Law Students

Exam Support for Macs Continues to Improve

By Erik Schmidt

At Santa Clara I’ve seen more Macs creeping into the law school, and based on reports from MLS readers, the same thing is happening at other schools. While some of this is because Mac laptops are so well-suited to law school use, I think another reason is that many more schools now support Macs for exams.

When I started MLS in January of 2006, about half of the schools listed on the Exam Software page supported Macs for exams. Last April the list had grown to about 29 schools, with 19 of them supporting Macs natively or via Boot Camp, five allowing PCs only, and five ambiguous in one fashion or another.

By my current count, the Exam Software page now lists 61 schools. Two of the schools have an ambiguous status, so for purposes of analysis, there are 59 schools. Of these, 27 support Macs natively, 20 support Macs via Boot Camp, eight allow PCs only, and four don’t use exam software at all. This means that Macs can be used in 51 of the 59 schools on the list. 86% isn’t perfect, but it’s a vast improvement over the situation two years ago.

Obviously there is selection bias at work here. The list is on a site for Mac-using law students. There are almost 200 ABA-approved law schools in the US, and only a quarter of them are listed on the Exam Software page. But the info on some of the schools is a few months out of date; during that time some of the PC-only schools may have changed their policies.

If you have info about a school that isn’t listed on the Exam Software page, or if one of the current listings needs an update, please send me a note.

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Full post as published by Mac Law Students on March 01, 2008 (boomark / email).