only reasonably reliable mechanism for identifying a student's work in the modern academic environment.

Yes, people cheat and plagiarize in the real world ... but there are often real (i.e., employment-related) consequences for the actions.

[James Pollock]

"24-hour take-homes are just begging for cheating and plagiarism ... in-person exams are the only reasonably reliable mechanism for identifying a student's work in the modern academic environment."

Lawyers in the real world work together on all sorts of projects. Why shouldn't law school exams reward the real-world skills of working together?

[Archibald Tuttle]

I would hate to be a witness being cross examined by that guy taking more than 3-4 hours to formulate his question.

[Bored Lawyer]

Yes and no. You are right that a good trial lawyer needs to think on his feet. But he also needs to be well prepared. The brilliant cross question is likely to be based on hours of preparation.

[Archibald Tuttle]

Planned or not, 2 questions per day of testimony puts everyone to sleep.

[NumaNumaPompilius]

Yeah, in my experience, being good at "thinking on your feet" is 10% being quick-witted and 90% being more obsessively well-prepared than everyone else. There's no substitute for actually knowing your shit, and actually knowing your shit requires lots of time and hard work.

[James Pollock]

"Yeah, in my experience, being good at "thinking on your feet" is 10% being quick-witted and 90% being more obsessively well-prepared than everyone else."

At least 50% caffeine.

[dwb68]

All *people* need to learn to deal with time limits.

Also, I taught calculus, differential equations, econ, and some other tough classes. First thing I learned was that you cannot help people who don't help themselves. I made the exam open book, I took the questions off the study guide of 50 problems I handed out a week before and went over in the optional study session. Literally everyone should have got 100%. No matter what the average grade was about 70%. I mean c'mon people.

I can tell you, Daddy and Mommy were paying a lot to send their kids to the school, and they should have bought a Bentley instead.

Time waits for no one. These kids are going to get old, be on their deathbed not having accomplished anything, and realize real life has a time limit. Teachers who do not teach kids to obey time limits are not helping anyone.

[bernard11]

First thing I learned was that you cannot help people who don't help themselves. I made the exam open book, I took the questions off the study guide of 50 problems I handed out a week before and went over in the optional study session.

This is not unlike my experience. I taught intro finance, and spent a certain amount of time on basic NPV calculations for capital budgeting. At one review session a student asked, inevitably, whether NPV would be on the exam.

"I'm not going to tell you what's on the exam," I said, "but we spent a lot of class time on this, and it was on the homework, and we are reviewing it now. Use your brain."

I don't think he did.

[David Welker]

"I am not going to tell you what will be on the exam. But THIS will be on the exam."

It sounds like you should relax your policy about not telling your students what will be on the exam. It is possible to give people some information without spoiling the whole surprise.

The reason for not giving people what will be on the exam is to give students an incentive to study material that isn't going to be tested.

If I recall correctly, research seems to indicate that topics that aren't on the exam aren't as well retained as those that are. I believe that one sometimes overlooked on an exam is not just to examine the students knowledge, but also a device for creating memories that will increase the long-term value of the teaching.

To the extent that is true, the truly important stuff should be on the exam. And it need not be a secret what that important stuff will be.

[David Nieporent]

Seriously, between this and the comment below about extra credit I'm wondering if you went to school. (Law school or otherwise.) There is typically more information covered in a semester-long class than can be covered in depth on one exam. (If there isn't, that's either one damn long exam or one wasted semester.) The professor can either design an exam to cover everything superficially, or to cover a few subjects in depth.

Most law school profs choose the latter. (Yes, there are hybrids, in which they'll give some short response (or even multiple choice) questions to superficially cover everything, and then essays to cover a few topics in depth.) When the prof is asked whether a particular topic is being covered on the exam, the prof can

a) Lie and say yes, so that students will study it.
b) Tell the truth and say no, knowing this means most students won't study it.
c) Refuse to say, forcing the students to study each major topic.

[David Welker]

Law schools are extremely inefficient at teaching in my view. First, there is the Socratic method which does not scale to large 100+ person classes very well because hearing some other random student engage in a Socratic discussion with a professor tends to be often difficult to follow (based on the random coherence or incoherence of the chosen student) and often extremely boring.

