De Facto

All leading national newspapers, including Bar & Bench recently reported on suspension of five Andhra judges for cheating in LLM exam. The judges were caught on camera copying from books, smuggled notes, and each other. If they had passed the LLM examinations, they would have been eligible for promotions and increments. This is a clear case of usage of unlawful means for pecuniary benefits by a public servant. The unethical action of the judges will be subject to investigation and hopefully severe punishments. Are you surprised, shocked or disappointed that those who have the demigod status, engaged in such unethical acts? I am not going to beat the drums on how unethical or how wrong their actions are. Reason being that our culture does not condone or look down upon acts of cheating – it may make the headlines of leading newspapers, but does not touch our personal ethical chords. To say the least, we have blockbuster Hindi movies where acts of cheating are hailed as an accomplishment. Many boast about how they engaged in acts of cheating and were not caught. If we were to conduct a world ethics ranking study, I don’t believe India would be very high on the list. We all are aware that India has been ranked time and again high (as corrupt) on corruption reports, just one indicator of ethics.

I am not going to focus on what happened with the Andhra judges since Indian media is all over it. Rather, my focus is on the larger debate on the value of ethics in Indian education system and specifically in law schools, colleges and soon with the to be held All India Bar Examination. We are well aware that cheating in exams is a common practice in India. Many believe that cutting corners is an acceptable part of the culture. Law schools and colleges have regular complaints about students cheating in exams and engaging in plagiarism. If professors find students cheating or copying works of others, they usually provide low marks or grades and let the issue pass. It is the culture that we are fighting with here on plagiarism, not one off incident like the Andhra judges case. We have heard time and again about how examination invigilators are bought by students, who allow them to engage in rampant acts of cheating from notebooks, cheat sheets, neighbors, etc. History has been the best teacher of how difficult it is for any society to change its culture, specially a culture that has been simply accepted for decades. It is just like spitting paan on the walls of Government offices and buildings. It is time we think of ways to tackle this problem sooner than later.

In many western countries, cheating and plagiarism is looked down upon by society as a shocking act. Even peeking at someone else’s paper is considered an unacceptable behavior. It is not to say that plagiarism in western society does not take place, it does, but they are faced with severe consequences.

Since we are fighting with the culture cheating and not just few incidents, it makes sense for us to be more creative in our examination system. I think allowing students to take any books, notes, statutes, rules, materials during examinations should be permitted – let students use any and all resources that are available to them and test them on their knowledge beyond what can be simply found in books. Questions should be prepared to test original ideas based on their readings and not just the ability to reproduce memorized information.  Several professors in law schools and colleges in India have adopted this method, but still we have a long way to go since majority professors continue to rely on the old school technique of rewarding students for their ability to memorize and reproduce information.

Also, when asking students to write papers, law schools and colleges should have legitimate expectations. The culture of rewarding for number of pages written is another conundrum that haunts those who wish to write original papers. If professors reward students based on their original thoughts, no one would need to write a paper that is 50 pages. How can you expect a student to write a 50 page paper that consists of good original ideas in 3 months? Writing a paper requires a lot of research, reading and understanding of the subject. Law schools papers have become a process rather than educating or training students on how to write good papers. With the work load of several exams in a trimester/semester, constant requirement and pressure to engage in extracurricular activities, internships, etc., it is very unreasonable for law schools to have a system that expects more than what students can deliver. It is therefore important for law schools to analyze their model of trimester system, number of courses, examination and project system. My efforts here are only to bring the issues to the forefront, and not to provide a framework to resolve the issues. I believe those who are currently suffering through law schools and colleges have good reform ideas on cheating and plagiarism at large and law school education system in specific. I look forward to reading your comments, thoughts and ideas on how we can create an efficient legal education system.   

De Facto is currently a lawyer practising in New York.

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