Academics & Teaching

As part of the Law School’s Learning Outcomes Assessment Plan, each course must list “goals” or an “objectives” statement as part of its course description in the online Curriculum Guide.  Identification of 3 to 5 goals would be optimal and some instructors may want to use a hierarchy of goals, designating “primary” and “secondary” goals.  Students will be able to use these goals statements in making course selections and in framing their expectations for the course.   At the end of the course, as part of the course evaluation process, students will be asked the extent to which particular goals have been realized, on a goal by goal basis.  

Understanding that some faculty will want to create their own course-specific outcomes, while others prefer to select from a pre-existing list, the faculty also agreed to a set of outcomes that could be utilized by individual instructors:

At the end of the course, students will have acquired understanding of and/or facility in:

• a specific body of law, including major policy concerns
• doctrinal analysis, including close reading of cases and precedents, and application to facts
• statutory and regulatory analysis, including close reading of statutes and regulations, and application to facts
• ethical and professional issues
• judicial, legislative and/or administrative processes
• values-based considerations in law-making
• jurisprudential considerations in legal analysis
• the historical development of law and legal institutions
• use of other disciplines in the analysis of legal problems and institutions, for example, philosophy; economics, sociology and other social sciences; and cultural studies
• the influences of political institutions in law
• comparative law analysis of legal institutions and the law
• transactional design and value creation
• finding, understanding, using and critiquing secondary legal literature
• various lawyering skills, for example, oral advocacy, legal writing and drafting, legal research, negotiation, mediation, working collaboratively, client communication, and case theory and planning

Any member of faculty who has questions regarding the learning outcomes for his or her course can contact Hazel May, Dean of Registration Services.

Explanation

• Perhaps counterintuitively, the existence of a wait list does not necessarily mean that a class is oversubscribed. Under the CLS registration system, students will appear on your wait list if they are registered for a conflicting class or if they are registered for more than the maximum number of credit hours.
• Such students enjoy the option to drop other those classes and take yours instead, in order of their priority on the waitlist, if they do so within the first week of class.  Any students with lower registration priority will also be put on a wait list until students with higher priority have resolved their conflicts, even if the lower-ranked students have no conflicts themselves.  
• However, it is extremely unlikely that every higher-ranking student will exercise their option to take your class [and in addition some students who are currently registered for the class may decide to drop it, in order to take up some other option they are simultaneously being offered in another class]. Thus, it is virtually certain that at least some lower-ranking students will get into the class if they stick it out for the first week.

Default Order of Priority

• By default, students on a wait list will be automatically offered the opportunity to add your course in the order that they registered for it, and your class list will be updated in real time throughout the Add/Drop period. If you wish, however, you may offer priority in registration to students who are present in class during the Add/Drop period. But if you choose this option you should notify the class in your course description or by email, so that students shopping for classes will have fair notice of your policy.

Choosing a different order of priority

• If you wish to register students in a different order from the default wait list or on any other basis, please contact Hazel May, Dean of Registration Services.

Changes in Your Class List 

• You should expect changes to your class list during the Add/Drop period when students are allowed to make changes in their academic program.   The Add/Drop period begins one week before the first day of class and typically extends for two weeks. 

Instructor Opt-Out

• Allowing students the flexibility to change their schedule in the first week of class enables them to make better use of academic counseling and their summer job experience, and is likely to provide you with a better match of students.  However, if due to the specific nature of your course it is very important to you to finalize your roster early [for example, in order to assign students to teams], you may choose to require your students to attend your initial classes.  If you choose this option you should notify the class in your course description and please also notify Registration Services.

Limit on Late Additions

• Students are expected to finalize their schedules by the end of the Add/Drop period, so please do not tell students that they may join your class after this date.  If special accommodations need to be made, please contact Registration Services directly.

Limit on Late Withdrawals 

• Withdrawal from a course after the close of the Add/Drop period is allowed only with instructor permission and only up through the sixth week of the semester (October 15 in the fall term and February 15 in the Spring term).  For such late withdrawals from a course, a grade of “W” (withdrew) will be entered into the student’s official transcript.

Class attendance and participation

• Although the Law School does not expect you to take attendance at each class meeting, students are required by both Law School and bar admissions rules to attend classes regularly and punctually. Students who fail to meet this requirement may be held accountable through a lowered grade or, in extreme cases, through exclusion from the course.   
   
• Please notify Yadira Ramos-Herbert, Dean of Students, if a student is absent from your class more than a few times. Repeated absence can be a sign of an underlying personal issue; in this case, notifying the administration will both allow the student to get assistance and mitigate the difficulty to you of assessing performance of someone who has missed class repeatedly.
   
