how to write a law school exam essay

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Exam Writing 101

Below, you’ll find general drafting tips for law school essay exams, advice on IRAC and IRAC-alternatives , and strategies for spending your exam-writing time wisely and turning out really great answers .

Best of luck!

General Drafting Tips for Law School Exams

• A Handy Template for Answering “Hard” Law School Exam Questions What not to do: cry and start drawing conclusions. What to do: embrace ambiguity and think it through. Oh, and read this post.
• Two Ways Your Law School Exam Answers Went Wrong Getting your first law school grades can be shocking. And what can be even more confusing is trying to figure out what you did wrong. Mostly, the answer is “the curve,” of course, but there are two fundamental ways that things can go off the rails.
• From Bare Bones to Meaty Analysis: How to Skeleton Outline Your Essay We here at the Law School Toolbox put a lot of weight in pre-planning essays and front-loading the work so the actual writing is more of a breeze. If you’re not sure what I mean by “scratch paper outlining” or “pre-planning” your essay, think of it as making a blueprint for the answer you’re about to write. Here are some steps to keep in mind.
• How to Use the Facts on Law School Exams Factual Analysis is an important lawyering skill. Here are some strategies to use the facts to your advantage on your law school exams!
• Top Three Mistakes on Final Exams and How to Fix Them Now! While it is not constructive to rehash your mistakes, it is constructive to identify weaknesses in your exam-writing skills — and to make a plan to improve those skills starting now.
• How to Move From Outline to Exam Answer Here are some tips for using your outline to prepare for exams – even if you haven’t finished your outlines yet.
• How to Deal With a Really Long Fact Pattern on Exam Day What if you open your exam to find the longest essay you've ever seen? Don't panic! Just remember the following steps and attack the test like a pro.
• 4 Ways to Improve Your Legal Writing If you're wondering how to improve your legal writing, you're not alone! Here are four things you can do to make your legal writing assignments better.

IRAC and Organizational Alternatives

• How to Organize Your Law School Exam Answers Although it depends on the preference of the professor (which you’ll suss out by examining their sample answers and asking questions), there are some generally accepted organizational strategies that you’ll want to consider.
• The Elusive Mini-IRAC: A Key to Law School Exam Success IRAC, the notorious structural underpinning of many a law school final exam is a relatively straightforward concept. But how do you handle an exam or practice essay when it isn’t that simple? The Mini-IRAC is the key.
• Help! My Professor Said Not To IRAC IRAC is so well established, and so useful, that it comes as a shock when a professor says, “I don’t want you to IRAC the exam.” What is a student to do?

How to Spend Your Time While Writing an Exam Answer

• Copy and Paste: Your Worst Enemy on a Law School Exam? When Lee is grading exams, she always has her eyes out for habits law students pick up that can negatively affect their grades. One of them is using copy and paste .
• Should You Proofread Your Law School Exams? Many law students struggle with time management during the law school exam period. One culprit of this can be spending too much time trying to make your essay perfect for the grader. News flash — under timed conditions, your professor does not expect perfection.
• Are You Wasting Time on Your Law School Exams? Almost every student I work with feels like they are running low on time when it comes to finishing an exam. So how do you work more efficiently? Here are two suggestions that I typically give to students to help them write more efficiently on law school exams.
• Use This To Save Time on Essay Exams Most students think their course outline is just there to help them organize the material they learned in class. Not so. A good course outline can also help you pre-draft portions of your essay exams, which will save you time on the exam and help you produce a comprehensive, organized answer.
• Pacing Yourself Through Finals, Part 2: Test Taking Time Management So, you know your material, but do you know how to budget your time during an exam? Read here for some suggestions on how to pace yourself when you're taking your finals.

Strategies for Great Law School Exam Answers

• What Makes a Law School Exam Answer “Good”? Seems like a no-brainier: Before you can write a successful law school exam answer, you need to know what makes an answer “good.” Check out our list here.
• How to Write a Law School Exam: Deal With the Ambiguity To write a great law school exam answer, you’ve got to do one critical thing: Deal with the ambiguity. Why is ambiguity important? Because the points are in the debate.
• The Most Important Thing You Can Do on a Law School Exam What’s the single most important thing you can do on a law school exam? This one’s easy! Answer the question!  Here's how to answer a question the right way.
• Could You Explain This Legal Concept to a 5-Year-Old? The next time you encounter a super-confusing legal topic, ask yourself one question: could I explain this concept to a reasonably intelligent 5-year-old? If the answer’s no, it’s time to simplify! Here's how.
• The Single Most Important Word in a Law School Exam Answer If you remember nothing else, remember this! There is — I kid you not — one single word that can radically transform your law school grades for the better. What is it?

