You worked for four years of bachelor’s degree. You have studied, outlined and IRAC’d your brain to death. Are you ready for your law school final exams? Most people answer that question by looking at the other law students in their school, who are just as terrified and confused as you are. Most end up studying MUCH more than necessary, to their detriment. Follow these seven basic tips to clear up your doubts.
1. Make Sure You Have Your Readings Assigned
Know what will likely be on the exam and, more importantly, what will not be on the exam. Most of the cases can be condensed into his black-letter law, also known as “this case represents the proposition that [x]Spending your valuable study time writing down facts, issues, opinions, and discrepancies will only frustrate and set you back.
Assigned readings are also important because they give you an idea of which cases your teacher considers important. As a general rule of thumb, cases where your professor spends the ENTIRE class period will likely have parallel fact patterns on the exam. Use this to your advantage: Get a Case Note Legal Summary Plugin (brand doesn’t matter). Copy the fact pattern of a paragraph, the problem and the celebration. Boom, you’re done.
2. Purchase add-ons
Most of your study time for your law school final exams should be spent on the supplements you buy at the student store. They condense a week’s worth of material into an hour’s worth of coherent, easily digestible information. I’m not in the business of recommending products that simply add to the coffers of their respective law professors, but the best ones that I feel it necessary to highlight are:
Civil Procedure: Examples and Explanations by Joseph Glannon. For many of you, this is required reading anyway. If not, BUY THIS RIGHT NOW. It’s incredibly clear, and Glannon’s ability to help you understand the Erie Doctrine, pending jurisdiction, and auxiliary jurisdiction, among others, make it worth every penny.
Grievances: Joseph Glannon. Not to lick Glannon’s boots, but his book One L Torts is just as impressive. I remember his timeline very differently than my professors, so be sure to cross-reference his syllabus.
Law against: Erwin Chemerinsky. This is THICK! At over 1,000 pages, it’s as hard to beat as the class itself. What makes Chemerinsky’s treatise so necessary is that it provides the one thing that makes Con Law so frustrating without it: context. Chemerinsky has a way of making everything, say, the 10th Amendment, cohesive and digestible. I was surprised how many of the cases we discussed at the conference were also lifted directly (hmmmm) from this book. Chemerinsky had more of a presence in my scheme than I did.
Be sure to purchase flashcards and case notes in addition to your supplements.
3. Condense the material in your law school outline
Make sure your outline is no longer than 25 pages. This prevents you from getting overloaded with information (more than you already are). Create a star schema that is paginated. Speaking of paging, add those little colorful things that stick out to the right of the folder. Tag the tabs with the main sections in your outline
4. Identify black letter law
You spend on average between 90 and 130 hours preparing for any class (4 CH * 8 hours of reading at home * 15 weeks). And how long is your ending? At most, 4 hours. How can your teacher test you? The short answer is that you can’t. Instead, it usually broadcasts advertisements. Why do they broadcast spots: the black letter law.
This is crucial to your success. How can you prepare your law school outlines for law school final exams? Identify the black letter law for all the cases you reviewed in class and organize them in the format you work best with.
Follow this format:
– Read the section/legal concept in your supplement
– Cross-reference your syllabus for relevant cases
– Find the cases in your legal writings, fill in the corresponding black letter law.
– Answer practice questions at the end of the supplement.
– Enter the legal section/concept in your scheme (or merge with stolen schemes)
– Add daily practice flash cards
5 Attend Study Sessions
Most of the time, these are chaired by the class teaching assistant, and most of the time you did very well on that professor’s law exam the year before. Use that to your advantage. Most of the time they review answers from previous exams, complete with model answers. Now it’s time to pick someone’s brain who has successfully picked your teacher’s brain. If they are routine questions and answers, without exam, skip them. NEVER leave a previous exam review session unattended.
6. Practice, practice, practice!
If you have had enough time, I strongly suggest that you take all the previous exams that the teacher has published under exam conditions. This puts you in the flow of taking the exam and helps avoid being booked into an anxiety clinic. The more you take them, the more patterns you find in the teacher’s final exams. For example, every one of my Civ Pro exams always started their answers with something like, “Whoa Mister Proctor, we’d better hurry up! Rule 4 says we have 20 days to respond (60 days if [X]) and it’s already been X days.” Is this incredibly late? Of course. But you need to please your teacher to get the grade.
7. Close
With these tips, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a law school ninja. Just remember to breathe, be methodical in your studies, and find a way to enjoy the process.