It is finals season again, with college students nationwide poring over notes and boning up for exams. But in a few classes, the secret of better grades has as much to do with negotiating skills as with study.

Law students Andrew Held and Suzanne Bowen were among the guinea pigs in some small but energetic experiments that are rattling, ever so slightly, the normally staid confines of law school.

Most class time in law school involves digesting vast quantities of abstract knowledge via the Socratic method - lecture followed by questions posed to students. Yes, there are sometimes opportunities for role playing in moot court situations, too.

But experiential learning became the main thrust in an unusually elaborate semester-long simulation last spring, when Mr. Held, Ms. Bowen, and fellow students in their respective labor-law classes hundreds of miles apart became "employees" in classrooms run like factories.

At Indiana University's School of Law in Bloomington, in a class dubbed "Labor Law I, Inc.," Prof. Ken Dau-Schmidt reveled in his "evil employer" role. His definition of "production" was covering the textbook material. On this point the boss was unyielding. When Held missed his class once, Professor Dau-Schmidt dispensed a "pink slip"; Held had been unceremoniously "fired" by his professor.

Picking up his books, Held moved across the room to where other "unemployed" students, also guilty of minor infractions, slouched in a corner, only occasionally being called upon.

"If he called on you and you hadn't done the work and slowed down production, he would fire you," Held recalls. "I don't think anybody knew what they were getting into when they signed up for the class."

Finally, after days and hours of extra preparation, Held managed to get Dau-Schmidt's attention and give a good answer. He was "rehired" and allowed to move out of the corner.

But by then, Held and the rest of the class had had quite enough. The group voted to form a union. Unknown to Held at the time, this was all part of the plan to get them to learn. They had to do the legal research outside of class. They had to immerse themselves.

Before long, students were filing documents and negotiating a bargaining agreement with their professor. Terms included the type of final exam (take-home or in-class) and even raising the grading curve itself.

When talks hit a snag over a higher grading curve, students picketed the classroom - to Dau-Schmidt's delight.

"They were chanting 'Dau-Schmidt you're no good, teach your workers like you should," recalls the professor with a chuckle. "I think they also called me 'Dau-Schmidt the great oppressor.' "

It's all really just a means to an end, he says: learning the law.

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