Further, having a single final exam (which is extremely common in law school) is far from optimal based on the theory that exams do not merely test learning, but are themselves learning tools. A student who is either successful or is burned by answering an exam question correctly or incorrect on an exam is more likely to remember the correct answer. Furthermore, if the class is not over and there will be more exams, the student has more incentive to correct problems in their understanding of the material.

Overall, I believe that law schools do a poor job of teaching. I agree with the law school emphasis of teaching from cases and other primary sources (to some extent), but I disagree with both the Socratic method in large classes (because it does not scale) and basing assessments upon one exam (based on the theory that exams are teaching tools and students have more incentive to learn from their mistakes on exams if there will be further exams and also that learning is best both done and proven in an incremental fashion).

Law schools are doing it wrong. Your argument is based on the theory that they are doing it right.

[bernard11]

It sounds like you should relax your policy about not telling your students what will be on the exam. It is possible to give people some information without spoiling the whole surprise.

Since my teaching career was fairly brief, and ended about 25 years ago, it's too late to change my policies.

The reason for not giving people what will be on the exam is to give students an incentive to study material that isn't going to be tested.

I agree.

the truly important stuff should be on the exam. And it need not be a secret what that important stuff will be.

It was no secret. The students had ample clues as to what was important - class time, homework assignments, amount of reading, random comments, etc.

[David Welker]

There is no need for clues is my point.

I am not totally against surprise, but if it is right that students learn from exams themselves, then that which is not tested will not be retained as much in the future. Assuming that is the case, what is tested and what is not should probably not be a matter of random chance. The most important things that you want students to know after the class is over should be on the exam.

[bernard11]

I do not try to surprise anyone. I put what is important on the exam. Learning how to tell what is and is not important is itself important.

The point is not that I give clues, as though this was some sort of game. Rather, important things are emphasized, unimportant ones are not.

At some point I might briefly discuss stock symbols. Mentioning that Anheuser-Busch's symbol is BUD is usually good for a chuckle, but I hope no one thinks that's going to be an exam question.

[James Pollock]

Students remember the questions they missed on the exam far longer than they remember the ones they got right.
This is why exam review is an important part of the educational process.

[ducksalad]

dwb68, one could argue that those students are engaging in advanced critical thinking and rational time management. They are there to get the course credit and most have no ambition to be perfect. Some of them don't even particularly desire to pass, they registered to please a parent, a probation officer, or just because they were told that's what you do after high school.

When you say "open book" they carefully deconstruct your words and realize the real meaning is "You can try to learn it in real time during the exam and probably still expect, on average, a score of 70".

When you say "optional study session" they understand that means you cannot introduce new material during the session.

[ducksalad]

Lower level classes typically aren't limited by innate ability, they are limited by effort. The average is 70 because (on average) students are willing to work hard enough to get a 70.

[dwb68]

lol.
1. " They are there to get the course credit and most have no ambition to be perfect."

Most of the students in higher calc classes or diffeq are plan to go on to engineering or other stem classes. A fair number of pre-med too. So some of them really did need the material. I think mainly quite a few discovered stem was not for them.

You are 100% some of them didn't care. That was the point of my comment- in the early days I made it easy and spoon fed them and still they didn't care. Which led to the new rule: make them work harder for the average grade.

I think that there is an old rule in teaching that students will rise to the level of your expectations. Sadly I feel like we all have to re-learn this every generation.

2. "When you say 'optional study session' they understand that means you cannot introduce new material during the session."

well, duh. I only took exam questions from homework or quiz questions (changing the #s) and the study guide was only a compilation of the those.

[SimonP]

I spent my undergraduate years spread across multiple departments - one liberal arts, one math, one STEM.

By far, the classes where I learned the most were the ones where the professor didn't "spoon-feed" us. Those professors focused on teaching concepts, critical analysis, etc. How to think, less than what to think. I excelled in those classes.

The classes where the professor resorted to "spoon-feeding" in some futile attempt to keep their class grades up were the ones where I felt least engaged, and the instruction seemed to match. Whether due to incompetence or disillusionment, the professors in those classes didn't seem to care, they didn't teach the material particularly well, the students weren't very respectful. Teaching like that drove me out of the STEM department.

Law school was its own exercise in crushing intellectual curiosity. No spoon-feeding, to be sure. But I can't say they pulled the best out of me.

