Overview - Using Practice Questions Effectively

Students often have questions about how and when to use practice questions. The answers change a bit throughout the semester as you cover more material. Below you will find some guidelines about when to do practice questions, where to find them, and how to use them effectively to prepare for your exams. 

Why should I do practice questions?

Writing answers to practice questions is a critical part of your exam preparation process. Almost all of your 1L exams will be mostly or entirely composed of essay questions. However, these essay questions are not like essays that you wrote in undergrad. You have to learn how to use IRAC format, include good rule statements and law-fact connections, and organize your answer for a legal reader. You also have to learn how to tailor your essay answers for different subjects - writing about personal jurisdiction may require some different structure and components than writing about intentional torts. Doing practice essay questions is the best way to work through all of these skills. It also gives you a chance to practice issue spotting and to become more familiar with the law. If your professor is willing to give you feedback, practice essay questions let you know if you're on track. 

Don't forget - the bar exam is mostly writing. The more you nail down your essay writing skills early in law school, the more time you can put into learning law for the bar exam later on. 

When should I start doing practice questions?

You can start writing practice questions at almost any time. Here are some suggestions for various points in the semester.

Early to mid-semester: In the early parts of the semester, you may not have covered much material. However, you can do shorter practice questions that you know relate specifically to topics you've covered. You can find short questions like this on Quimbee, in your textbook, or in an Examples and Explanations book in the chapter on the topic you've just covered. Your professor may also give you short hypos during the semester that will be tailored to material you've covered. At this point you're just getting familiar with the material and starting to work on using IRAC consistently. 

Mid to late-semester: Around the middle to late parts of the semester, October to mid-November in fall semester and March to mid-April in spring semester, you should start seeking out more regular writing practice. You may want to set aside time to write essays for 1-2 hours to start getting used to longer writing sessions. You may also want to work with a study group or with ARC to review your essays and make sure you're including all components of a good law exam essay answer. Try to answer questions that cover law from the beginning and middle of the semester - this will be good review. 

Heading into finals: Now is the time to buckle down on practicing essays. This will help you memorize the law, become familiar with how to answer different kinds of questions, and become a more efficient (quick and concise) writer. You should try to do some full-length practice exams to get used to writing for several hours at a stretch. You should try to write answers to longer questions, including "issue spotters" where you don't know exactly what issues will be covered in the exam questions. If you can get access to old final exams from your professor, prioritize those. If you can't get questions from your professor, string together questions from other sources (see below for ideas on where you can find questions). If you can, get feedback from your professor, ARC, or your peers. 

How should I use practice questions for effective exam prep?

Some tips for effective use of essays:

1. Write under exam conditions. If you have an open-note exam coming, use the outline that you're planning to use for the final. For closed-book exams, try writing without looking at your notes. It will help you get a feel for what the real exam will be like.
2. Review your writing. Don't just write an essay and then never think about it again. Compare it to a model answer or scoring sheet. Go back and see if you can highlight all the rule statements or the law-fact connections to make sure you included them. Ask yourself if you would be happy with that essay answer if you turned it in as a final exam. If not, what would you like to improve on during the semester? 
3. Get feedback! The best source of feedback is always your professor, since the professor will be grading your final. If you can't get feedback from your professor, consider sharing your work with your study group or with someone from the ARC team. It can be very helpful to have a third party read your work, as they will have a different perspective on your writing than you do. 
4. Be cautious about what the practice question can tell you. If you are using a question other than one written by your professor, be a bit cautious about how you use it. Note that you are learning the law as your professor teaches it, not how Quimbee or any other source teaches it. Sometimes questions will cover topics you haven't covered in your class, or the model answer might address topics in a different way than you think your professor would. This doesn't mean you can't use the questions. The question will still provide a fact pattern that you can use for practice. However, you may need to ask your professor about how he or she would approach a particular fact pattern from a hypo, or you may only want to use the model answer to check your issue spotting and then use your notes to check your rule statements. 

Where can I find practice questions?

1. Your professor may release old exam questions or practice questions that they've written. These are always the *best* source of practice since they will most closely resemble your actual exam.
2. Many secondary sources have practice questions in them. Examples and Explanations (E&E) books will have short essay questions, Emanuel and Gilberts books have longer essay questions, Glannon and Q&A questions have practice multiple choice and sometimes short essay questions. You may find other books, like Siegel's and others, that have a series of practice essay questions in them.
3. Quimbee has about 30 essay questions for each 1L subject, each of which includes a model answer. Here is a chart Download Here is a chart
   that lists the subtopics covered by each question. Quimbee also now has a feature that allows you to show the general topics covered by each question (ie: if you click on the button that says "Show Topics," the site will divide the Torts questions into Intentional Torts, Negligence, Other Torts, and Products Liability/Strict Liability). 
4. Some textbooks have short hypos in each chapter. You can answer these using IRAC format for some writing practice. 
5. ARC keeps a question bank of essay questions that we have pulled from various sources throughout the years. They come from professors at different schools so they may not match up perfectly with the material that your professor covers, but it will give you an opportunity to do some longer questions if your professor is not releasing old exams.