Want some help preparing for exams? Check out our law school tutoring options , and set yourself up to do your very best!

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How To Write A Law School Exam

by Tania N. Shah, Esq. | Law Videos , Study Skills , Webinars , Writing Skills | 0 comments

This methodical step-by-step approach will answer any and all questions you may have about exam writing. Our expert panel of law school professors give valuable insight into exactly how to write for your law school exams. Learn about stacking your IRAC (and not the courts), avoiding analysis pitfalls, and how to organize your exam to make your professor happy!

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How to Write a Law Essay

Last Updated: August 11, 2023

This article was co-authored by Clinton M. Sandvick, JD, PhD . Clinton M. Sandvick worked as a civil litigator in California for over 7 years. He received his JD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1998 and his PhD in American History from the University of Oregon in 2013. This article has been viewed 240,973 times.

In a college legal studies course, and in some law school courses, you may be required to write a research paper addressing a legal topic. These essays can be tricky, because the law is constantly evolving. To secure a top grade, your essay must be well-researched and coherently argued. With proper planning and research, you can write a stellar legal essay. [Note: this article does not address how to write law school essay exams or bar exam questions, which require different techniques and strategies.]

Choosing an Essay Topic

• A narrow essay prompt might read, "Discuss the evolution and impact of the exclusionary rule of evidence in the United States." A broad prompt might read, "Discuss how a civil rights movement led to changes in federal and/or state law."
• If you are invited to choose your own topic, your professor may require you to submit a written proposal or outline to ensure that your chosen topic complies with the prompt. If you are not sure if your topic is within the parameters of the prompt, propose your topic to your professor after class or during his or her office hours.

• Hopefully, your course readings, lectures, and class discussions will have given you enough background knowledge to select a topic. If not, review your class notes and browse online for additional background information.
• It is not uncommon to change your topic after doing some research. You may end up narrowing the questions your essay will answer, or changing your topic completely.

• If you can, try to focus on an are of the law that affects you. For example, if your family is involved in agriculture, you may be interested in writing about water use regulations .

Researching Your Topic

• If you are prohibited from citing internet resources, you can still use online research to guide you to physical primary and secondary sources in your local library or bookstore.

• Look at footnotes, citations, and indexes in tertiary sources. These are great for finding books, articles, and legal cases that are relevant to your topic. Also take note of the names of authors, who may have written multiple works on your topic.

• Also find search engines for related fields, such as history or political science. Ask your librarian to recommend specialized search engines tailored to other disciplines that may have contributed to your topic.

• Never cut and paste from the web into your notes or essay. This often leads to inadvertent plagiarism because students forget what is a quotation and what is paraphrasing. When gathering sources, paraphrase or add quotation marks in your outline.
• Plagiarism is a serious offense. If you ultimately hope to be a lawyer, an accusation of plagiarism could prevent you from passing the character and fitness review.

Drafting the Essay

• An effective introduction takes the reader out of his world and into the world of your essay. [2] X Trustworthy Source University of North Carolina Writing Center UNC's on-campus and online instructional service that provides assistance to students, faculty, and others during the writing process Go to source Explain why the subject is important and briefly summarizes the rest of your argument. After reading your introduction, your reader should know what you are going to discuss and in what order you will be discussing it.
• Be prepared to revise your introduction later. Summarizing your essay will be easier after you have written it, especially if you deviate from your outline.

• State each argument of your essay as a statement that, if true, would support your thesis statement.
• Provide supporting information drawn from primary and secondary sources that support your argument. Remember to cite your sources.
• Provide your own original analysis, explaining to the reader that based on the primary and secondary sources you have presented, the reader should be persuaded by your argument.

Formatting Your Essay

Proofreading the Essay

• Open up a Word document. On the Quick Access Toolbar at the top, click on the down arrow. The words “Customize Quick Access Toolbar” will appear when you hover over the arrow for two seconds.
• Click on the arrow. Then click on “More Commands.”
• In the “Choose commands from” drop-down box, choose “All commands.”
• Scroll down to find “Speak.” Highlight this and then click “add.” Then click “okay.” Now the Speak function should appear on your Quick Access Toolbar.
• Highlight the text you want read back to you, and then click on the Speak icon. The text will be read back to you.