[David Welker]

The idea of "making" someone learn or focusing on "your expectations" for them is a big part of the problem.

If someone doesn't want to learn, that isn't your problem. If they don't have expectations for themselves, you can't substitute your expectations for the ones that they lack.

Calculus for medical school probably doesn't make very much sense. There are probably more efficient IQ tests we can give people rather than expose doctors to a skill that they will rarely or never use.

One major problem with education is people "going through the motions" learning material that they know they will never encounter later in their career. This makes it more difficult for students to care or develop expectations for themselves, because all they are really doing is jumping through an arbitrary hoop and they know it. There is enough actual medical knowledge out there that we do not need to fill curriculums with unnecessary information.

I feel many of the requirements are from a time when there was, in fact, less knowledge out there. But if we are going to require an irrelevant skill for pre-med students, it definitely should be computer science rather than calculus. The probability of that actually being useful later in the career of a doctor is much higher.

[Absaroka]

"Calculus for medical school probably doesn't make very much sense."

They may be wrong, but it seems a fair number require a bit of calculus.

I see Brown, Duke ('strongly recommended'), Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Penn State, Tufts ('recommended', not a requirement), various UCal's, Wake Forest, Wash U, et al.

[David Welker]

I think they are wrong.

If we did a survey of practicing physicians, how many would say that calculus was an important part of their career or day-to-day practice do you think?

The only argument for it is that the reasoning abilities uniquely learned in calculus somehow helps with problem-solving in medicine in a way that, for example, reasoning learned when taking a computer science course wouldn't similarly help.

Ideally, if we are going to be teaching reasoning abilities, we stick to subjects as close as possible to one's career goals as possible. This will better motivate students and create fewer inefficient hoop-jumping exercises.

[David Nieporent]

I'm not an expert on medical school, but I assume that calculus is less useful for the everyday practice of doctoring than it is for taking certain med school classes.

[Absaroka]

That was my thought - a surprising number required physics, and of course organic chem. I could see it used for reaction rates and so on.

FWIW, also, they said 'calculus'. I dunno about other schools, but my alma mater had two calculus tracks - engineering calculus, which was two years x 5 credit hours and had a 50% fail rate, and calculus for everyone else which was a much easier 1 year x 3 credit hour class. Come to think of it, they had a third one called 'Calculus Survey' or something for ed majors that was even less rigorous. Anyway, it's not like every prospective MD is going to be doing triple integrals in his dreams like the engr majors.

(OTOH, a couple required diffy-Qs, which IMHO are a lot harder than plain calculus)

(Some didn't require stats, which seems like a serious weakness)

[David Welker]

Is it important for medical doctors to be able to calculate reaction rates? How does that help their patients?

Of course, SOMEONE has to calculate reaction rates. But that someone is not your physician.

[David Nieporent]

Yes, but it's not Physician School. It's Medical School. Graduates may end up doing all sorts of things besides setting a broken wrist and prescribing antibiotics for that rash.

[Absaroka]

I'm not talking about looking up something in a table - I'm talking about an understanding of, say, pharmacological kinetics. I sure want my doc to understand those. And the way to understand those is to understand the math.

My sense is you are talking about fields you don't really understand well.

[David Welker]

Absaroka,

If we were to test practicing physicians (without warning them so that they could study) on pharmacological kinetics, I bet most would fail.

Pharmacological kinetics is a subject that is more relevant to drug design than it is to prescribing drugs. And physicians are CERTAINLY not calculating reaction rates when deciding what medicines to prescribe to patients. (Can you imagine how much it would suck to die because your physician f*cked up a calculus problem? But I digress.)

[David Welker]

Nieporent,

It is legitimate for an M.D. to go into research. Say they decide they want to be an M.D./Ph.D. and they actually need to know calculus because of whatever subfield they have chosen.

They can learn calculus THEN. In the Ph.D. portion of their training. Learning something near the time you are actually going to use it is much more efficient anyway.

Having EVERYONE learn calculus, just because is HIGHLY INEFFICIENT. And efficiency actually matters. If we could shave some time off of medical education, we could increase the number of physicians, lower the cost and increasing the quality of medical care. (Fewer physicians means not only higher prices, but less time spent per patient.)

On this subject, I am far more libertarian than you. You want a top-down centralized mandate for everyone to know calculus. I think that the people who should know calculus are those who either 1) want to learn it just because or 2) those who actually need it for their career.

