How NOT to Cheat in Law School: A Cautionary Tale
Growing up in the information age, there is no limit to the ways in which we rely upon the internet for answers. For better (or often, for worse), we’ll pump things in to Google for instant information on an endless array of topics.
If you want to laugh, and if you’re able to see your recent searches, go ahead and take a look at the last 5 things you Googled…go ahead, do it! A friend of mine (seriously, a friend, not me) recently sent out a very funny email to a bunch of old college friends listing the last 10 phrases he’d searched for on Google. Among some other extremely funny terms that won’t be as humorous to those who don’t know him were “why is my poo green” and “how to make white rice”.
But I digress. The point of this post is to tell you, oh law school hopeful, the cautionary tale of ‘honestapplicant’ (irony alert!), the Duke Law Student who recently posted a question from his take home Constitutional Law Exam on TopLawSchools.com. ‘honestapplicant’ very unfortunately took to the internet to post a question from his Constitutional Law exam – and was very quickly humbled. Not only was he instantly called out as someone looking for answers to a take home Constitutional Law exam, the story quickly spread across the internet leaving the guilty party (no one is sure if the Duke was able to ID the student) reeling and scrambling to cover up any evidence.
It should go without saying that this type of behavior is not advisable, and should serve as a stark reminder of how everything that you can (and may) post on the internet can somehow, someway be traced back to you.
You may be thinking “there’s no way I’d be that careless as to ask for exam answers in a public forum”, I urge you to think about the other ways in which your online behavior might one day come back to bite you, particularly if you end up becoming an esteemed councilor. Consider this: facebook recently came out with its new fangled ‘timeline’ functionality. While this is admittedly pretty cool the reality is this: when you’re a 70 something year old grandparent, there will be a digital record of all of those random status updates that you once posted, complete with a geo location tag of some sort, as well as any snide comments from your college friends (or enemies). Gulp.
Props to the Above the Law for their humorous summary and analysis of the incident.