When a Florida Coastal School of Law student last year spotted notecards poking out of a fellow test-taker's pocket during finals, she kept her head down and focused on the exam in front of her. "I've never been one to rat people out," said the student, who requested anonymity to speak candidly.
Her classmate was returning from a bathroom break during a final exam, and it was pretty clear to her that cheating was afoot. Like thousands of law students each year, the Florida Coastal student and her classmates had signed an honor code on their first day of school. Law schools rely on honor codes to keep students from cheating. The codes reflect the self-policing nature of law school academic integrity regimes, and they appeal to students' sense of fair play to keep them in line.
While the situation at Florida Coastal may be a traditional case of academic dishonesty, changes in technology, the formats of law school exams and the ways in which professors administer tests have rendered some of the codes outdated and ineffective. In early May, complaints about cheating prompted Syracuse University College of Law to change its testing procedures. Some students asserted that classmates were breaking exam rules by using their cellphones to consult notes or outlines during bathroom breaks. Other complaints were that students were logging back into testing software to change answers after consulting outside sources.
Hannah Arterian, dean of Syracuse University College of Law, said that complaints about cheating during finals were not unusual but that the dean of students had received more than normal this year. After hearing the complaints, the law school's administrators sent an e-mail to first-year students notifying them that they could leave classrooms for restroom breaks only once during an exam. (The testing changes were first reported on the legal blog Above the Law .)
Syracuse faculty members also now are more diligent in making sure that students completely log out of testing software when they finish a test, Arterian said. "We did what we really should've had in place all along," she said. Arterian added that the school maintains a "zero tolerance" policy toward cheating and that the concerns voiced by students reflected that policy. Arterian is not convinced that cheating at Syracuse is on the rise, but conceded that technology — cellphones, testing software, online outlines and e-mail — has created more temptation for students to cheat.
About 45% of law school students have engaged in some form of cheating at least once in the previous year, according to a survey published in 2006 by Rutgers University professor Donald McCabe. The survey was based on data collected from 54 colleges and universities. McCabe found evidence that students' definition of what constitutes cheating has narrowed.
He compared student comments that he collected in his 2006 survey with comments from earlier surveys, one of which dated to the mid-1950s. The surveys looked at cheating on tests and plagiarism on written work. Although the percentage of cheaters remained nearly the same, students from the latest survey saw more gray areas between honesty and dishonesty. "Students are redefining what cheating is," McCabe said.
DETECTING CHEATERSEvery law school has problems with cheating and plagiarism, said Florida Coastal Vice Dean Terri Davlantes. "It's just a matter of catching those cheaters. We do our best to detect cheating opportunities," she said. The school last fall expelled a first-year student who ran an advertisement offering to pay someone to write a paper for him.
The school relies on cameras in its facilities to catch cheaters during finals, she said, and it trains proctors to watch for repeated bathroom breaks. It also instructs its security workers to look for outlines and notes stashed in garbage cans. The Florida Coastal student said that the vast majority of students at her law school take the honor code seriously, but she has known classmates who received outside help with papers in violation of the rules. The teachers, she said, "just assume" that students will not cheat.
The American Bar Association (ABA), which accredits law schools, does not specifically address academic integrity or student ethics in its standards for accreditation. All but two of the law schools accredited by the ABA have devised their own academic conduct and integrity rules, according to a 2006 report by the ABA Standing Committee on Professionalism. The others rely on the policies of the universities to which they belong. The ABA accredits 200 law schools, all of which report cheating to their state bar associations, the report said.
Law schools typically require students suspected of cheating to appear before a disciplinary committee that often includes student members. Some schools empower the committee to determine whether cheating has occurred and the appropriate degree of punishment. Others have the committee make recommendations to the dean. About 90% of law schools allow students to appeal disciplinary decisions in a variety of forums. The 2006 standing committee report urged all schools to adopt an appeals process.
In an effort to identify what conduct constitutes cheating, administrators at Santa Clara University School of Law in California just revised its academic integrity policy. Cynthia Mertens, associate dean for academic affairs, said that law students today may be more tempted to cheat because of the availability of online information for papers and because of the increased use of take-home tests. The school's new policy enumerates different areas of cheating, including behavior during tests; plagiarism; unauthorized collaboration on written work; and submission of the same work for more than one course. It establishes a protocol for students and faculty to report the behavior.
In general, law schools rely on the intense competition among students to motivate them to report other cheaters and uphold their honor codes. But strong bonds among class members and a resistance to tattle can undercut that motivation.
'HE WAS A FRIEND'When a Brooklyn Law School student was approached last year by a classmate who wanted some inside information for a makeup test, she felt torn. "He was a friend," she said. She knew that, because the professor graded tests on a curve, her classmate's score ultimately would affect her own performance in the class. But she didn't want to seem like a prig to her insistent friend, who had to take a makeup exam because of a scheduling conflict. The student, now a graduate, requested anonymity so that she could speak candidly.
She ended up declining to disclose to her friend any specific questions on the test, but she did tell him that, if he was studying "an insane amount of time" on areas that weren't on the exam,she would warn him off. Even though she was uncomfortable with her classmate's conduct — and not entirely at ease with her own — it never crossed her mind to report him after he had approached her. "I'm not one to cause trouble," she said.
Part of the challenge for law schools is an increased use of open-note and take-home tests instead of traditional closed-book, in-class exams. The rules for taking open-style tests can vary widely, depending on the professor's preference. Some professors allow students to consult any books or notes, others restrict references to certain materials. With take-home tests, some professors restrict students from collaborating with others but allow them to consult published resources.
These kinds of tests better mirror real-life lawyering, said David Yellen, dean of Loyola University Chicago School of Law. But they also may create too much temptation to cheat for students. Even so, Yellen said that cheating most often occurs with written assignments. Students sometimes collaborate with other students, friends or family members, some of whom are attorneys, and do not realize that they are committing an honor code violation. "People have very different expectations of what's appropriate," he said.
The most effective academic integrity policies include students in the disciplinary process; that helps make the code a part of a school's culture, said Gary Pavela, an attorney and former honors program teacher at the University of Maryland. In June, he will become the director of academic integrity at Syracuse University. Pavela said that schools increasingly are tailoring their policies to more specifically identify what defines dishonest conduct and to set out the consequences of cheating. Having faculty members refer often to academic honesty helps, he said. The combination of student and faculty involvement, Pavela said, creates a "double impact."
Leigh Jones can be contacted at leigh.jones@incisivemedia.com. Read more Law School News on NLJ.com
