By: Anne Gordon, Clinical Professor of Law and Director of Externships, Duke Law School

I’ve often heard colleagues say that they love teaching so much their law school wouldn’t even need to pay them for it . . . but grading is a different story.  Grading is time-consuming and stressful, two things that none of us needs as we finish up an uncommonly difficult year.  We all know that taking the time to check that stress is good for our health.  You may not know that it is also critical for reducing your bias.  Mitigating our biases is critical to ensure accurate student assessment, as well as the relationship-building that is so key to our mentorship and supervision.  This article, an excerpt from a paper in the Spring issue of the Clinical Law Review, will illustrate how biases shape our thinking, show the link between stress and bias, and provide concrete ways to mitigate our bias – critical for avoiding biased behavior toward our students – in grading season and beyond.

Brains and Bias

Our brains sort through information we encounter in the world by creating schema, automatic characterizations that allow us to go on 'auto-pilot' as we process information throughout our day.  These allow us to be efficient: we can distinguish a plastic bag from a log in the road while driving and react appropriately, even without conscious thought.  Our automatic judgments can also activate in ways that aren’t helpful, however, when those schema intersect with actual or perceived social characteristics like race or gender, including harmful stereotypes."

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From Best Practices in Legal Education