• Do not rely on a spell checker exclusively, as it will not catch typos like "statute" versus "statue."

Revising the Essay

• You can share the essay with someone outside of class, but a classmate more likely has the requisite knowledge to understand the subject matter of the essay.

Expert Q&A

You might also like.

• ↑ https://owl.english.purdue.edu/engagement/2/2/53/
• ↑ http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/introductions/
• ↑ https://www.legalbluebook.com/
• ↑ https://support.office.com/en-ca/article/Using-the-Speak-text-to-speech-feature-459e7704-a76d-4fe2-ab48-189d6b83333c

About This Article

To write a law essay, start by writing a thesis statement on your chosen topic. Phrase your thesis statement as an argument, using words like “because” or “therefore” to state your point. Write an outline of the arguments you will use to support your thesis statement, then use that outline to build the body of your paper. Include any counter-arguments, but use your evidence to convince the reader why your point of view is valid, and the counter-arguments are not. Be sure to cite all of your sources in the format preferred by your professor. For tips from our reviewer on finding the best sources for your topic, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Turn Studying Into Success On Your Law School Essay Exams

To achieve a passing score on your law school essay exams, you must effectively brief your assigned cases, create carefully crafted substantive law study outlines, and practice essay exam writing on a regular basis. Do those things and you will achieve success in law school. 

To begin an effective study program, you must first brief all of your assigned cases, because you locate the rules from the cases and you learn the legal reasoning that is foundational to your legal analysis skill development. 

Next, you must attend all of your classes and take copious notes, which is paramount to incorporating the relevant material from class discussions into your study outline. By briefing your cases and engaging in classroom activity, you will enhance your ability to memorize and understand the issues and rules for each course. You will then use that expertise to maximize skill development in the law school process.

Finally, and most important to the study process, you must incorporate essay exam practice into your study program by practicing your essay analysis and writing skills under timed, simulated exam conditions . Practicing essay examsmanship will tell you what you know and what you need to improve so you can write on all the issues tested in each exam within exam timing parameters - usually sixty minutes for most essay exams.  

Law student study guides and class discussions assist with learning issues and rules, but only you can develop essay writing skills. You must learn to apply the law to law school exams, and the only way to become proficient in doing so is to practice exams under timed conditions so you learn how to perform to your full potential by the time of your midterm and final exams. 

Your Study Outline is Your Guide to Success

For the reasons given above, creating a substantive law study outline for each course is foundational to preparing for your law school essay exams. Your outline should include all of the issues and rules in the order you are learning them in your classes.  

In Torts, for example, you will generally commence with learning the intentional torts. As such, for your study outline, you would head-note the first intentional tort, e.g., Assault, and then provide the Assault rule. You should add anything notable regarding each issue that may be tested on the exam - such as transferred intent - when learning intentional torts. 

Commercial law school study outlines like those offered by Fleming’s Fundamentals of Law are a tremendous resource when creating your own study outlines. They provide a comprehensive presentation of the subject material and ensure you have all the correct issues and rule statements in your own study outlines. You can use these commercial study guides to cross-reference issues in your selected law school subject to make sure you have included all of the required issues and rules, especially for complicated subjects like Products Liability and Defamation. These study guides are also a great resource to ensure you have all of the correct elements in your rule statements because every rule element of every rule must be developed when the related issue is raised by the facts of an essay exam. 

By combining the use of commercial law school study outlines with your own study outlines, you will have the best of all study resources, which promotes excellence in the law school process. 

Case Briefing Is An Important Component To Studying For Exams

The purpose of briefing cases is not only to learn the history and development of law but to extract your rules and learn legal reasoning that then must be incorporated into your law school essay exams. 

It is imperative to brief your cases yourself. Students who use canned briefs cheat themselves because they miss an integral part of the legal education that cannot be developed by any other means. Students who use canned briefs may save time, but they sacrifice the process of developing foundational legal reasoning skills that only comes from briefing cases themselves. 

When briefing your cases, you learn where information is generally located within the cases. You learn where to look for the case rules, how to identify the case reasoning, and how to incorporate those essential case ingredients into your course study outline. You also learn how the Court holds due to its discussion of the parties’ arguments and counter-arguments. That information is crucial because it assists with developing your analysis skills.  

