GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2012

Status

Accepted

Abstract

Faced with the American Bar Association's proposed changes to law school accreditation standards, especially related to student assessment and outcome measurement, law schools are responding by developing and incorporating assessment standards. Likely related to these proposed changes, there has been an undeniable recent trend in law school assessment scholarship, which is one way to measure law schools' reactions to the call for change. This article contributes to that trend by offering an introduction to a methodology of assessing legal writing - through the use of detailed grading guidelines called rubrics. Our experience over the past several years of using rubrics in our legal writing courses has resulted in improved student expectations and more consistent teaching across our Legal Research and Writing (LRW) Program. In our article, we encourage the legal writing community to embrace rubrics as a way to achieve similar results. In addition, we argue that in writing courses, not only is there room for objective assessment, but there must be a means of objective assessment. If all legal writing professors are teaching solely their personal preferences and grading on subjective standards alone, they are doing their students a disservice. Instead, though, we argue that the legal writing community is marching to the beat of the same drum; even with the various acronyms for the same legal writing paradigm, we value good writing in the same way. And in using rubrics, we can create a framework in which to recognize - and measure - these qualities of good writing. In our article, we also encourage use of rubrics in other courses beyond legal writing, and based on our experience in LRW, provide some practical guidance about creating and using rubrics. Thus, the article provides both a pedagogical and practical introduction to the use of rubrics in law schools

GW Paper Series

GWU Legal Studies Research Paper No. 574; GWU Law School Public Law Research Paper No. 574

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