Conduct officers have been moving away from the legalistic disciplinary systems that colleges built in the latter half of the 20th century on the belief that they'd lose lawsuits without them. Confident now that judges won't expect those systems to conform to the rules of criminal procedure, colleges are making hearings less like trials, and more frequently using mediation and similar techniques to settle disputes. A national survey presented this month shows that institutions are scaling back on some criminal due-process procedures they used to uphold, such as a person's right to have a public hearing and to confront opposing witnesses. Colleges still decide cases--and impose sanctions--but a steady movement over the past decade has taken hold: Campus conduct systems should steer clear of legalese and all that judicial maneuvering. At the same time, some institutions have ratcheted up a practice that sounds prosecutorial: investigation. While legalism on campuses may be out of style, litigation against colleges is not, and risk-management consultants have encouraged institutions to step up their fact finding before holding students responsible. Investigators say they help keep the disciplinary process fair for students--and defensible in court--while playing by the new rules.