Are you preparing for the exam? You are in the grip of your first semester and, if you are typical, may be feeling you cannot add anything to your study schedule. I hope that Learning Legal Reasoning has aided you in decoding the appellate cases and the challenging first-year classroom. As I stressed in that book, the path to success on the December exams requires practice in a different terrain with often dense fact patterns and the terse instruction at the end: “Identify and resolve the relevant legal issues” or “ What are the rights and liabilities of the parties?” Add intense time pressure and the need for beginning exam practice now is clear. I suggest you begin to prepare in the following ways. Page numbers are from my companion book How To Do Your Best on Law School Exams that many law school libraries have in circulation. 1. Identify the exam type(s) your professor favors from her old exams. (48-50) 2. Tailor your issue-spotting practice according to the type(s) of exam you will encounter. (Type One exam, 50-62; Type Two exam, 67-68; Type Three exam, 68-69; Type Four exam, 69.) 3. Begin to practice resolving some of the issues you have already studied in each professor’s class and materials and that you see on your professor’s old exams that. Practice making your arguments terse and cogent. (Type One exam, 79-89; Type Two exam, 89-95; Type Three exam, 95-105; Type Four exam, 105-108.) 4. Do the above alone and then discuss and contrast your written exam arguments in your study group. (See top of 25; bottom of 22; top of 23.) 5. Keep at it. You may feel uncertain to start but you will improve. Avoid grossly misleading advice that you should wait until the week or two before exams to begin to prepare as in college or until you “know the materials” or that all issue-spotting or policy problems are the same or that the ideal is invariably to “get to maybe”. You may pose exam questions to me on our FaceBook page – Help with US Law School Exams. You may also benefit from revisiting Learning Legal Reasoning over the break and doing more exam practice. The more you know, the more you will see. Good luck – and make your own luck, Professor John Delaney (retired) the exam book is available at amazon...amazon/gp/aag/main/ref=olp_merch_name_1?ie=UTF8&asin=0960851453&isAmazonFulfilled=1&seller=A3D02ZFW5DE02Q
Posted on: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 00:28:09 +0000
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