[David Welker]

If we were to assume that was true, that might be a sign that those medical school classes are themselves lacking optimal focus and alignment with the practice of medicine.

Which is bad if you assume that doctors who are more knowledgable in RELEVANT knowledge are more likely to make correct diagnosis of a given problem. Time spend on less relevant knowledge may come at the expense on more relevant knowledge.

There are, of course, subfields of biology and medicine where calculus would be relevant. Certainly many of the tools used in medicine are based on the laws of physics and require calculus to fully understand. But just as you don't need to understand calculus to drive your car (even if it is used to design your car), a doctor need not understand the internals of all the tools they use in medicine work.

[Absaroka]

"I think they are wrong.

If we did a survey of practicing physicians, how many would say that calculus was an important part of their career or day-to-day practice do you think?"

Not my area of expertise; I'll defer to Harvard. Maybe they know something I don't.

Also, many engineers don't use calc after college. I don't think that means it shouldn't be required, though.

[David Welker]

Deferring to an institutional arrangement at Harvard because they might know something you don't is not really a good form of reasoning when that institutional arrangement may and likely is in place due to institutional inertia.

If many engineers aren't using calculus after college, that is, in fact, a sign it shouldn't be required for them. Of course, not all engineers are the same. Far from it. Some people do in fact need to know calculus to do their job.

[Absaroka]

"Deferring to an institutional arrangement at Harvard because they might know something you don't is not really a good form of reasoning..."

Perhaps, although the argument that they - and other med schools - may be better positioned to design med school curricula than lawyers is not without merit.

"If many engineers aren't using calculus after college, that is, in fact, a sign it shouldn't be required for them."

I dunno. It's fine to use a table or computer program to do the dirty work, but there is an argument that you should understand a bit about what is going on under the covers in order to really use things safely. Moreover, there are classes - thermo, perhaps - where you need the calc to understand the thermo. And colleges are graduating, say, mechanical engineers who might go on to a number of fields. The guy who goes to work on engines might use thermo a lot, while the guy who designs cup holders probably won't. But they don't know who will end up doing what.

"Some people do in fact need to know calculus to do their job."

Indeed. I've used it, and the higher level math, a few times myself.

[David Welker]

Based on my experience seeing how law schools are designed or actually taking the bar exam, I am very familiar with concept of institutional inertia creating suboptimal systems. I know that lawyers have not created optimal systems for educating and credentialing lawyers. And I also know this about medical doctors based on the fact that the minimum MCAT score that will get you into medical school keeps on changing. (The standards are thus obviously relative, not absolute.)

More importantly, talking about WHO is better positioned to decide X is non-substantive. What is substantive is talking about what X should be and why.

"And colleges are graduating, say, mechanical engineers who might go on to a number of fields. The guy who goes to work on engines might use thermo a lot, while the guy who designs cup holders probably won't. But they don't know who will end up doing what."

This is why we have master's degrees. Or certificate programs. Ever hear of just in time manufacturing? It is more efficient. Just in time education is also more efficient.

Why delay the education of the guy who is going to design cup holders for the sake of having knowledge used by the guy who designs the engine? That isn't efficient. That is really just crazy. You may call the cupholder guy a mechanical engineer and the engine guy a mechanical engineer. But they aren't really the same. (Imagine that, an engineer actually designing *bump bump bump* engines!)

The REAL reason we designed these systems like this was 1) because we designed curriculum based on what teachers knew and 2) because personalized education did not scale.

But in the modern era, personalized education WILL scale and with an explosion of access to knowledge means that we are not as reliant on purely local knowledge.

We have the means to be more efficient. But institutional inertia will delay us for a time as people (like you) make the argument that "of course the people who do it the old way know what they are doing and of course they would update their systems right away in response to technology... I don't understand why they do what they do, but there MUST be a good reason after all they have fancy credentials and specialized knowledge"

[Absaroka]

"Why delay the education of the guy who is going to design cup holders for the sake of having knowledge used by the guy who designs the engine? "

Because when they were in college they didn't know whether they were going to be designing cup holders or engines. And you might design cup holders for a while, then switch to engines, of vice versa. The engineers I know surely haven't been pigeonholed for their whole careers.

