April 17th, 2008

Dear Dean Gomez-Velez,

Thank you for meeting with us on April 10th. We write to file a formal complaint based
on the performance of our First Year Lawyering Seminar instructor, Associate Professor Angela
Burton. This complaint can be divided into the following topic areas: grading, communication,
consistency, professionalism, and Prof. Burton’s history of unsatisfactory performance as a
CUNY Law instructor. We have listed below our most important grievances, categorized by
topic area. Given her hostility expressed towards certain students in class, we do not feel
comfortable personally discussing these issues with Prof. Burton. We file this complaint
pursuant to the 2007-2008 edition of the CUNY Law Student Handbook and we believe that the
issues addressed in this complaint are not protected by academic freedom. This complaint
reflects Prof. Burton’s neglect of duty and incompetent service, both of which are listed in the
Handbook as sufficient grounds for student complaints.

Unfortunately, our experience with Prof. Burton has severely inhibited our abilities to
engage with CUNY Law’s ultra-important Lawyering curriculum. Given the history of student
troubles with Prof. Burton, this has become an institutional problem which must be promptly and
adequately addressed by the Administration. Current and future students at CUNY Law deserve
no less. Again, thank you for meeting with us and we look forward to updates of the
Administration’s follow-up on this issue.

Thank you for your attention to this urgent matter,

Concerned Students of First Year Lawyering Seminar H

Cc: Concerned Students of Lawyering Seminar B, who had Prof. Burton as an instructor last
semester and met with Dean Gomez-Velez regarding similar problems with Prof. Burton

Cc: Concerned Students of Prof. Burton’s Spring 2007 LFR class, who circulated a petition and
met with Dean Anderson and former Academic Dean Edwards regarding Prof. Burton’s
inadequate performance

Cc: Dean Anderson

Below are the specific areas of concern:

I. GRADING
a. Prof. Burton’s grading has been arbitrary and not reflective of student
performance. This statement is based on her grading of our draft pretrial briefs on
extraordinary circumstances, submitted on March 3rd, 2008 (the only grade we’ve
received thus far). Her evaluation of these briefs was vague, sometimes
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 contradictory, and inconsistent with her stated expectations. Even students who
were given relatively high grades were puzzled by her apparent oversight of
significant flaws in their analyses and structures. For example, Prof. Burton set a
strict 12-page limit for the briefs, despite student protest and other Lawyering
instructors’ willingness to extend the page limit on the assignment. Some
students who received high grades on the brief significantly exceeded the page
limit while many of the students that struggled to meet the page limit received
lower grades, apparently because of missing content and analysis. Obviously, it is
unfair that those students were penalized for lack of content in part because they
stayed within the page limit, while the students who did not meet the page limit
were able to include more analysis and were thus given higher grades. This
leaves students uncertain as to whether Prof. Burton will stick to her stated
expectations in future evaluations.
b. Prof. Burton engages in favoritism (or dis-favoritism) in class and many students
fear that this may also be reflected in her grading. For example, students have
noticed a relationship between grades on our draft briefs and the amount of
clarifying questions asked in class. That is, the students who ask Prof. Burton to
clarify statements or assignments in class (often triggering her hostility) seemed
to receive lower grades than the students that rarely speak in class or those that
ask no clarification questions. Many in the latter group have expressed a lack of
desire to engage in class for fear of “saying the wrong thing” or falling into
disfavor with Prof. Burton, which could translate to her grading. This is a stark
contrast to our seminar last semester when there was much more student
engagement by a larger portion of students. This chilling effect in the classroom
has severely limited our abilities to openly engage with the Lawyering
curriculum.

c. Prof. Burton’s seminar section in Fall 2007 (Seminar B) received grades that were
noticeably lower than any other seminar section that semester--only one student
received an A- and the rest of the grades were lower. Students from that section
have complained about unfair grading from Prof. Burton and report that she
announced at the beginning of the semester that she would not give grades above
a B+ because first year law students do not produce "A" work.

d. With 75% of our grades still to be determined, we want to ensure that they reflect
our true performances and are not arbitrarily assigned.

II. COMMUNICATION

a. Prof. Burton refused to give us her written feedback on our ungraded draft rule
statements and rule explanations for the first brief, with no explanation as to why.
Prof. Burton continues to request that we submit additional work to her, usually
by email after class has ended instead of during class. However, she has not
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 returned any of this written work with comments or feedback for us to improve
our writing and analysis. This work includes the above-mentioned draft rule
statements and rule explanations, four case briefs, a fact summary for the draft
brief, a log of cases relevant to the equitable estoppel portion of our brief, a
sample argument for the equitable estoppel portion of our revised brief, an outline
of our revised brief, and our revised briefs submitted on April 16th. We question
why she continually requests that we submit these items to her but refuses to give
us her written feedback on them. This is inconsistent with the Lawyering
curriculum’s focus on guided instruction and inconsistent with how other
Lawyering professors are engaging their classes.

