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The requirement of passing a final exam to receive a law degree was the brainchild of Harvard Dean Christopher Langdell, who introduced the system in the early 1870s. Langdell is also famous in academia for introducing the case-study method in the law school curriculum. The system found immediate acclaim with law school academia being the first successful business model of law schools that were financially advantageous and allowed high student-faculty ratios.
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Previous to the Langdellian method of creating stables for law students, earlier systems assessed first-year students regularly and more frequently. At Litchfield, the first professional law school in America, students needed to take weekly oral exams. At Harvard, it was the custom to examine student progress by both oral and written weekly tests and by a test at the end of each topic. Michigan used to hire recent graduates to conduct daily oral and written examinations, while Cornell, Pennsylvania and Columbia law schools combined frequent or daily quizzes with cumulative assessments that were end-of-term, annual, and for graduation.
The importance of first-year end-of the course exams to law students
The importance of first-year exams for law students can be summed up under the following points:
- Good first-year grades increase chances of summer associate jobs at better law firms, in turn leading to more employment options. .
- Good first-year grades help to secure better jobs in the academia.
- Good first-year grades help in determining who receives memberships to law reviews and moot court competition.
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Most stakeholders in the law school academia, including employers, professors, and administrators derive benefits from the Langdellian method of assessing students by a single annual examination. Such examinations help:
- Law schools have bigger class sizes and assure more revenue
- To hide the lack of expertise of law professors in designing constructive assessment tests
- Law professors to pursue and fulfill the demands of their “publish or perish” peer pressure and keep churning out papers and studies that bolster their personal careers by removing the time pressure of conducting multiple assessments of students
- To serve as a ritual hazing system that the professors themselves survived, and feel it is better for others
- Positive evaluation of professors by students: This sole event being so important in the life and career of the law student, few students can gather the nerve to speak out truthfully against negatively performing professors. Mid-term assessments create the chance of students submitting negative evaluations of their professor, if unhappy with their scores
- Employers with easier means to distinguish among students in contrast to the results of multiple and varied assessments
- Law school rankings to avoid the quality of teaching or the quality of assessment altogether while ranking schools
- Prepare students for high-pressure single examinations which can determine the courses of their lives like the prevalent bar admission examinations
So, despite most research, finding the fates of law students resting on single end-of-the-course examinations to be defective, the system would continue, as it is in sync with needs of other stakeholders including the bar, the ABA, the rankings, the law schools and the professors. Many law students fail to understand that for different reasons, the first-year examination at their law schools can be a turning point in the courses of their careers. The system is not only important to them but to every stakeholder interested in the study of law.
Source:
Ron M. Aizen, "Four Ways to Better 1L Assessments," Duke Law Journal 54, no. 3 (2004)
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