A law school exam essay question has time limitations for completion based on the bar exam, which is typically designed to allow fifty minutes for each question asked. This fifty minutes encompasses the total time accorded for reading, note taking, outlining, and the writing of the essay. Fifty minutes is not enough time to complete the task-trust us-but you must attempt the impossible. You have no other choice.
Practice Exam:
Because of the high difficulty level, it is preferable to practice and test your skills prior to the time when you must perform. The greater your confidence and experience in dealing with this format of exam, the better you should do. Thus, whenever you are given the opportunity to take a practice exam you should, if at all possible, do so.
To derive maximum benefit, find practice exams that are as similar as possible to the ones that your professors use. Check your professor's old exams as they will be the best guideline to his preferred choices. Old exams are normally found in the school library's archives and are a great source of useful information. You can also talk to old students to find out about the professors inclinations and preferences as far as setting examination papers were concerned.
Always strive to complete the practice exams within the stipulated time limits. However, the true gain of a practice examination is that you get to practice the exam under comparable and related conditions as your final exam, giving you an opportunity to unintentionally prepare for the final law school exam.
Practice Exams Can Delude:
There is a danger in taking practice exams that a prospective student should be made aware of. At one law school, first-year students were given an opportunity to take a practice exam at about the midterm level of the school year. The exam was a real property question that the students were given fifty minutes to answer. It was a difficult fact pattern, and there certainly was not adequate time to fully develop all of the issues. However, the students gave the exam their best efforts. To the surprise of many of the students, they did quite well on the practice exam. They spotted most of the issues and correctly applied the law to those issues. As a result, the students began to think that they had the real property segment of upcoming finals under control.
Many students, therefore, did not put in the same amount of study time toward real property as they did their other classes. Why should they when they had demonstrated mastery on the practice exam? When the final was given, none of the issues contained in the practice exam were covered. Instead, more difficult issues were to be discerned by the students now that the exam truly counted.
A significant amount of blood was shed needlessly because the students erroneously concluded that since they had performed well on the practice exam, they would perform brilliantly on the final as well. The only way students can trust their results on a practice exam to be a fairly accurate picture of how they will perform under pressure is to take a lot of practice exams. Multiple exams will test the student on many issues, not just the few that the student may know.
If you are going to take our advice and practice taking exams, take the exams under the same constraints that will be imposed during the real test. Time yourself, and be faithful to the constraints placed on you. Do you find that you spend too much time on one task or another? If you discover that you are extremely comfortable with your understanding of an area of law covered on a practice exam, resist the temptation to quickly outline that question and forgo writing out your response. You need the practice and the expertise that is developed through hard work.
Do not look for shortcuts; there are none. Lastly, when you have completed a practice exam, check your response with the one offered as a model answer. Does your response differ from the model? It may still be acceptable if it is different-we all vary in our approaches-but there should be a distinct similarity regarding the issues recognized and the analysis demonstrated.
Finally, it is suggested that students review old exams for a particular professor's course. These are normally on file in the library for copying purposes. Old exams will give a student insight into the types and lengths of fact patterns particular professors consider important. Also, it is possible that old exam questions may be repeated on exams or that the rules of law may be the same even though the facts are different.
One student had a professor for a seminar class who mentioned the first day of class that he had placed old exams on reserve in the library for students to review. The reserved exams were never mentioned again during the remainder of the course. In preparing for the final exam, the student remembered the reserved copies and obtained them for study.
About 75 percent of the final was taken word for word from the old exams on reserve. On exiting the final, the student learned that very few people had either checked out the library reserves or could even remember the professor mentioning their existence the first day. If a professor directs you to a source of assistance, it will probably prove helpful sometime in the semester or beyond.
Final exams induce a lot of stress since the test represents a "do-or-die" situation for students. Students may have had the opportunity to demonstrate their efforts on numerous quizzes or projects prior to the final, but it is the final that usually establishes the grade earned. So much is riding on doing well on the final that many students simply perform poorly because of the pressure they are under. Recognize the pressure and your limitations and do the best you can. If you have followed our earlier advice on taking numerous practice exams, then the "best you can" will be maximized through extensive preparation.
