Legal Commentary

This post is a follow-up to Bill's, from a few days ago ("The Very Mixed Blessings of Word-Processed Exams").  In first-year classes, what I do with exams is (I gather) pretty typical:  word-processed, open-book, and word limits.  Also (and maybe this isn't typical?), I tell the students in the instructions that a part (a very small part, as it happens, but still a part) of their exam score will be based on style, organization, grammar, syntax, and spelling.

I do this for (I think) three reasons:  First, I hope to dis-incentivize, if only a little bit, some students' tendency to (as Bill put it) "power through" the exam-answer and simply type every doctrinal proposition they can recall.  It seems to me that a student who is thinking about form and style might be a bit less likely to engage in this kind of outline-dumping.  Second, I want to have some way to take account of the fact that the students who write a more elegant -- or just a readable -- answer are likely to have allocated some of their scarce answer-writing time to proof-reading and editing.  Those who write word-salad had, in a sense, extra time on their answers.  Finally (and in saying this, I do not mean to celebrate the mad-rush, in-class, everything-rides-on-three-hours law-school-exam practice), it seems to me that, now and again, in law practice, lawyers are required to do good work very quickly, and the fact that it has to be done quickly is not regarded as an excuse for doing it sloppily.

Any thoughts or reactions?