The NBA Skills Challenge DQ: What It Teaches Us About Good-Faith Effort in Law School
Last night, during the NBA's Kia Skills Challenge, San Antonio Spurs’ Victor Wembanyama and Chris Paul were disqualified for failing to take “valid” shot attempts. Their strategy involved quickly releasing the ball without genuine attempts to score, aiming to save time. This approach was deemed a violation, as the event's rules require players to make a shot or take up to three valid attempts before proceeding to the next task.
This moment in professional basketball serves as an excellent analogy for law students who are given assignments graded on a completion basis. Just as Wembanyama and Paul failed to meet the event’s standard of a valid shot attempt, students can fall short in demonstrating a good-faith effort when completing work assigned for law school, particularly when the grading is based on participation or completion rather than accuracy.
What Is a Good-Faith Effort?
In both legal and academic settings, a good-faith effort refers to an individual’s honest, diligent, and sincere attempt to meet an obligation or fulfill a requirement. In legal practice, this concept is crucial in contract law, negotiations, and ethical duties—attorneys are expected to act in good faith when representing clients, dealing with opposing counsel, and fulfilling professional responsibilities.
For law students, demonstrating a good-faith effort means engaging meaningfully with an assignment, attempting to apply the concepts taught in class, and putting forth the necessary effort to complete the work as intended. Even if the final product is imperfect, as long as the student sincerely tries to complete the task within the scope of its requirements, it meets the threshold for a valid attempt.
In my courses, I require good-faith completion of assignments as part of students’ participation grade. This means that simply submitting something—without real effort, analysis, or adherence to instructions—does not count as full participation. Just as the NBA ruled that Wembanyama and Paul’s attempts were invalid because they failed to satisfy the challenge’s intent, students who fail to genuinely engage with an assignment risk receiving no credit.
A good-faith effort means more than just turning in a file or filling a required word count—it means:
Engaging meaningfully with the task by applying effort, thought, and legal reasoning.
Following the assignment instructions to ensure that the work submitted is aligned with expectations.
Demonstrating effort in legal writing, organization, and analysis rather than providing incomplete, disorganized, or unstructured responses.
Submitting an assignment that could, in theory, be evaluated for feedback or improvement, rather than turning in something that is clearly rushed or non-responsive to the prompt.
If a student submits an assignment that does not reflect a reasonable attempt to complete it in good faith, I reserve the right to mark it incomplete and ask for revision or additional effort. The purpose of this policy is not to be punitive, but to reinforce the idea that legal education and bar exam preparation require real engagement. Half-hearted submissions do not serve the student’s own development and do not meet the participation standard.
What a Good-Faith Effort Does Not Include
A failure to demonstrate a good-faith effort doesn’t always mean outright cheating or exploiting the rules—it can be more subtle. Below are some actions that do not qualify as good-faith efforts in law school assignments:
1. Dishonesty
Misrepresenting your work, such as copying and pasting text without understanding it, submitting AI-generated responses without personal analysis, or passing off another student’s outline as your own, violates the principles of good faith. Even if the professor doesn’t grade the work for accuracy, they assign completion-based exercises to help students internalize material. If you don’t engage sincerely, you’re only hurting yourself.
2. Evasion
Just as Wembanyama and Paul tried to move through the skills challenge without properly attempting their shots, law students sometimes try to complete assignments with minimal engagement. For example, if an assignment asks for a well-reasoned analysis, submitting a few short, undeveloped sentences just to check the box isn’t a valid attempt. If a professor assigns a practice essay, writing two vague paragraphs instead of a complete response under timed conditions misses the point entirely.
3. Minimalism
There’s a difference between efficiency and cutting corners. A law student might technically “complete” an assignment by submitting something, but if that submission lacks effort—such as writing an essay without citing any law, failing to apply rules to facts, or skipping key sections—it does not meet the standard of a good-faith effort. In practice, this mindset leads to underdeveloped analytical skills and ultimately weak bar exam performance.
Why Students Might Fail to Complete Assignments in Good Faith
Students often don’t intend to submit low-effort work. Instead, they may fall into this pattern due to:
1. Procrastination
Waiting until the last minute to complete an assignment often results in rushed, superficial work. When students cram an essay into the final hour before the deadline, they rarely produce thoughtful, well-organized responses. A good-faith effort means allocating enough time to engage meaningfully with the material.
Superficial Engagement
Some students treat completion-based assignments as busywork and fail to recognize their value. For example, if a professor assigns a practice essay to help students learn how to analyze issues under timed conditions, a student who types a few disorganized thoughts without actually structuring an answer is missing the educational benefit.
3. Rule Manipulation
Just as Wembanyama and Paul tried to skirt the rules by taking technically valid but clearly unserious shot attempts, some students attempt to exploit assignment requirements. For instance, if an assignment requires three pages, submitting three pages of vague, repetitive sentences without real analysis is an attempt to “game” the system rather than complete the work as intended.
Why Failing to Engage in Good Faith Hurts You in Bar Prep
When law students don’t engage in good-faith efforts in assignments, they set themselves up for failure in bar exam preparation. Unlike law school, where some assignments are graded on participation, the bar exam has no leniency—either you answer questions correctly, or you don’t.
Lack of Skill Development: Each assignment in law school is an opportunity to refine legal writing, issue-spotting, and analysis. Skipping good-faith efforts means losing out on valuable practice.
Knowledge Gaps: Bar exam questions require applying knowledge under pressure. If a student has a history of superficial engagement in law school, they are more likely to struggle with recall and application on exam day.
Poor Test-Taking Stamina: The bar exam is a marathon, not a sprint. Developing the ability to complete full-length essays, MBE sets, and MPTs requires practicing with discipline. Students who take shortcuts in law school often lack the endurance to perform under timed conditions.
Final Thoughts: Learn from the NBA’s Mistake
Wembanyama and Paul’s disqualification wasn’t about missing shots—it was about failing to take valid attempts. The same logic applies to law school assignments. If you’re given an opportunity to develop your skills, take it seriously. Engage with the material, put forth an honest effort, and approach each assignment with the mindset that it is preparing you for something bigger.
In the end, skipping good-faith efforts might not immediately impact your law school grades, but it will absolutely impact your bar exam performance. Unlike the NBA, where you can move on to another game, in law school, a failure to engage today means a tougher road ahead when the bar exam comes. Don’t just “throw the ball up” to satisfy a requirement—take a real shot.
