Restoring Dignity to the Law: plagiarism

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

North Carolina Central Grad. Speaker Lifts Speech

Now that we're back on normal programming (I hope), we are faced with an interesting question: what's the perfect way to cap off a third-class legal education?

Well, at North Carolina Central, the answer apparently is to have your graduation speaker rip off another speaker from a third-class undergrad institution:

A North Carolina Central University law school graduate is being criticized by school officials for delivering a commencement speech that heavily plagiarized a YouTube video.

The News and Observer of Raleigh reported Preston Mitchum gave remarks Friday that included much of a speech last year by Binghamton University student Anthony Corvino.

The article goes on to say that Mitchum intended to give credit to Corvino, and that he sought his permission in advance, so the plagiarism is apparently purely technical, but who on Earth spends three years in law school and has nothing better to fill the time with than lifting some other guy's speech from youtube?

And a Binghamton student from last year? Really? Was the library closed? Couldn't you at least plagiarize a famous lawyer? A working lawyer? A well-known writer? Corvino's speech may be good, yes, but that's completely beside the point.

As the Durham paper points out, Mitchum may face discipline:

"He graduated," the dean said. "He's gone. When students have graduated, that limits what the law school can do. This is almost definitely a matter we will have to pass on and leave to the North Carolina Board of Bar Examiners. It's very likely they will be the ones to make a decision about whether this could affect his license."

I think that's a little steep, just as I think some of the reactions are a bit over the top, consider Provost Kwesi Aggrey:

"We completely disavow this behavior by any of our students in any capacity."

Aggrey added that he, too, hoped "this incident will serve as a teaching moment for our students."

You disavow plagiarism? Wow, way to go out on a limb. "Teaching moment?" Uh, kids, plagiarism is bad. You shouldn't do it. That's it. Be disgruntled, laugh, move on. No reason to try to discipline a kid or get the bar examiners involved (it's not academic/professional dishonesty; it's a commencement speech at what I'm sure was a lame ceremony).

About RDTTL

I am a current law student who dreads the end of the conveyor belt and wishes to see positive change in the legal community.

To me, a dignified profession is one that is respected, one whose members serve as ambassadors for its social value, one that lets its practitioners lead healthy, productive, and active civic lives, and one where the members of the profession take active steps to protect the profession's honor.

It is self-evident that the legal profession has problems on that front (or all of those fronts, if you want to break it down). Lawyers are twice as likely to kill themselves as the average person. They are significantly more likely to become depressed or alcoholic. Along with other factors, an oversupply of labor has led to smaller salaries for most - putting the ability to have families or manage debt at risk - while making attorney work an impossibility for others. Last year roughly 1/3 of recent juris doctor recipients did not have jobs. Legal process outsourcing makes it far less likely that they'll ever get them.

These issues existed before the recession and extend beyond its effects. This blog explores these issues and seeks to provide helpful information and commentary, especially with regards to legal education, the reform of which I believe would aid many the other issues that prevent the law from being a fully-dignified profession.

I have chosen to use pseudonymous speech for roughly the same reasons outlined by zerohedge, even though I don't think the risk of retaliation is that high in my case (of all the professors I've had, I can only think of one who would "retaliate").

If you wish to contact me, please leave a comment. In the interest of simplifying my life, I am cutting my email addresses down, including the one that used to appear here, which has become unmanageable due to spam.