Nationwide College Plagiarism Defense Attorneys

What should you do if you have been accused of Plagiarism by your School, College or University?

Plagiarism is a serious charge and can result in academic dismissal. A finding that you have violated your schools code of conduct by engaging in plagiarism can lead to difficulty finding jobs, obstacles clearing background and ethics checks, and can also create barriers if you wish to apply to other educational programs.

If you have been charge with plagiarism, it is wise to consult with an experienced education lawyer sooner rather than later.

What is Plagiarism?

Plagiarism is defined as, “the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own,” but in a modern technological age it’s not as simple as that. Plagiarism can extend to using artificial intelligence (AI) to create original works that may still be considered by schools, colleges and universities to be plagiarized.

The Four Types of Plagiarism:

There are four (4) types of Plagiarism that account for most of the cases that we see:

1. Direct Plagiarism
2. Self Plagiarism
3. Mosaic Plagiarism
4. Accidental Plagiarism

Direct Plagiarism

Direct plagiarism is what most of us consider to be plagiarism; which is the word-for-word transcription of a certain percentage of somebody else’s content, without quotes or proper attribution.

Self Plagiarism

Self-plagiarism occurs when a student recycles their own work and passes it off as new or uses a certain percentage of previous work in the creation of new content and does this without requisite permission. One might not think that reusing your own work could be considered plagiarism, but indeed self-plagiarism can lead to a violation of your school’s code of conduct.

Mosaic Plagiarism

Mosaic Plagiarism is taking someone else’s work and making it enough of your own with synonyms and revised sentence structures to “beat” plagiarism checking technology such as websites like turnitin.com.  Mosaic Plagiarism can get tricky depending on just how much was changed, and whether any credit was given to the original author, but Mosaic Plagiarism can also lead to a violation of your school’s code of conduct.

Accidental Plagiarism

Accidental plagiarism occurs when someone is sloppy with citations or quotes and does not have the intent to plagiarism, but may just be bad at using MLA or other bluebooking authorities.

Intent is not a requisite of plagiarism and accidental plagiarism may still rise to the level of a violation of your schools code of conduct.

Is using Artificial Intelligence Plagiarism?

There are many interesting articles online about whether using AI amount to plagiarism. Some may say you are NOT keeping up with technology if you are not using AI to assist in writing your papers. Others argue that there is a time and place to lean on AI for content creation, but the academic setting should be testing your own brain power and abilities and not those that are coded into software. Regardless of your school of thought, Schools and Universities can use their massive power to build a case against you for using Artificial Intelligence in your drafting process and if they do it may be violation of their code of conduct. Some schools have not caught up with the idea of AI in their own policies. Cases of AI Plagiarism are taken on a case by case basis and present interesting legal challenges.

There is an article worth reading in the Wall Street Journal that discusses Grammarly and how Grammarly has brought Artificial Intelligence to Writing. Does using machine learning and artificial intelligence to improve people’s writing amount to Plagiarism or is it no more than an up to date spell check? We would be interested in your comments to that question below.

How do you defend a Plagiarism case?

Great question! Each case is different and requires the application of different skills from your attorney. But overall our goal in the defense process is to ensure you exit school with a record you can be proud of and that you are set up for success in the future and that an accusation of Plagiarism does not cost you the time, energy and money that you have invested in your education over the past 20+ years. Having an experienced and aggressive education lawyer by your side while fighting plagiarism charges can mean the difference between a bleek and bright future.

Why do we operate our Plagiarism defense firm nationwide?

As Education Lawyers we understand that matriculation into college or university often means traveling far from where you may have been born and raised. Often your local attorney may not be able to handle a matter across the country or way up or down the interstate. We have a network of highly skilled education attorneys that can handle matters near and far.

Have you been accused of Plagiarism?

Sincerely, we hope you are visiting this page doing research on Plagiarism and not because you have been charged by your school, college or university with Plagiarism. But in the event you are up against it right now, we are standing by and available to discuss your issue. Please feel free to call or text us at 888-9595-LAW (888-9595-529) or chat with a live operator who is standing my somewhere near the bottom left hand corner of your screen.

Montgomery Law – “Teaching Schools a Lesson”