[David Welker]

The alternative to not teaching possibly irrelevant subjects early is not to pigeon-hole people for their entire careers. The alternative is to teach them those subjects when they are relevant.

An engineer who designs cupholders can learn what they need to know to design engines later when (and if) they desire to make that transition.

And knowing that they have an actual (rather than theoretical) purpose to learn the particular thing they now wish to learn, the engineer will be more motivated to pay attention. And with less time between learning and application of knowledge, less will be forgotten. If you took calculus 20 years ago, but haven't touched it since and you suddenly need it for your job, you are going to have to re-learn quite a bit of it anyway.

Education isn't a thing that begins and ends in college anymore. That is an old model that is obsolete.

[James Pollock]

"The only argument for it is that the reasoning abilities uniquely learned in calculus somehow helps with problem-solving in medicine in a way that, for example, reasoning learned when taking a computer science course wouldn't similarly help."

Computer Science programs generally require at least a year of calculus in the first two years. Or at least, they did back when I was wanting to earn a degree in Computer Science.

[David Welker]

That isn't a logical requirement for computer science. Computer science deals with discrete mathematics much more than calculus.

Calculus was not required at UC Irvine, where I went to school for computer science as undergraduate over 20 years ago. Other programs required it because their computer science programs were part of the engineering program and calculus was required JUST BECAUSE.

This is just institutional inertia. People doing things the "old way" because that is the way they have always done it.

You even see people defending things that don't make sense in this thread. It is unfortunate, because it impedes efficiency.

[James Pollock]

Computer science isn't engineering. Computer Science is applied mathematics. But when I showed up to study it, back in 1984, they decided that Pascal would be the prime implementation language they would teach. I made it through the second year.

[bernard11]

Calculus for medical school probably doesn't make very much sense.

OTOH, it makes a great deal of sense for someone who wants to be educated. Calculus is one of the world's great intellectual achievements. It should be understood on at least a basic level by any college graduate.

Yes. I know mine is an unpopular view.

[David Welker]

It is an unpopular view for a good reason.

People are faced with too much to learn and not enough time to learn it. No one could object to your view if learning was free and took no time. But it isn't free. It takes time. Time that could be spent doing or learning something else potentially more valuable.

If learning calculus was less valuable than the alternative best use of your time, it would be irrational to learn calculus. Of course, one problem is that we don't really know for sure what the most useful things to learn are nor do we know what the best use of our time is. So, we have to guess.

For someone who wants to be a doctor, calculus isn't the best guess about how someone should spend their time unless there is some other reward that they particular value (such as enjoyment of learning calculus). That chance that this skill will be used in their career is very low. The benefit of learning this skill if it isn't used is also low.

Calculus is, as you say, a great intellectual achievement. But it isn't the only one. And none of us have enough time to learn everything we might wish we knew.

[David Welker]

Calling a study session "optional" is just bad communication on your part. You should instead call it a "study session."

I have the same criticism of labeling work "extra credit." A point is a point. It is mathematically irrelevant if the point you didn't earn came from "regular work" or "extra credit." You get a lower grade either way.

Saying that someone will not have "accomplished anything" on their deathbed unless they do well in your calculus and differential equations class is rather silly.

I would predict based on this statement that you are unsatisfied with your own "accomplishments" and feeling the pressure of time.

Maybe just relax a little and enjoy life a little more instead. There isn't going to be a replay. When you are dead, it won't matter (to you) what you accomplished or didn't accomplish. (Although, if you DO accomplish something big other than having and raising children -- which is rare -- future generations other than your children will benefit.)

[David Nieporent]

I have the same criticism of labeling work "extra credit." A point is a point. It is mathematically irrelevant if the point you didn't earn came from "regular work" or "extra credit." You get a lower grade either way.

Well, then, you don't understand the concept of extra credit. You can only gain from doing extra credit; you can't lose points from skipping it. Whereas if you don't do a regular assignment, you do in fact lose points. Not just opportunity cost, but actual points.

[Davy C]

You can only gain from doing extra credit; you can't lose points from skipping it. Whereas if you don't do a regular assignment, you do in fact lose points. Not just opportunity cost, but actual points.

Do the math. You can get 10 points for doing an assignment or skip the assignment and get 10 points for doing the extra credit. The grade is the same either way.

