This Is How a Lot of Law School Students Are Cheating

If I told you, “Some law school students are cheating — and are even helped by their law schools,” you’d probably think, “No way, I can’t believe that.”

Not only has this been going on for years, but, as you will see, it directly impacts law firms — large and small — and clients, who can easily be paying a premium for an honor student who is actually a dishonor.

How Cheating Spreads at Law Schools (paywall) was the headline on an excellent Wall Street Journal opinion article, by Jillian Lederman, that ran June 5.

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

After that article ran, my office received phone calls from several of the law firms and attorneys who have been helpful to this column.

Their reasons for calling, summed up in one sentence: Some 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.

Getting more time to take written exams invites fraud

Law students about to take their first exam are usually anxious and often worried. If a first-year student isn’t nervous, then something’s wrong, as law school is not a walk in the park.

Now, what would you be asking yourself if about a third of your first-year class members didn’t show up for the final exam? That’s what a Pepperdine law student noticed in the summer of 2023.

Were they just running late? Chickened out? No. As many as 30 students were in a different room, getting extra time because of the Americans With Disabilities Act, which, as Lederman noted in her piece, requires schools to accommodate “students with conditions that impair ‘major life activities’ such as learning, reading and concentrating.”

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

Lederman writes in her article that multiple students said that Pepperdine’s administration confirmed at a town hall last year that “more than a third of the school’s law students receive testing accommodations, the most common of which is extended time.” The school also noted that the prevalence of accommodations is comparable to that at other law schools.

Many people look at such high numbers of students claiming an ADA impairment and four words come to mind: That sounds like cheating.

What else could it be? One of my law school professor friends noted that cheating is the only possible explanation.

For the record, no one is criticizing students who need extra time for tests because of legitimate learning disabilities. The issue here is students who don’t need extra time but profess under false pretenses that they do need it so they can perform better than they would otherwise.

Test accommodations arrived in 1990

ADA accommodations became a requirement in 1990, and thorough medical/psychological evaluations were required to justify allowing more time to take tests.

While many students do suffer from certain disorders, such as PTSD, ADHD, anxiety and others, it is possible to fake impairments — and there are years of research proving it. (Check out this article from NBC News to read more about that.)

A Loyola law professor in Los Angeles, who spoke with me on condition of anonymity because faculty is not authorized to speak for Loyola, said, “Something is wrong here, (as more 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 lawyers?

“Or, do we have a Varsity Blues situation where families with money pay a psychologist to give them a report that will justify the student’s 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.”

The consequences of this cheating affect us all

As law students are evaluated on a competitive curve, top grades have real-world consequences.

For instance, top students can get scholarships, score a spot on the school’s law review, receive job offers from major law firms, land coveted clerkships with federal judges and can be paid far more than other first-year lawyers. The cost of those higher salaries is passed on to their clients.

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

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

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