• Instructors in their discretion may require class participation and/or consider it a factor in grading; this is the norm in seminar classes.  It is best practice to notify your students in writing, or through email or your online course description, if you choose to impose such requirements.

• Pursuant to ABA Standard 310, faculty should typically expect to provide one classroom hour (50 minutes) of instruction per week for every point of academic credit offered. In addition, faculty should typically assign to students at least two hours (120 minutes) of out-of-class work per week for every point of academic credit offered. The ABA standard permits variance from this norm, as long as the total expectation is at least three hours of work per week (or 45 hours per semester) for every point of academic credit offered. 
• If you need to cancel a class, fall below the required minimum meetings, and cannot make up the time by extending other class sessions please arrange for a guest lecturer or a makeup class. (When scheduling makeup sessions, it is a good idea to ask your students which of your suggested times might be most convenient for them.  You can also have such sessions taped for the benefit of students who cannot attend). Please email [email protected] to request a room for a make-up class and [email protected] to request a recording of your class. If you have questions about meeting times, please contact Hazel May, Dean of Registration Services.

• Columbia University is dedicated to facilitating equal access to all educational resources, and to cultivating a campus culture that is sensitive and responsive to students' needs. Please endeavor to be flexible when students request accommodation for religious observance, health or family emergency, or similar circumstances. If you have questions about any specific requests, please contact Yadira Ramos-Herbert, Dean of Students.
• Students who request accommodations on the grounds of disability should be referred to Christy Pastore, Director of Registration Services, who coordinates the provision of accommodations pursuant to the Americans with Disabilities Act and ABA Standard 207.
• It is customary to record classes that are held on major religious holidays so that students are not disadvantaged by absence. If you would like to arrange to record your class please write to [email protected]. If you are unable to attend class for reasons of religious observance, please reschedule the class in consultation with the enrolled students and write to [email protected] to reserve a classroom.

• Students may sometimes request extensions to complete their coursework after the official Law School deadline. Whether to grant extensions is a matter of the instructor’s discretion, but please keep in mind that extensions can interfere with students’ work in other courses in subsequent semesters. Accordingly, please exercise judgment when granting extensions and do not grant them as a routine matter. Blanket extensions to an entire class are strongly discouraged. 
• In order to qualify for an extension, students must obtain the instructor's signed permission and file the permission form with Registration Services before the end of the semester for which the extension is granted.
• All extensions are subject to the following limitations: Students may carry no more than one incomplete grade into the following term of school, and must complete all outstanding work by October 15 of the following academic year. Graduating students must complete all outstanding work by April 1 in order to graduate in May, by October 1 in order to graduate in October, and by the last day of the December exam period in order to graduate in February.
• Instructors should not grant any extensions beyond these final deadlines, and should strive to ensure that all grades are submitted in timely fashion (four weeks after receipt of all required work, and, in addition, two weeks before graduation for graduating students.) Please take into account your own availability for grading, as well as the student's graduation plans, when granting any extensions.

• Columbia Law School examinations are administered by the Office of Registration Services using an anonymous grading system. Student exam answers are identified by a randomly assigned exam number.The student’s identity is revealed to the instructor after s/he has assigned the exam grade in LAWNET.The instructor then can make adjustments for class participation or other criteria before finalizing and releasing the final course grade.Grading for courses evaluated by paper or other methods is not anonymous.
• Examination schedules are circulated before the close of the Change of Program (Add/Drop) period each term.Exam schedules and general Law School examination procedures and regulations are available at http://web.law.columbia.edu/registration
• Rescheduling an Exam:  Please note that only Registration Services can reschedule an exam for a student, and only for specific circumstances that are outlined in the published examination schedule information.  Please refer to Registration Services any student who contacts you about rescheduling your exam.

Student Certification of Examination Performance

• By resolution and vote of the faculty, students are required to affirm language of certification when submitting any examination or when submitting written work for credit. Individual faculty members are responsible for ensuring that appropriate certification is submitted in connection with all written work other than exams.  The text of this certification and certification forms available for download, can be found on the Columbia Law School website under the general category of “Academic Rules.”  Please note that all students were made aware of this policy and the implications of its violations at the beginning of their time at the Law School. 
• If you encounter a situation of potential academic dishonesty in the course of your teaching at Columbia Law School, please contact Yadira Ramos-Herbert, Dean of Students, who can advise you on possible courses of action.