It's like, you can go to work this week and earn $1000, or you can get someone to cover for you and go on a game show and win $1000. It doesn't matter that one's designated "regular" and one's designated "extra"; you're in the same financial situation either way.

[David Welker]

Davy C:

Well explained. You said it better than I did.

Many students are confused by this. Extra credit isn't really extra. If you want to maximize your probability of getting an A, you would be well-advised to do it. Just like you would be well-advised to attend the "optional" study session.

By calling study sessions "optional" or credit opportunities "extra" all we are really doing is confusing people.

[David Welker]

This is false. A point is a point. Not completing extra credit points means you do in fact "lose."

I will give you an example. Assume a final exam worth 50% of the final exam. Take one student, call them A, who has completed all "mandatory" work but could do extra credit that is worth 10 points and another student, call them B, who has already done the extra credit but hasn't done the final "mandatory" assignment which is also worth 10 points. Assume these students have an equal number of points, taking into consideration the credit they already earned.

If student A doesn't complete the extra credit, they will lose 10 points they could use to increase their probability of getting an A in the class. If student B doesn't complete the last "mandatory" assignment they will lose 10 points they could use to increase the probability of getting an A in the class.

Whether you call the final bit of work they have to do "extra credit" or "mandatory work" has nothing to do with anything from a mathematical perspective. A point is a point. A point doesn't know where it came from. A failure to earn a point is a failure to earn a point.

The student who declines to complete extra credit has the same thing to lose as the student who fails to complete the last mandatory assignment. No more and no less.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

" No matter what the average grade was about 70%. "

If some students struggle, a likely circumstance is a problem related to those students.

If all students struggle, that might be a problem elsewhere (but the instructor might be disinclined to consider that point).

[Just Eric]

This is a poor argument, as school is the place to make lots of mistakes under artificial pressure. In real life, especially in appellate cases with complex fact patterns and nuanced legal arguments, rushed decisions likely make bad law.

Dog bites man. Students whine about challenging test.

[David Welker]

Some amount of discomfort is necessary for learning.

[James Pollock]

"Some amount of discomfort is necessary for learning."

Actually, you get better results with positive reinforcement than with negative reinforcement.

[David Welker]

Sure. But you are going to have to sit there and work when you would really feel like doing something else. That is what I mean by discomfort.

The discomfort I am talking isn't emotional trauma. It more akin to the discomfort experienced with physical exercise. You have to exert your brain.

[John F. Carr]

The Rehabilitation Act did not exist in 1971. Now the court could issue a "shadow docket" order resolving the case and grant the disabled lawyer extra time to brief a meaningless merits decision.

[dwb68]

The fact that this was in a 1971 opinion shows that there is nothing new under the sun.

Probably in Socrates time the students demanded an end to the endless questioning.

[Andrew Dhuey]

Absolutely -- there are scores of situations in the practice of law where time is very tight for the practitioner. The key is to accept that you don't need to do your best work in such circumstances. Do the best you can, under those difficult circumstances.

[Dan Schiavetta]

The way to get a good grade on a law school exam is to immediately vomit everything you can think of onto the “blue book”. Every possible issue, everything that comes to mind, just write and write, shotgunning for the whole two hours, hoping you’ll hit a target or two. The more you write, the better your chances. I don’t know if anyone’s tries to write an emergency brief like that but I’m sure if I was the judge I’d be less than impressed.

[David Welker]

A judge would only appreciate this if they liked to have their time wasted.

Maybe professors should design more focused exams to avoid such nonsense.

[Nisiiko]

That's racist. With the black average IQ of 85, they need more time. Why do you want blacks to fail?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

That is one of the answers the professor hoped to inspire.

[James Pollock]

"That's racist. With the black average IQ of 85"

Does it bother you that so many of them are outscoring you?

[Jimmy the Dane]

Time limits are clearly racist.

[James Pollock]

Law school exams are necessary for the same reason exams are necessary in other graduate degree programs. But pointing to a case where lawyers were required to work quickly is NOT a defense for the way law school courses are graded.

Law school exams (and the bar exam, for that matter) test memorization of law, but of course, a lawyer who relies on his memory of law is courting malpractice.

[David Welker]

You are right.

[Cal Cetín]

Has anyone mentioned that every human on earth is under a deadline (though the length may vary from one person to another)?