Law School Academic Support Blog

Law Student Blogs

Have you visited any law student blogs?  They abound on the net, and provide insight into what our students' passions, frustrations, and needs are.

For example, today I visited Blawg Wisdom: Advice About Law School From Those Who Are In It, and found an interesting thread of entries about comments law professors had written in the bluebooks of their students ... followed by student and professor reactions to the comments.

The blogging student referred to his Contracts class as one in which "the professor doesn't actually profess," and a student should just "assume you're scr__ed but hope for the best."  The student had heard from two and three elles that the professor graded randomly, often lost exams, and created mass hysteria among the students.  This professor, the blogger explains, "went through every hand-written exam and made some of the most blunt, outrageous and snarky comments ever to grace a bluebook."   (Snarky?  I had to look it up: the word describes a witty mannerism, personality, or behavior that is a combination of sarcasm and cynicism. Usually accepted as a complimentary term. Snarky is sometimes mistaken for a snotty or arrogant attitude.  Complimentary my foot. (djt))

The professor's marginal additions to the students' answers (allegedly) included:
●  YOU COULD NOT BE MORE INCORRECT
●  nonsense, nonsense

The blog comments include many law student responses, and one which appears to be penned (keyboarded?) by a law prof: "I'm a Contracts professor and it is interesting to see those comments. I think many of them could have been phrased differently, but I understand where they come from."  ...and more...

As AcSup folk, we read (graded) exam answers.  I have seen my share of marginalia that made me blink twice before attempting to interpret it for a perplexed student. How do you counsel your students vis-a-vis professorial annotations which are amphibolous, ambiguous, equivocal, obscure, recondite, abstruse, vague, cryptic, or even downright enigmatic?  (djt)

Join in the Discussion

Interested in joining the conversation of the broader academic support community?  Academic assistance faculty and administrators may join the discussion list hosted by Chicago Kent Law School for professionals who supervise, develop and teach in academic support programs at law schools.  Here are the instructions for joining:

1.  Send an e-mail to the following address:  [email protected]

2.  Leave the subject matter blank.

3.  In the first line of the body of the message write:

subscribe ASP-L (your first name, last name, position and school)

For example, I would type the following into the first line of my e-mail:

subscribe ASP-L Ellen, Swain, Assistant Professor of Law Vermont Law School

4.  Please note that you will only type two commas in the body of the message:  one between your first name and last name and one between your last name and title.   

5.  Once you're enrolled you can send an e-mail to the listserv and it will be posted to all of the members by addressing your e-mail to:

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(els)