The Advantages of Take-Home Exams

In my first-year Property class, I always give closed-book, in-class exams.  In part, this is because of the nature of the Property class -- it is an introductory survey, and I am testing on the students' understanding of basic material.  This semester, I taught Real Estate Transactions for the first time.  Although this course has a survey aspect to it, I focused a lot on advising clients on legal and non-legal risks.  Because of this different approach, I decided to give a take-home exam for the course.  Here were the two big essay questions:

(1)  Early in the semester, we discussed the respective roles of attorneys and real estate brokers in real estate transactions.  Considering what we’ve learned over the remainder of the semester, what do you think the respective roles of attorneys and brokers should be?  Why?  (700 words).

(2)  You are a practicing real estate attorney.  Nancy Preston is an occasional client of yours.  She dabbles in real estate, buying or selling a property every year or two.  Getting into the office one day, you get the following voicemail from Nancy:  “Hi, it’s Nancy.  I’m thinking about buying a property out by the airport.  I haven’t seen it yet.  It is about 150 acres, mostly vacant.  There is a farmhouse near Route 43.  Joe Jordan currently owns the property.  Marty Condon is acting as his broker.  Marty told me that Joe would sell it to me for $750,000.  That’s $5,000 per acre, which is a pretty good price for that area.  He said that if I wanted to get the property, I’d have to buy it quickly, and that he’d give me a quitclaim deed, whatever that is.  He also said that there are some power line easements over the property.  Give me a call and let me know what you think.”  Describe the advice that you would give Nancy when you call her back.  Think broadly, and address both legal and non-legal risks.  Also think about the questions you would ask her.  (1,500 words).

Both questions are very open-ended.  It is possible to give this sort of question in an in-class exam, but I've found that the time pressure leads to so-so answers.  With a take-home exam, the students had plenty of time to think through each question.  I was especially happy with my students' answer to question (2).  They were very creative, and reflected a good understanding of the legal and non-legal issues that we discussed in the class.  They also reflected a good understanding of a big part of the lawyer's role in a transaction, which (in my view) is to advise the client of risks and risk mitigation strategies.  As an added bonus, the question put the students in a relatively realistic position, reacting to some vague input from a client.  In the context of this kind of upper-level elective, I was very happy with the take-home format.

Ben Barros

[Comments are held for approval, so there will be some delay in posting]