Law professor argues closed-book exams may be fairer in the AI era
hoofnagle · x · 2026-07-27
A law professor argues that AI and extra-time accommodations are making closed-book exams look more defensible in law school.
- The argument is that closed-book tests reward internalized knowledge, and that recall and understanding are still tightly linked.
- More importantly, open-book exams can intensify fairness concerns around extra-time accommodations, since students may end up with very different effective test conditions.
- The proposed compromise is to include factual material directly in the exam if the goal is to test memorization of specific legal elements.
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