NOT FAIR and I'm pissed!!!

[tsilva25]

Question for you:  do you think your fellow student's intent was to set these margins incorrectly--or perhaps was it a mistake?  Maybe you could point out to her verbally, "hey I noticed your margins are a lot smaller than everyone else's.. might want to check that."

Or try this--it has worked well for me: the 'clueless' approach.  It allows you to point out the offense without appearing to be accusatory:

(Pissed off) Student to Prof:  "Prof. Torts, I noticed on Ms. So-and-So's appellate paper that she had 1/2 inch margins; I thought they were supposed to be 1" margins--have I done the assignment incorrectly?"

HTH

[fooseball22]

Is it just me or do nerdy people get irrate about the wierdest things?  I seriously suggest the original poster 'get a grip'.

[IHEARTLS]

Hey everyone, thanks for all of your advice!!!  Keep reading to find out what I did!!!

To answer a few questions...
1. I was the only one to receive her brief since we were against each other in the oral argument.

2. I've asked around and our professor will surely notice...2Ls say that he is very anal about margins of all things.

3. During the oral argument when the guest judges asked her about how certain cases that she mentioned related to her argument, she gave incorrect facts and details!  This person is a d**mn fraud and my professor saw her in action!!!  My professor knows the details of all of the key cases used for our issues (he asked VERY detailed questions during the practice round).

4. I honestly do feel that this person intentionally set her margins incorrectly b/c there is NO way that she could have fit so much info in 20 pages, plus, there was so much text on the page that she had to manually TYPE the page numbers onto the pages. 

To make a long story short, it is all over now and I did not say anything to her or the professor.

[rapunzel]

Proof that karma works.  Good job in just standing back and letting her tie her own noose.

We did give the OP a bit of a hard time.  I stand by my advice, but I do remember how stressed I felt this time last year.

[TJordan78]

one way to deal with these kind of situations is to put a bug in someones ear. to start a pepple down the snowy hill and let it build on its onw. that type of thing..

the OP could have written to the prof like the day before the breif was due for a quick question - "how imperitive is it that we all adhere to the margin specifications? i know that some people were thinking of extending them to make a longer brief, and i was wondering if i could do this as well"

of course the prof will say "NO"   but now his eye is out for it, and you havnt tattled on anyone. you asked a question regarding your own paper.