Do your professors care about grammar? Forum

[dr123]

Do professors let you hand write exams?

[Grizz]

Do professors let you hand write exams?

All mine did. No one did.

[pleasetryagain]

Do professors let you hand write exams?

why would you handicap yourself?

[TheFutureLawyer]

Flame

Yeah, cause it's not at all important to know whether or not one needs to have good grammar on an exam.

[cronous]

I did have one 48 hour take-home exam where grammar and style mattered more, but even then, the occasional typo wasn't a big deal.

I think my legal writing professor, who worked at private firm for many years, gave me the best piece of advice with regards to typos/grammar: "As long as the reader is not distracted by it do not worry." Partners and Judges are not interested in hitting you over the head with a grammar mistake. So long as they can understand what is going on they are likely to gloss over it. And FYI they do not teach you grammar skills at law school, they teach you legal writing skills.

[AreJay711]

Flame

Yeah, cause it's not at all important to know whether or not one needs to have good grammar on an exam.

Because one could never just ask one's professors could one?

[TheFutureLawyer]

Because one doesn't have professors yet, does one?

[smittytron3k]

Because one doesn't have professors yet, does one?

It's funny that you complain about grammar and then write this torturous sentence.

Anyways, I've found that professors don't care about typos or ding people for grammatical errors, but they probably do care, at least subconsciously, about the aggregate writing quality of the 3000+ words you produce during an exam. This is not to say they expect Shakespeare, but those who can quickly produce clear, crisp, straightforward prose probably will do better on exams, all things being equal (as they rarely are, of course).

[TheFutureLawyer]

Because one doesn't have professors yet, does one?

It's funny that you complain about grammar and then write this torturous sentence.

Anyways,

It's funny that you didn't see what I was trying to do there.

Anyway, 'anyways' isn't a word.

[goodolgil]

Why is this thread still going on? The question has long been answered.

[cronous]

Because one doesn't have professors yet, does one?

It's funny that you complain about grammar and then write this torturous sentence.

Anyways,

It's funny that you didn't see what I was trying to do there.

Anyway, 'anyways' isn't a word.

Speaking as a professional who writes daily if you are that uptight about grammar you will go positively insane in your professional life. The practice of law is often about raking up the billables and figuring how to cast the facts in a favorable light as well as making persuasive legal arguments. This means not wasting your time looking for the subtle language issues that are not likely to affect your client's interests.

[09042014]

I've heard transactional attorneys care more about typos than litigation attorneys. T/F?

[fatduck]

I've heard transactional attorneys care more about typos than litigation attorneys. T/F?

falsw

[TheFutureLawyer]

Speaking as a professional who writes daily if you are that uptight about grammar you will go positively insane in your professional life. The practice of law is often about raking up the billables and figuring how to cast the facts in a favorable light as well as making persuasive legal arguments. This means not wasting your time looking for the subtle language issues that are not likely to affect your client's interests.

I'm not really a grammar nazi, I've just been messing with people on that front. I started the thread for a pretty simple reason: to find out whether I'd need to brush up on my grammar before law school started (I was thinking about getting the Redbook or something similar, and am reading 'Garner on Language and Writing' right now). With the input I got here, I'll probably forgo that.

[09042014]

I got a B+ on a memo where the professor told me to read my work out loud to check for mistakes.