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Toward A Unified Grading Vocabulary: Using Grading Rubrics To Set Student Expectations And Promote Consistency In Legal Writing Courses, Jessica L. Clark, Christy Hallam Desanctis

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Faced with the American Bar Association's proposed changes to law school accreditation standards, especially related to student assessment and outcome measurement, law schools are responding by developing and incorporating assessment standards. Likely related to these proposed changes, there has been an undeniable recent trend in law school assessment scholarship, which is one way to measure law schools' reactions to the call for change. This article contributes to that trend by offering an introduction to a methodology of assessing legal writing - through the use of detailed grading guidelines called rubrics. Our experience over the past several years of using rubrics …