Studying for Law School Exams

Most law school courses have only one exam at the end of the quarter, semester, or year, which may be a midterm or final exam, depending on the course length. Most exams are three hours long and contain three to five essay questions. The questions set forth a long, factual situation followed by something on the order of, "Discuss the rights and liabilities of the parties."

The fact that each course usually only has one exam obviously in-creases the importance of your performance. The basic steps in studying for law school exams are:

1. Finish and review your outline.
   
   
2. Take practice exams.
   
   
3. Create a mini-outline and flow charts.
   
   
4. Take care of yourself.
   

Taking Practice Exams

Once you have finished your outline, test it by taking practice exams. As discussed in the chapter on study aids, most professors put old exams on file in the law school library and some even provide model answers. Photocopy some of these and take them home. Read a sample test question and outline your answer without reference to your outline. Then compare your answer with the model answer, or if there is no model answer, use your course outline to review and evaluate your answer.

Taking practice exams, preferably under exam conditions, is the single best, and most often underutilized, method of preparing for exams. If you are a member of a study group, take practice exams with your group and evaluate each other's answers. Ideally, the members should find the same issues in the practice exam questions and reach the same depth of analysis.

If your professor does not keep old exams on file, check to see if another professor teaching the same course does. (Using your professor s old exams, however, is preferable because it gives you insights into how your professor thinks about the subject matter and how she likes to structure her exam questions.) If there are no old exam questions at all on file in the school library, use the sample essay questions in the back of commercial course outlines. These always have sample answers together with references to the text.

The vast majority of law school exams contain only essay questions. A minority of exams contain short answer (fill-in-the-blank) or multiple-choice questions. Another distinction among exams is whether they are open book or closed book. The majority of exams are closed book, which means that no materials may be referred to during the exam. Open-book exams vary in what materials may be used. Some code-oriented courses, such as Uniform Commercial Code courses, permit reference to the code only during the exam. Other exams permit students to refer to whatever written materials they want during the exam.

Mini-Outlines

After getting a feel for answering essay questions by taking practice exams, you should go back over your entire course outline. The practice exams, by their nature, only cause you to review those areas of the course material raised therein. They are likely not inclusive of all matters that you must study to properly prepare for your final exams. You may find that creating mini-outlines or flow charts are helpful ways to review the entire course material. Your mini-outline should condense your course outline to five or six pages, using only bare-bones, memory-triggering phrases with no extraneous detail. The physical process of writing the mini-outline reinforces the material and also creates a more workable set of notes for repeated review.

Of necessity, the mini-outline will omit many details and will cover only the major points of a class. However, by this time, reading only a few words relating to a major point should trigger your recollection of a whole host of related rules on that point. This is one reason why the organization of your outline is so important. Placing unrelated things together in your outline will interfere with this triggering function. This is also why it is important to create your own outline. If the outline does not reflect your understanding of the course material, how you learned it, and how it fits together, it will not facilitate the necessary triggering. (A sample course outline, mini-outline, and flow chart are included in the appendices.)

Stay Healthy

It is important to maintain your physical and mental health while in law school. This means eating right, getting enough sleep, maintaining your hygiene, and getting enough exercise. Do not let exams disrupt your normal living routine too much. If you do not take care of yourself and as a result get sick during exams, your exam performance will suffer because you have to contend with your illness as well as with the exams.

Taking a break from studying to get some physical exercise not only keeps you physically healthy, but also refreshes your mind for the work ahead. Thus, you are more efficient in studying. You may also have an unexpected inspiration while jogging, bicycling, or working out. The benefits of exercise are well worth the hour or so it takes away from studying.

It is also worthwhile to take an occasional break and participate in some sort of social activity-just to act like a normal human being for a while. It lessens your anxiety to have contact with the outside world, and such contact puts law school exams into a broader perspective. Lessening your anxiety is important to your personal well-being because overwhelming anxiety tremendously impairs your ability to perform well on an exam. Anxiety can produce a mental gridlock, which obviously leads to poor results. (For additional tips on avoiding these problems, consult the chapter entitled "Maintaining a Life Outside of Law School.")