2023 Laws of Puerto Rico › TITLE FOUR Appendices - Rules of Court (§§ 1 — 1-54) › VII-B - Regulations of the Board of Bar Examiners (1983) (§§ 1 — 18) › Rule 6.0 - Grading of essay questions

(a) Key number. — At the end of each examination period, the Chairperson of the Board, with the assistance of the Executive Director and other designated persons, shall remove from the cover of each answer notebook the part containing the identification number and shall mark each one with another number that shall be known as the key number. The Chairperson of the Board shall prepare a list of the key numbers which he shall keep under his exclusive custody. In this way, no examiner will know the applicant’s identity when grading his notebook because neither the examiners nor the applicants, nor any person except the Chairperson of the Board, shall know to whom the key number belongs. The Chairperson of the Board may delegate the above process [to] the Executive Director.
(b) Grading committee. — The Chairperson or Executive Director of the Board shall organize a grading committee for the bar examination to be composed of attorneys in private practice or public service and law professors, specialists in the subjects covered in the bar examination. All members of this committee shall be appointed by resolution of the Court to correct answers to the examination’s essay questions. The grading committee shall meet on the dates and at the places designated by the Executive Director in order to proceed with the grading.
Each grader shall receive a per diem, computed [on the basis of] $2.50 for each answer booklet corrected. Graders who travel from areas beyond metropolitan San Juan shall be reimbursed for mileage and toll charges in accordance with regulations applicable to officials of the judicial branch.
(c) Grading standards. — When grading the answers given by the applicants, the following shall be taken into consideration:
(1) If the applicant has adequately identified the legal problems involved in the question;
(2) if the applicant has correctly stated the law applicable to the problem in question;
(3) if the applicant understands the problem presented and makes an adequate analysis in the light of the applicable legal principles;
(4) if he can correctly fashion juridically acceptable solutions;
(5) if the candidate digresses into irrelevant or unimportant matters;
(6) writes unnecessarily long answers, and
(7) uses the written language and expresses his ideas in an adequate manner.
(d) Modification of grading guidelines. — Before grading the answers, the Chairperson, Executive Director or persons they designate shall take a random sample of twenty (20) answer booklets for each essay question. This sample shall be distributed to members of the grading committee, which shall be divided into teams of two (2) graders for each question. These teams shall evaluate the answers in the twenty (20) booklets to determine whether the directions for grading should be modified. If, in the process of correction, it appears that a significant error occurred in the preparation or modification of the directions they should be amended accordingly and, if necessary, the grading process of the affected question shall be started anew.
(e) Procedure for grading. — Except as otherwise provided in subsection (d) above, the grading process shall be as follows:
(1) The Executive Director or officers of the Board shall organize the answer booklets by questions.
(2) All answer booklets shall be taken to the place designated for the grading process, where they will be available to the grading committee.
(3) The grading committee shall be divided into teams of two (2) graders for each question.
(4) Each shall individually correct each answer to the particular question according to a point scale which they determine.
(5) In the correction process, each grader shall record the points obtained by each examinee for each answer on a paper provided by the Board. The graders shall not make marks o[r] annotations o[n] the examination booklet[s].
Once individual correction is completed, the two (2) members of each team shall meet to compare the points assigned to each answer. If the point-value awarded by each grader differs from that awarded by the other by more than one (1) point, the graders shall discuss the grounds for their differences and shall agree upon a point-value which adequately represents the quality of each answer. Once all grades have been finalized the papers with points awarded to the answers shall be given to the Executive Director or officers of the Board.
This procedure may be varied to conform it with any other procedure which assures maximum uniformity and objectivity in the process.
History —Mar. 17, 1983; Feb. 23, 1984; Jan. 16, 1987.