Legal Commentary

Unlike some of my fellow Prawfs, I am not yet in the grading phase of the semester- rather, I am still in the answering-of-frantic-questions-about-civil-procedure phase. I am often amazed, in this phase, at how often I receive massively long emails from students, containing a large number of questions that either 1) ask me to repeat for them things that I am absolutely certain I covered in class, or 2) ask me to do the work for them of "summarizing" a relatively complex concept or area of law ("Could you summarize the Erie doctrine for me? What do we need to know about personal jurisdiction?").

I find that I spend a lot less time agonizing over these emails than I used to, though I confess I am still uncertain whether my way of handling them is the best way. I usually tell the student that it would be far too time-consuming for me to answer such questions via email, and therefore that they have the choice of either drafting proposed answers for me to review and correct, or coming to see me in person (for an appointment of a designated length). How do others handle this? Do some prawfs decline to answer student emails at all during exam period? Set ground rules in advance? Pretend to be away doing research in a remote island village with no internet access?