2017-2018 Upper year grade guidelines

Pursuant to CLS faculty resolution, instructors are expected to broadly adhere to past grading practice. To assist you in following this principle, here are the average grade distributions for the last five years:

A+

A

A-

B+

B

Other Available Grades:

B-, C, F

UPPERYEAR COURSES

0.77%

15.86%

26.78%

33.55%

20.32%

Assigned as earned

UPPERYEAR SEMINARS

1.88%

29.93%

36.93%

24.96%

5.08%

Assigned as earned

Although these are not fixed curves, you are asked to try and bring your grading roughly into conformity with our past practice.  Instructors wishing to submit grades which deviate substantially from that practice may be asked to provide an explanation for the deviation. 

Please note:

• Grade of A+: The Faculty has resolved to limit the A+ grade to not more than one per course or seminar.  This grade should be used sparingly and only for truly extraordinary performance.  It should not be used automatically for the top performance in the class if that performance is not extraordinary.
• Grades of B-, C, F: In recent years approximately 2.2% of upper-year course grades and approximately 0.63% of seminar grades awarded were B- (B minus). Also, approximately 0.51% of course grades and approximately 0.59% of seminar grades awarded were C or below. Instructors are not required to award these grades.

Faculty policy for grading 1L foundation courses

In order to promote consistency in grades across sections of the Foundation curriculum, the CLS Faculty have voted to require instructors to adhere to the following grade ranges:

Grade or grade family

Permissible range

A+

No more than one to be awarded per courses; need not be awarded if top performance in the class is not extraordinary.

A

6-11%

A-

13-19%

All A-family grades

25-30%

B+

30-35%

All grades B+ & above

55-65%

All grades B & below

35-45%

B-, C & F

Assigned as earned; instructors are not required to award these grades

Please note that, LawNet will calculate grade distributions, and will also allow release of grades to Registration Services if they conform to the grade families identified above in bold type. Faculty seeking award grades outside this range, are asked to please send a brief explanation. Pursuant to Faculty resolution, there is more tolerance for deviation in small sections, where a few grades can distort a curve significantly, and more tolerance for deviation from the ranges for individual grades than for the gradingfamilies identified in bold type.

All grades are submitted through LawNet and you can view this instructional podcast for guidance. As always, please email [email protected] if you experience any difficulties in submitting your grades.

If you wish, you can upload grade files into LawNet, rather than enter individual grades online. If you elect to submit your grades in this way, you will need to first download the grade rosters from LawNet and there are different instructions for courses with exams and without exams:

• Click here for instructions for classes in which a final exam is administered
• Click here for instructions for classes in which there is no final exam

Instructors of classes in which more than 30 students are enrolled will have the additional option of identifying the student whose performance earns a 'Best in Class' designation, which is then reflected on the student's transcript. The faculty Clerkships Committee very much encourages you to make these determinations as this information is of critical assistance in students' applications for clerkships and judges' assessments of our students.

Faculty Resolution on Principles of Academic Honesty

In October 2003, the Faculty adopted the following principles of academic honesty by which students are expected to abide. These principles are the cornerstone of educational integrity at Columbia Law School. They also reflect the legal profession’s special obligations of self-regulation. Students are expected to familiarize themselves with these principles during initial orientation and before taking an examination or submitting any work for credit toward a degree. Academic dishonesty — attempted or actual — will not be tolerated.

 Academic dishonesty includes, but is not limited to:

1. Plagiarism: Failure to cite or otherwise acknowledge in any paper, exercise, or project submitted for credit ideas or phrases gained from another source such as published text, another person’s work, or materials on the Internet unless the source is obvious from the context given.
2. Self-Plagiarism: The submission of one piece of work in more than one offering or in any two exercises for credit without the explicit permission of the instructors involved.
3. Preparation by another: The submission of work as one’s own that has been prepared by or purchased from another.
4. Cheating: To give, receive, take assistance, or make unauthorized use of information from written material, another person, his or her paper, or from any other source (except as explicitly allowed by the instructor) before or during an examination or other written exercise.
5. Violation of instructions: Failure to abide by the explicit directions or instructions of an instructor with regard to a performance for credit.
6. Falsification of work product: Falsification or misrepresentation of data, evidence, or other reportable observations in any course or other exercise for credit.
7. Impermissible collaboration: The violation of the rules on acceptable collaboration on projects, papers, exercises, or examinations set by a faculty member or Law School committee.
8. Tampering with materials: Removing, hiding, or altering library materials or stealing another person’s materials.
9. Facilitation of academic dishonesty: Facilitating academic dishonesty by enabling another to engage in such behavior.
10. In further clarification and recognition of the standards of academic conduct to be met, students sign the following language of certification, Student Certification of Examination Performance, when submitting any exam, and Student Certification of Written Work when submitting work for credit.

If you encounter a situation of potential academic dishonesty in the course of your teaching at Columbia Law School, please contact Yadira Ramos-Herbert, Dean of Students, who can advise you on possible courses of action.