Apparently students at the University of Maryland College Park who miss class do not have to worry about finding someone to take notes for them. Instead, they can rely on "Terp Notes". According to the website of Bookholders.com, the company that sells Terp Notes, Terp Notes are "professional typed notes for daily class lectures. The notes are taken by hand-selected students enrolled in your class providing easy to read material that you need. Not only do you receive lecture information but an interpretation by a student to understand the material better." According to one newspaper, student note takers are paid from $8 to $20 per class for their notes. The Bookholders.com website includes prices for the notes, samples notes, and classes for which notes are available. The prices range from $2.49 for one day of notes to $26.95 for a full semester. Interestingly, class notes from previous semesters are less expensive than notes currently being taken. While the quality of notes appear to vary, based on the sample notes I saw, the class notes are not just pages of rambling classroom discussion, but rather are presented in an outline format. The notes have been available for several years. Yet their existence continues to cause concerns, particularly among professors who apparently not only worry about copyright concerns, but also worry about students' relying on such notes as authoritative. While I can appreciate the concerns these notes generate, they seem like an inevitable extension of commercial outlines and other research tools on which students rely. And of course I wonder if a market for these kinds of notes will develop at the law school level.
To be sure, Bookholders.com seems to be aware of the potential for legal liability in any school setting. However, Bookholders.com thus far has managed to avoid legal issues, and includes a disclaimer on its notes that reads: "these notes do not represent the professor's lectures verbatim." Apparently Bookholders.com also keeps the list of note takers confidential so that professors will not know whose earning money while they take notes in class.
Copyright concerns aside, perhaps law school students are more risk averse than undergrads and hence are not willing to rely on a stranger's perspective of classroom discussion. Of course, one could argue that something like Terp Notes is preferable to more traditional commercial outlines because at least the notes seeks to capture the perspective of a particular professor. Then too, aside from the profit piece, such notes seem almost indistinguishable from borrowing class notes from a friend, on the one hand, or outlines and other class materials passed down from year to year, on the other. Moreover, it is possible that the profit piece incentivizes the note taker to take better notes. And yet it is equally possible that the profit motive corrupts these more informal ways of sharing class information because the original note taker is motivated by more than just the educational experience. And I can imagine that law students would feel comfortable relying on these informal ways because the notes have somehow been verified--that is, dubbed the "law review" outline or taken by the "A+" student. This suggests that maybe such a note service could not take off in the law school setting.
And yet, given the anxiety many law school students feel and the amount of money students pay for various study aids, it is hard to imagine them not taking advantage of any tool that they perceive as potentially bolstering their performance.
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