Tips for Exams

Practice, practice, practice. 

There is a reason this tip is listed first. As we talked about on the Understanding the Law School Exam page, law school exams are unlike other exams you've taken. They also require a slightly different set of skills than the skills that you've been practicing all semester. We strongly encourage you to complete several practice exams under exam conditions. This will help you figure out what law school exams are like, whether you're effectively organizing your time and your writing, and how well you know various subjects. 

Pay attention to what your professor is looking for.

Some professors post explanations about how they expect their students to approach law school exams. If your professor posts one, you absolutely need to read it a few times to make sure you understand their expectations and preferences. Also, keep your ears open in class to see if the professor drops hints about what they expect in exam answers. For instance, some professors care strongly about policy while others don't, and some will place much stronger emphasis on use of case law than others. 

Follow the instructions!

This seems ridiculous to include, but it can really trip people up. Both the instructions on the front of the exam and the "call of the question" on each hypothetical provide a lot of information about how to proceed with your exam. Your professor may include very specific instructions on the front page, like "Do not discuss the Statute of Frauds" or "Your answer should not exceed 10,000 characters." An individual question may specifically state something like "Do not analyze contract formation," or "Only discuss claims that may be brought by Character A." Failing to follow these directions leads to a couple of problems: 1) you'll make it obvious to your professor that you weren't reading carefully; 2) you may waste a lot of valuable time discussing an issue that you can't get points for because your professor told you not to cover it; or 3) you may be penalized for failing to follow character and word limits. 

Read carefully and actively.

It's easy to go into panic mode on an exam and start to read too quickly, missing details or mixing up facts. Your ability to spot issues and accurately analyze them depends on your full understanding of the facts in the fact pattern. Losing track of the order or events or forgetting who did what to whom can seriously hinder your ability to answer the question. Therefore, you should be an active reader - highlight important facts, make timelines of events, note issues that pop up as you're reading, etc. Consider reading the exam question twice. When you know where the question is heading, facts that appear early in the fact pattern may take on a different significance. Don't forget that most of the facts in a question will usually have some importance to your analysis. Professors don't tend to add a ton of fluff into a question.

Outline your answer before you write.

This doesn't need to be a very thorough outline, but creating at least a sketch of what you intend to write can keep you organized and prevent you from forgetting to address an issue that you've spotted. If you need an idea of how to organize your exam writing, this Download fact tree

provides a more formal structure for an answer outline ( Download here's an example of one that has been partially filled out).

Stay organized with IRAC...

...Or CREAC or IREAC or TREAT or CIRI(P). Whatever way you think about how to write your exam answers, you will notice that the many exam writing acronyms share some common themes. They have some way of identifying what issue you're writing about, they require you to give a rule statement, they require application of that rule to a set of facts, and they require you to make a reasoned judgment about the outcome of the problem. 

IRAC is really its own subject, but it's good to get this reminder early and often - most exams will require you to employ some variation on IRAC structure and it's a skill you need to practice. For more information on IRAC, visit the Writing for Exams - IRAC page, check out one of the books in the additional reading section, Google it, or make an appointment with ARC. 

Note - if your professor says not to use IRAC, or has some other specific format they want you to use, always go with what your professor says. However, IRAC is generally a good fallback position if you have not been given other instructions. 

Manage your time carefully.

Part of the key to success on a time-limited exam is managing your time carefully. Many students have expressed frustration about the fact that they spent too much time on one question or failed to pay attention to point distributions. If you have an exam question with four issues in it, you need to leave time for all of them. Writing the world's best answer on Issue 1 won't help you if you take up so much time on Issue 1 that you can't write anything about Issues 2-4. 

If your exam has only one hypothetical, your job will be somewhat easier. Nonetheless, you should keep an eye on how many issues you plan to tackle in the allotted time. If you know you have 5 issues you want to discuss and only 3 hours to do it, you don't want to find yourself with only 30 minutes remaining and two issues that you haven't discussed. Plan to keep an eye on the timer and do a rough estimate of how long you can devote to each issue. 

If your exam has multiple parts, you have two tasks ahead of you. First, figure out how much each question affects your grade. For example, an exam with two questions may not allocate points evenly between the two questions. One may be worth 25% and the other 75%. If you have multiple choice questions on your exam, pay attention to how many total points the multiple choice section is worth. Some students spend WAY too much time multiple choice, and this may be very unwise if the multiple choice section is worth only 20% of your exam grade. Second, think about how much time you can give to each section based on how much each section is worth. For instance, in a two hour exam with one long question worth 50% of your grade, multiple choice questions worth 25% of your grade, and short answer worth 25% of your grade, you would plan to spend about 1 hour on the long question and half an hour on each of the other two sections. You don't need to perfectly stick to those time limits. Still, it's good to realize early on if you're starting to devote way too much time to one question.

Make it easy for your professor to read.

Organization can be a real asset on a law school exam. Things like bolded or underlined headings, paragraphs, and decent spelling will make your answer and your analysis easier to follow and easier to grade. 

Even if your exam is open book, spend time memorizing the material.

Open book exams can be a trap. If you haven't spent enough time memorizing and internalizing the material from your class, you can squander huge chunks of exam time flipping through your outline to figure out what rule you need. Your book and notes should be there only as a reference. 

Ask yourself, "Who is my audience?"

The answer to this question is not necessarily "my professor." When you imagine that you're writing your exam answer for your professor, you may find that you write less clearly or skip over certain critical points because in the back of your mind you're thinking, "Oh, my professor will know what I mean." That leap makes sense since your professor taught you the law and wrote the exam question. The problem with that approach is that law school exams are like high school math tests - even if you arrive at the right conclusion, you may lose points if you don't show your work. Therefore, even though your professor may understand what you're getting at, failure to show your work by stating rules and making clear law-fact connections will prevent you from earning points on your essay.

If you find that you fall into the "Professor Smith will know what I'm talking about" trap, think about writing to a different audience. Imagine a judge who can comprehend legal analysis if it is presented to her, but who has no direct background in the subject you're writing about. This judge doesn't have the same degree of knowledge that you have about the facts, so you need to explicitly state which facts support your legal arguments. The judge will be able to understand the rules that you're using, but only if you include and explain them in your answer. 

Two important caveats:

1. If your professor says something different then follow their guidance. 

2. Don't erase your professor completely from the picture. Your professors will have certain policy interests, favorite cases, or terminology that they expect to see included on the exam. Don't forget to address those things in your answer.