Then it boggles the mind why you misinterpreted what “writing skills” meant. Perhaps your intrepretive skills are set on “result-oriented” and you see ambiguity (or bitterness) where it serves your interests. I believe Brian Tamahana has examined this.

With prof salaries down, tuition could be lowered. Suddenly students (1) might find auctions appealing, and (2) would have more money to bid in the auctions!

I think one of the for-profit law schools should try this first. It might have to “share” a cut of the auction proceeds with the ABA accreditation cmte, or course.

Both Mark McKenna and Bruce Boyden are cases in point for why we should have different methods of testing law students. They decide something is ambiguous and downgrade it, when if they simply paid more attention and were less self-absorbed and self-interested in justifying their laziness they’d understand what they were actually reading. But no, they’re too interested in writing an article on Feminist Virtue Ethics in Minnesotan Corporate Law (circa 1954-67) to bother.

I would also note that if you look up the definition of “writing” it does not permit Bruce’s and Mark’s interpretation. So I wonder where you’re getting your definition from, because it certainly isn’t the dictionary, and certainly not a legal one.

I think Prof. Grimmelmann is on to something here, which leads to a result you may like. Theoretically the prices set by the auction should be the present value of the expected income stream from the “biglaw” jobs, assuming a sufficiently competitive market, which is unlikely, given the barrier to entry. Of course, this would lead the firms to compete on other factors: dental plans and airplane rides to exotic boardrooms. To the extent that students have somewhat homogenous preferences, these intangible factors would be priced into the auction as well, making students entirely indifferent between the A and the C (thus reducing your workload further). Any heterogeneous preferences would sort themselves out, leaving students on the whole happier with their careers (and some of that would be captured by the law school years later when they endow a new professorship). Relaxing some of the assumptions, such as that of perfect information, would lead to students overpaying for the A, perhaps reducing morale that much more.

I’d like to add, on a personal note, that we aren’t indifferent yet…

If you look at a number of law exam test-taking tip guides, they harp on things like whether your handwriting is legible, whether the presentation is organized, and whether you skip every other line. The point is to make the written text, regardless of its content, easier to skim for the professor.

I am a practicing lawyer and having to skip every line in a bluebook, having legible handwriting, and organizing exam answers (in the sense of not making a revision of your answer on page 3 with an addendum on the back on page 7), has not helped me one whit.

But thanks for misinterpreting “writing skills” to mean “literary value” or “drafting ability” rather than “the skill of composing meaningful letters or characters that constitute readable matter.” Emphasis here on readable.

It only proves that someone reading too quickly and without depth can underestimate the depth of content of what he is reading. Which does not happen when one can ask a question an oral argument. Which is precisely why I and Howard Wasserman seem to think other testing methods are better.

What in the world do you think lawyers do in the real world, if writing skills don’t count as “practical” or “realtime application”?

I do that as a part (about 15 % of final grade) in my small upper-level courses. Every student argues one case and sits on a panel to judge one case; the entire class is present to observe and discuss each argument. I have done it twice so far and have been very impressed with how seriously students take the exercise and how much most seem to enjoy it. And I enjoy grading this a lot more than 25 issue-spotting essays.

Signed,

Your Contracts Class

(1) proceeds have to go to charity;

(2) publication standards for tenure are doubled

Maybe that second condition should come with its own condition:

(3) auction will also decide who gets published in which law journals