b. Many students find her methods of communication, particularly when requesting

clarity on an issue, to be patronizing and inappropriate for students at our level.

c. On more than one occasion, Prof. Burton has rolled her eyes as students ask
questions; other times she appears distracted and inattentive, looking at the clock
when students ask her questions.

d. On April 4th, Prof. Burton announced via TWEN that we must turn in “Case Grids
(worth 5% of final course grade - see syllabus)”, without ever explaining in class
this assignment or giving much explanation on the TWEN site. It seems that she
wishes us to submit case grids based on cases we studied over 1 ½ months ago,
but she did not indicate at the time we were studying the cases that they would
need to be gridded. In fact, many of us understood that 5% portion of our grade
to have already been completed when we presented cases to the class. The course
syllabus says nothing about turning in case grids with our final revised drafts on
May 1st.

III. CONSISTENCY

a. Prof. Burton has departed from the Lawyering course curriculum on more than
one occasion, without explanation. For example, the course syllabus stated that
during class on April 7th and 10th, we would work on preparing for our oral
arguments (worth 20% of our final grade). Despite student concerns raised in
class, Prof. Burton refused to talk about the oral arguments that week and stated
that we “might” get to them on April 14th. In fact, we spent a total of 15 minutes
discussing oral arguments on April 14th and Prof. Burton directed us to a 20 page
reading assignment in our text to learn everything else about the subject. She
noted an “evaluation” sheet for the oral argument on the TWEN site but did not
go over it with us. The evaluation sheet seemed confusing to many students but
there was no time left in class to go over it. Meanwhile, the other Lawyering
seminars had been discussing and mooting oral arguments in class, which leaves

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 us feeling unprepared as we face the other seminar section in our graded oral
arguments.

b. Prof. Burton’s evaluations of our first draft brief assignments were inconsistent
with what she claimed she was looking for. Many of us attempted to incorporate
her verbal feedback from a draft rule statement in our graded draft brief, only to
have her mark those items wrong on our graded evaluations. This left us feeling
confused as to what she really is looking for in our work. This problem has
continued both in class and in one-on-one interactions.

c. Often, Prof. Burton refuses to explain to us how to improve our written work,
instead directing us to “go read the case again” because we did not read it
correctly or closely enough, or to “go to the Writing Center.” Again, this is
inconsistent with the Lawyering curriculum, which is intended to give us
instructor-guided support while we build our writing skills.

IV. PROFESSIONALISM

a. Prof. Burton was unavailable to meet with students for three different office hours
that she had setup before our first brief deadline, on the following dates: Feb. 27th
,28th, and, 29th. As a result, many students were unable to get feedback from her
on how to improve our briefs. She never explained why she was absent for these
office hours.

b. During the mandatory student-teacher conferences to discuss our draft pretrial

briefs on extraordinary circumstances on March 6th-13th, Prof. Burton arrived late
for some meetings with students and refused to extend the meeting times with
those students due to her tardiness. Many students found these conferences to be
unproductive and frustrating since Prof. Burton had not read the entire briefs, nor
had she evaluated them before the conferences.

c. Several students have noted that Prof. Burton has a condescending way of
addressing students, often telling us that we are not “thinking like lawyers” when
we are unable to understand a concept.

i. Example: On January 28th, Prof. Burton thought she had assigned a

reading to us that she had not. In fact, not a single person in the class had
read the assignment but she insisted that she had assigned it and proceeded
to scold us for our “unprofessionalism” and for not “acting and thinking
like lawyers.” Given the fact that not a single student had read those
cases, we think that the error was Prof. Burton’s and not ours.

d. Prof. Burton has told at least one student that the student’s question was “dumb.”

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 e. Prof. Burton generally fails to satisfactorily answer clarification questions about
assignments and other important matters, instead getting angry and distracted. On
April 3rd, one student asked her what the page limit would be for our final revised
brief and she refused to answer, instead claiming that he had “distracted” her. Her
temper often flares unexpectedly, causing detriment to the class environment.

V. A HISTORY OF PROBLEMS

a. We understand that students in the Fall 2007 Lawyering Seminar B section had
similar problems with Prof. Burton and even met with Dean Gomez-Velez.

b. We understand that the students of Prof. Burton’s Family Law class last year
submitted a petition requesting action taken because of her inadequate
performance and also met with Dean Anderson and former Academic Dean
Edwards.

c. We understand that there have been various other student complaints about Prof.
Burton over time.

d. We ask what Dean Anderson and Dean Gomez-Velez have done to address these
issues and why Prof. Burton’s neglect of duty and incompetent service is tolerated
at CUNY Law year after year. The students at this school deserve better.