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An Informal History Of How Law Schools Evaluate Students, With A Predictable Emphasis On Law School Exams, Steve Sheppard

Steve Sheppard

This story of the evolution of legal evaluations from the seventeenth century to the close of the twentieth depicts English influences on American law student evaluations, which have waned in the twentieth century with the advent of course-end examinations. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English examinations given to conclude a legal degree were relatively ceremonial exercises in which performance was often based on the demonstration of rote memory. As examination processes evolved, American law schools adopted essay evaluations from their English counterparts. Examinees in the nineteenth century were given a narrative, requiring the recognition of particularly appropriate legal doctrines, enunciation of the …

Teaching In The Shadow Of The Bar, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

This Essay is a memorial tribute to Professor Trina Grillo. Trina took seriously what many of us know but find too hard to remember: the student who is academically disqualified or who fails the bar examination might be the most brilliant in the class or the most needed within the profession. When we conceive of the bar exam as a particularly grueling and potentially unfair rite of passage between law school and the practice of law, we collude in hiding the pervasive and often negative power of the bar exam. The bar examination permeates and controls fundamental aspects of legal …

Protecting Intellectual Property Rights Through Civil Litigation: A Symposium, Eric Easton

All Faculty Scholarship

On September 30, 1996, nineteen lawyers, law professors and judges from the People's Republic of China began a six-week program of classroom study, practical experience, and scholarly exchange that focused on the American system of protecting intellectual property rights through civil litigation. The program was funded by a $107,000 grant from the United States Information Agency's Office of Citizen Exchange Programs to the University of Baltimore's Center for International and Comparative Law, in cooperation with the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development.

The initial, two-week phase of the program included field trips to the U.S. Copyright Office, the Patent …