Digital Commons at St. Mary's University Faculty Articles School of Law Faculty Scholarship 1997 An Informal History of How Law Schools Evaluate Students, with a Predictable Emphasis on Law School Exams Stephen M. Sheppard St. Mary's University School of Law,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.stmarytx.edu/facarticles Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Stephen M. Sheppard, An Informal History of How Law Schools Evaluate Students, with a Predictable Emphasis on Law School Exams, 65 UMKC L. Rev. 657 (1997). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Law Faculty Scholarship at Digital Commons at St. Mary's University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Articles by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons at St. Mary's University. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. AN INFORMAL HISTORY OF HOW LAW SCHOOLS EVALUATE STUDENTS, WITH A PREDICTABLE EMPHASIS ON LAW SCHOOL FINAL EXAMS Steve Sheppard* Finalexams play on a law student 's world like some weirdly orbitingmoon. They are always in sight; but while they're at a distance, they serve merely to create the tensions which swell daily like tides - to read to keep pace, to understand As exams draw close, however,... theirgravitational force startsto shake the whole place to pieces.' American law schools currently employ one essential, formal method of student evaluation - course-end examinations.2 While informal evaluation, particularly observation of student oral class performances, does occur, the exams are usually the exclusive method by which a record of student performance is created.