When Noah Werksman began his first final exam in law school, the classroom was half-empty. “There were 60, maybe 70 people in our cohort,” he says in an interview. “At least 30 students were missing.”
Mr. Werksman, 27, came to Pepperdine Caruso School of Law in Malibu, Calif., in the summer of 2023. “It was what we call a racehorse exam,” he says of the final. “It’s pretty guaranteed you’re not going to finish, but you have to move as fast as possible and rack up as many points as you can.”

