OK, here it goes: When you are in law school, you have to learn how to take a law school exam. To take a law school exam, you must apply law to fact.
That’s it. Simple. Easy money. If you do it, you will put your peers to shame.
What WON’T help you learn how to take a good law school exam? Having that special hornbook, that special outline from last year’s class, being the last person to leave the library, or taking notes in a special way. In order to do well you must learn how to take a better exam.
“Imagine that Law School is a horse race. On the first day of classes, the professors pass out the syllabi, the gates spring open, and the horses (that’s you) burst forth from the cages. In a real hose race, however, the thoroughbreds charge forward on a beeline course down the track toward the finish line. In law school, however, when the gates open, the first-year students charge out of their cages and spray out in any number of directions in a zealous but aimless charge. Not surprisingly, after fourteen weeks barreling off in the wrong direction, many of these hapless 1Ls cross the finish line exhausted, frustrated, and completely confused. Worse yet, many of them end up bombing their first-semester exams, and their dismal results hang on their necks like albatrosses for the rest of their law school careers.”
Prong one has been done to death, so I’m going to keep it short. Read your cases, try to decipher rules from them. Write down SOME notes as you read them, but there’s no need to brief fully. Watch out for highlighters, they can make you think you’re learning when really you just highlight what you don’t understand. Pen or typed notes work better, they engage your brain more fully. At some point (early or late) create your own outline. Consult hornbooks when lost, confused, or new. Never read about topics that were not covered in class. Learn well the fact that every professor (and by extension, every hornbook author) has a different take on exactly what the law is and how it applies.
Feel free to try flashcards, don’t worry about the length of your outlines. Memorize your shit whether it’s open or closed book. Done.
Hopefully that cursory treatment hits home my main point: It’s the least interesting and least important part of law school. Pro tip: once you get good at exams, you realize that 1Ls work way too hard for their grades (good or bad). That’s fine, there’s something to be said for over-preparing / covering all of your bases. But the kids who grade on to law review stay at the top of the class even while spending dozens of hours per week cite checking, flying around the country doing interviews, and participating in other ECs. How? They realize that learning a body of law doesn’t require memorizing 3 treatises and constructing a 4,000 page outline. They’ve learned how to properly take a law school exam, they understand how much law they need to learn, and they do it quickly and efficiently. Their grades do not suffer.
Professors have many different ways to grade exams. Some do it holistically and apply a letter at the end. Others sort into piles. Some use checklists, some just add points when they see proper analysis.
Most professors grade exams by awarding points for correct application of law to fact.
The significance of this should not escape you. There’s a way to get points on a law school exam, and your job is to figure out how to GET POINTS on a law school exam. Not learn as many rules as possible, but learn how your application of those rules will turn into check marks, ticks, pluses, smiley faces, and large numbers scrawled all over your exam in red ink.
You’re going to encounter (written on TLS, discussed in the halls of your law school) a lot of pushback with respect to law school exams and how arbitrary they are. When you encounter this pushback, remember that just because you don’t see the grading process and aren’t taught well how to handle it doesn’t mean there isn't method to the madness behind the black box of exam grading. Approach the process as rational, put in the work, and enjoy rational results.
In general you need to think about some mechanical things: If your professor is going to grade with a checklist of some kind, you should approach your exam in a checklist friendly manner. Use LOTS of headings and subheadings. In fact, put them down before any of your analysis to help guide your answer. Make sure you cover issues from every angle, and consider bringing in an ‘issue checklist’ to make sure you’re not missing any big premises in the fact pattern.
Beyond that, you need to read, read, and re-read information about law school exams. Don’t skim Getting to Maybe the week before class and call it a semester. It's just not enough - you've got to think about, learn, and practice the process of taking a law school exam over and over and over again. I read Getting to Maybe 3 times – once before law school, once a week into law school, and once just before exams. I wish I’d done it more. Read it with a pen just like you’d read your cases, and engage it. Put thoughts on the paper. Circle concepts that will give you points. Marvel at the insight on the top of page 191, and imagine how you too can approach an exam playfully.
The key isn’t necessarily just reading the words over and over. What's important is to read the concepts over again as you gain experience reading cases, taking practice exams, and putting together an entire area of law. You'll get more out of it each time; the advice will become more concrete.
Other strong sources are out there, including many linked below. You certainly don’t need every perspective on the matter, but the more the merrier.
Another absolutely critical aspect is getting inside your professors head. I can tell you how most law professors do things (in no small part due to the level of inbreeding in the legal academy) but I can’t tell you how YOUR law professor will do things. Pay attention to his/her favorite topics, consult recent on-point law review articles (not always useful) to see what they think is important, and religiously study released practice exams and model answers. The more you know what to expect from YOUR professor walking into the exam, the better you will do.
While I recommend many ‘out of class’ sources such as law review articles and practice exams, the most important source by far is just what your professor covers in class. Sure, an issue they only talked about for one day may be a highlight on the exam – you’re on notice, go to class and learn the material. But you’ll never see obscure info from the ‘notes’ section of your casebook play a big part on the exam if it was never covered in class.
I read all the books and understood what I was *supposed* to do beforehand - I don't know. I just needed that sample set of grades and I needed to talk it through with my professors before I knew what was going on.”
When you take your practice exams, keep the mindset of doing all of the ‘right’ things. Apply law to fact, apply law to fact, apply law to fact. Then apply some more law to fact. Don’t worry about conclusions, and don’t worry about ‘solving’ the legal problem before you start writing about how to solve it.
The moment you finish writing the exam your work has just begun. I cannot stress this enough – find a likeminded law student or two and dissect the shit out of your exams. For bonus points, actually try to grade them. How would you do it if you were a professor?
Focus on specific issues. If you’re doing a contracts hypo, take the issue of fraud and compare everyone’s treatment of it. How could it be better? How often were people restating legal rules without analysis (which won’t get you points), how often were people re-typing facts without applying legal rules (Which won’t get you points), how often are the rules and facts combined to come up with a conclusion in an overly conclusory manner (which not only won’t get points, but many law students will mentally feel counts as ‘spotting’ the issue)?
This exam post-mortem, with a focus on points, is the most important thing you can do. I don’t mean to fetishize check marks or rubrics, but I strongly believe that if you can take two exam answers written ‘live’ by earnest law students and figure out why one got more points than the other, you will gain a powerful advantage over your peers. First, law school exams will stop being quite so scary – you’ll be the bearer of the secret knowledge that even if at first blush exams seem similar, it is quite possible to figure out which is ‘better’. Second, you’ll be able to use that knowledge to focus your keystrokes come exam time on those sentences and thought processes that you know GET YOU POINTS in advance.
That was exhausting. Good luck, try to have fun. It’s way too much work and stress to do this if you’re not loving it. Hardly every second of every day, but in the end if you can’t look yourself in the mirror and say “I’m happy to be at law school” then no amount of advice can motivate you to get the As/Hs and the opportunities that they lead to.
