Legal Quandary

A Little Bar/Bri Whining

I got my first "feedback" from Bar/Bri today, and I have to say I'm underwhelmed. I turned three essays in nearly 2 weeks ago, so I was anxious to see how I did.

Basically all I've discovered is that my analysis is really weak and I missed a bunch of issues. I guess when they said "feedback," I thought I'd be getting something with a little more insight than "good rule statement," "weak analyses," and "use facts in problem." I know they're doing this for a gazillion other students, but I guess I thought I'd pick up some helpful hints on how to combine rule statements, how to better identify issues and other generally useful stuff. Instead, I got a grading sheet which doesn't tell me much beyond the fact that a checkmark means you got full credit and a 1/2 means that you got partial credit. Nothing to indicate what to shoot for, what a passing number of checkmarks would be, since every question has a different number of possible issues, etc.

It didn't help that they hadn't posted the rules for those of us typing exams yet, but had given us a terrible template to type on, so my essays were about 200-300 words shorter than they could have been - no wonder my analysis was weak - it was the only thing I could cut!

*sigh* The first batch is just supposed to be for practice. Maybe the next one will be more helpful. I guess I'll know in about 2 weeks.

UPDATE: I'm liking the whole web submission process we have now. I submitted three more essays 2 days ago and already have feedback on one of them. I'm not sure the "feedback" is that much more helpful, but I do feel better about the comments. I also appear to have done a complete turn around on my analyses - now I'm getting comments that they're too long. Maybe I'm the Goldilocks of Bar/Bri and I'll eventually find one that just right.

posted by Legal Quandary at 20:13