Critical Perspectives on the Scholarship of Assessment and Learning in Law: Volume 1: England

It is a well-accepted practice in higher education that the knowledge of law is assessed by written exams and coursework. But do these types of assessment are most suitable to develop professional skills, such as the ability to communicate effectively or the ability to gather and integrate information from various legal sources? An argument can be made that “the traditional exam is not the best way of assessing these skills because it is limited both by time and by the resources students are able to consult [and] ... in a traditional exam it is difficult to assess if professional skills have been acquired in depth” (López et al, 2011). The universities in Australia, Canada, Sweden and the US set take-home exams to assess the knowledge of law on a regular basis. However, this type of assessment in the UK universities is not that common. This chapter argues in favour of take-home exam for assessing law students, in order to develop the skills that fall under what can be defined as ‘professionalism’. These skills include personal and professional integrity and ethics, time management, work/life balance, research, the ability to express the ideas in a logical manner and to find solutions to problems, and the ability to predict and to deal with IT and technological challenges. The chapter draws on the limited academic literature on the topic and the related topics, the discussions in blogosphere, as well as the authors' own experience of take-home exams. The results of preliminary literature searches reveal lack of discussion of the advantages and the disadvantages of take-home exams to assess legal knowledge, especially bearing in mind the task of educating the future generations of professionals, who may choose legal or non-legal career paths.