Law students, cheating and even being helped by their law schools?

It has been going on for years and directly impacts law firms — large or small — and clients who can easily be paying a premium for an honor student who is more of a dishonor.

“How cheating spreads at law schools” was an excellent Wall Street Journal article, by Jillian Lederman, that ran this past June 5. You can find it and related articles online. Just have your blood-pressure meds or Valium handy.

As this column has put me in touch with law school faculty over the years, the content of Lederman’s article wasn’t news to me. This type of cheating has been a dirty, well-kept little secret at many law schools, upsetting countless law professors.

After that story ran, my office received phone calls from several of the law firms and attorneys who have been helpful to this column, their reasons summed up in one sentence: “Many of the lawyers we hired had grades that put them near the top of their class, but when it came to doing actual legal work, things just did not correlate with their excellent grades, and we just could not figure out why.”

ADA accommodation — more time to take written exams invites fraud

If a student taking their first exam isn’t anxious, then something’s wrong as law school is not a walk in the park. So, what would you be asking yourself if about 30 of your first year class didn’t show up for the final exam?

That’s what Pepperdine law student Nash Werksman noticed in the summer of 2023. “The absent students would be taking the test in a different room, given extended time, a test accommodation that the Americans with Disabilities Act requires schools to make available for students with ‘conditions that impair major life activities, such as learning, reading and concentrating,’” Lederman noted.

This translates into giving law students who claim a disability up to four extra hours to complete the test.

A lot of people look at this and two words come to mind: Invites cheating! “With such a large number of students claiming an ADA impairment, that’s the only possible explanation” one of my law school professor friends had for it.

No such thing as a test accommodation before 1990

“According to multiple Pepperdine students, more than a third receive testing accommodations, the most common of which is extended time, a number comparable to many other law schools, Pepperdine’s administration confirms and acknowledge a substantial increase in disability accommodation in recent years,” Lederman reports.

For a little history, these ADA “accommodation” became a requirement in 1990, and thorough medical and/or psychological evaluations were required to justify allowing hours more to take tests. But it is possible to fake many test-taking impairments — PTSD, ADHD, anxiety and others — and there are years of research proving it.

“So, we really have to ask ourselves,” one Loyola Law professor in Los Angeles told me on condition of anonymity, “Something is wrong here. As the numbers of students across the country are increasingly seeking ADA accommodations, are law schools admitting students and graduating future lawyers who lack the ability, in the real world, to function as a lawyer?

“Or, do we have a Varsity Blues situation where families with money pay a psychologist to give them a report that will justify an ADA need for more time to take exams? The answer is obvious. Students are cheating on a massive scale, and in my experience, school administrators are fully aware.”

Consequences of this cheating affect us all — What you can’t ask

As law students are evaluated on a competitive curve, top grades have real-world consequences: Scholarships, a spot on the school’s law review, jobs offers from major law firms and the opportunity to receive paid-far-more-than-otherwise-justified clerkships with federal judges (with costs passed on to their clients!), to list a few.

You might be thinking, “During the job interview, why not just ask if they ever received an accommodation in law school (or anywhere) giving them greater time on exams?”

But under the ADA, “The hiring manager should not ask that question or any similar questions about a history of having a disability,” Southern California-based labor attorney Daniel Klingenberger notes, adding, “The purpose of the ADA is to ensure that qualified individuals with disabilities have an equal opportunity in the workplace.”

However, a frequent criticism is that it encourages fraud — keeping from an employer information that would be relevant to hiring them, such as honesty — cheating your way to getting top grades in law school, for example.

A Work Around

“The more you know about the person, the safer you are,” a Senior HR consultant told me on condition of anonymity. “An employer is free to require an applicant to direct their university to send them a copy of their complete file without any reference as to why you want to see it.

“If they refuse, what does that tell you?”

Dennis Beaver practices law in Bakersfield and welcomes comments and questions from readers, which may be faxed to 661-323-7993, or emailed to Lagombeaver1@gmail.com. Also, visit dennisbeaver.com.