Law students get deadline extension to watch basketball game after submitting spoof written submissions

Their lecturer loved it 🏀

A law professor has gone viral after tweeting about her students’ creative request for a deadline extension.

Sara Warf, who teaches legal writing at the University of North Carolina School of Law, took to Twitter on Wednesday to share the uplifting anecdote.

Her students had to draft an application for summary judgment, due on Sunday. But the deadline clashed with what Legal Cheek research establishes is the semi-finals of a popular basketball tournament, with the University of North Carolina (Michael Jordan’s college team) playing arch-rivals Duke.

Nothing daunted, Warf’s law class submitted a request to push the deadline back until after the match — in the style of a formal court application.

The spoof motion saw the students “respectfully request an order granting plaintiff(s), pro se, an additional 24 hours to file their motions for summary judgment”. It was “filed” in the “Orange County Educational Court” and accompanied by what Warf called a “beautifully formatted” memo (written submissions).

The memo noted that although the Carolina-Duke rivalry (which has its own, enormous Wikipedia page) stretches back 334 games over 100 years, this is the first time the teams have met in this tournament. It therefore met the test set by the law school syllabus for a deadline extension: when “something wild happens to the academic calendar” (apparently this is the actual wording).

Another student filed a meme-tastic amicus brief.

Warf – whose CV reveals that she was men’s basketball team manager while a UNC student — proved sympathetic, as did her colleagues.

The class now has until Tuesday to submit their assignment. You might call that a slam dunk.

SQE lecturers take note: Man City v Liverpool is next Sunday.