Legal News

Law Students Lost In Vegas

By Nathan Koppel

There's some strangeness going on in the desert, folks.

At the University of Nevada Las Vegas Boyd School of Law, a law professor, for reasons that are not yet known, failed to grade exams in first-year Constitutional Law classes and to hand in final grades in the classes.

In an email this month to 2L's at the school, dean John White did not explain what, exactly, is going on with the missing grades. "Please accept my sincere apology for this most unfortunate situation," he writes, explaining that a substitute professor may be called in to grade the exams on a pass/fail basis. (HT to the Wild Wild Law Blog.)

The full text of the dean's email–which raises as many questions as it answers–follows after the jump. The email doesn’t clarify whether the school has been in contact with the professor. We have a call into the dean's office for comment and will report back what we hear.

From: John.White@unlv.edu
Date: July 9, 2009 11:28:54 AM PDT
Subject: Constitutional Law I grades

Dear Rising 2L’s,

It is possible you have heard a rumor that some first year grades are not yet available and that those classes missing the grades may be graded on a pass/fail basis. I write to confirm the basics of this rumor and clarify what has occurred.

The BSL Registrar has received all grades except grades in two sections of Constitutional Law I. Despite efforts, we have been unable to determine the status of the grades for those two sections. We understand that this is a serious inconvenience to you and potentially disruptive to your plans. Consequently, we have taken the interim step of asking another Constitutional Law Professor to grade the papers on a pass/fail basis so that we may create rankings. We expect to have those grades by early next week at the latest.

It is our hope that the professor who has not turned in grades has in fact graded [the papers] or is nearing completion of grading them. However, we have no way to know at this time what the status of those grades is. Should we receive grades by Monday (when we expect to receive the pass/fail grades) we will use them. If we do not receive them by Monday, we will utilize the pass/fail grades, calculate rankings, and move forward.

Please accept my sincere apology for this most unfortunate situation. Please trust that we are taking all appropriate steps to see that grades for the missing classes are submitted in short order. I believe that grading exams in a timely fashion is among the faculty’s most significant obligations; consequently, I am extremely troubled by this situation and am taking every step possible to remedy it and will be taking additional steps to ensure something like this does not happen in the future.

Regretfully,

Dean White

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on July 17, 2009 (boomark / email).