[« Note to Kenneth Tomlinson…] [Los verso del Capitán »]
06/08/2005: Gem o'the Day:
For the benefit of my non-law readers: the classic law school exam gives the student 3 to 4 hours to write out an analysis of the legal issues presented by various hypothetical situations; the answers are handwritten in "blue books," which consist of ten-or-so lined white pieces of paper between light blue covers. A student might fill out two or three of these blue books in the course of the exam. Once the exams are turned in, faculty have 4-6 weeks to read and grade them all (law faculty do their own grading). In a typical first-year law school class, this may mean grading anywhere from 80 to 125 student exams--or, in other words, thousands of handwritten pages in bluebooks.
So much by way of background. One of my colleagues (who shall remain nameless) recently offered the following memorable characterization of the experience of grading dozens and dozens of bluebooks from the same class: "It feels like you are watching endless re-runs of episodes of Gilligan's Island, with the vague sense that you had something to do with the plot."
--Brian Leiter
Len on 06.08.05 @ 09:46 AM CST
