Late Work and Extension Requests
David E. Sorkin
The John Marshall Law School
July 2008The syllabus for each course I teach sets forth my formal policy for that course regarding late submissions. The late penalties that I impose vary from one course to another, but they tend to be fairly substantial, for several reasons:
- Having a strict and clearly stated policy on late assignments is an effective means of encouraging students to submit work on time.
- Giving some students additional time to complete an assignment is unfair to those students who work hard to make the deadline.
- A late penalty tends to offset any advantage gained by taking an additional day after the due date to polish one's work.
- I schedule the due date for each assignment carefully, in order to allow sufficient time for the next assignment and to prevent students from falling behind in the course.
- Receiving late submissions is inconvenient for me, because I allocate time for grading papers ahead of time. It is also more difficult for me to grade papers fairly when I receive them at different times.
- Time management and meeting deadlines are critical skills for lawyers. See e.g. Toshiba Am. Info. Sys., Inc. v. New Eng. Tech., Inc., No. SACV 05-00955-CJC(MGLx) (C.D. Cal. Nov. 14, 2007) (denying motion for $1 million in attorneys' fees primarily on ground that it was not timely filed, where counsel's courier service arrived at the courthouse to file the motion mere minutes after it had closed for the day).
Nonetheless, I recognize that unforeseeable circumstances can arise that prevent a student from submitting an assignment on time, and in such cases I may exercise my discretion to grant an extension or reduce a late penalty. (Note that computer-related failures are almost always foreseeable, in my view, and therefore would not justify such an exception. You should always back up your work and have a contingency plan in place should you experience computer or Internet problems.)
In such cases I expect students to notify me of the situation at the earliest possible opportunity, and I reserve the right to insist upon appropriate documentation. I am likely to be much less sympathetic to an extension request if it appears to me that a student was already behind on an assignment even before the situation arose. Thus, for example, if you request an extension because of unforeseeable circumstances arising one week before a four-week assignment is due, preventing you from being able to complete the assignment within the remaining time, you should normally be prepared to present evidence that you had already completed more than half of the work when the circumstances arose. Such evidence may consist of research notes, outlines, rough drafts, or other documentation, depending upon the nature of the assignment. In addition, I will generally be more sympathetic to an extension request from a student whose previous work has been timely and complete than one received from a student who has requested extensions or submitted late work in the past.