Commit To Attending All Class Lectures

The California State Bar requires 80% attendance in your classes. However, best practice is that you strive for 100% class attendance. The lectures and discussions will reinforce your case briefing and assist with your comprehension of the subject, which translates into stronger analysis skills. Your professors will also provide you with insight regarding how to write a law exam for their respective courses. Take notes and incorporate the relevant portion of your notes into your study outline. 

Memorize Your Issues And Rules

When it comes to memorizing your issues and rules, you need to understand whether you are a visual , auditory , or reading/writing learner. Because I am a writing learner, I would memorize my issues and rules by writing them over and over again. My son is an auditory learner, so he can learn from a lecture without ever taking notes. For visual learners, flashcards are an excellent resource for learning rule statements. Determining how you learn and incorporating that into your study process will add to your success. 

Follow The IRAC Format When Writing Your Answer

For first-year law students, part of your studies includes understanding how to write a law school exam in the IRAC (Issue / Rule / Analysis-Application / Conclusion) format. It is imperative that you always write on each issue in the order you spot it in the exam. 

For example, in a Torts exam, if you have an Assault, a Battery, a second Assault, and a Conversion, you must write them in that order. However, the Call of the Question will govern, so always follow the Call because defenses may be written under a separate Call. Failure to correctly write on the Call of the Question and according to the instructions contained in each Call can result in a failing grade. 

In crafting your exam answer, you must start your answer with the title of the lawsuit such as "Pete v. David", because you need to show the professor who the litigants are in the case. You then head-note the first issue, which should be in bold and underlined so the grader can quickly identify the issue. Next, write the rule statement, then your analysis, and finally a conclusion for that issue. Repeat the process for each subsequent issue your raise. 

Fleming's offers a number of study guides for law school and Bar exam tested subjects that provide sample essay questions and model answers to ensure you have the correct format for passing any law school essay exam. 

If you’d like to see an excellent example of what I’m talking about, just click here .

Practice, Practice, Practice Your Essay Writing

Once you have learned how to create an effective substantive law outline with complete rules, you must take timed practice exams. This is the only way to develop your timing and analysis skills. 

One of the most fatal errors in writing a law school essay exam is running out of time. I do not believe there is a faster sixty minutes than taking a law school essay exam, so you must prepare under timed conditions. 

So often law students believe they understand the rules...until they take timed practice exams. Suddenly, they realize they do not really understand a part of a rule or how to apply the facts to a rule. They also realize that if they do not finish in the allotted exam time, they cannot pass the exam no matter how well they understand the law. Thus, practicing examsmanship teaches you how to allocate time in order to finish - a crucial exam requirement. 

Your law school exam practice must also include developing your analysis, which demands that you write on each element of the rule, supporting or negating it with the facts in a persuasive manner. With practice, you will be able to discover and rectify any weaknesses in your exam skills prior to taking your midterms and finals, which always results in high exam scores. 

Have The Determination And Discipline To Achieve Success On Your Essay Exams

It is important to understand that effective study for essay exams incorporates all aspects of what you are learning in law school. If you are having a difficult time with one aspect of the process, you need to dig deep and work even harder until you understand it. The worst thing you can do in law school is to settle for less than your goal. Having the discipline and determination to follow this approach will turn your hard work into success when taking your laws school essay exams. 

By implementing the principles described above, you will turn your studying into success, both in law school and on your law school essay exams.

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Law School Exams Are Completely Different

Law school exams are completely different from what you’ve encountered before. Successful students coming from undergrad generally will have learned that success on an essay exam means regurgitating information – doing an “information dump,” as I heard one person describe it.

It is crucial that you understand that this is not how law school exams work. Feeding back into a law school exam answer all the information you’ve learned by repeating that information is completely ineffective.

In addition, some students – probably especially those from liberal arts programs – carry the idea from a successful college career that to differentiate one’s self as truly outstanding, a student is well-advised to go in a completely offbeat direction with their analysis, demonstrating both familiarity with assigned texts and wild, blue-sky creativity in re-interpreting the course’s teachings in unconventional ways. Happily, there are many ways in which the legal field provides opportunities for the rewarding of wildly creative approaches. But the issue-spotter essay exam that is the workhorse of law-school assessment is not the place for a fugue of iconoclasm.

These things are especially important for first-semester 1Ls to learn. If you try to answer a law school exam in a way that worked for something else you studied (e.g., political science, philosophy, history, literature) the result will likely be disastrous. I don’t mean to scare anyone. I just want to be sure to eliminate misconceptions that could come between you and the success you deserve to achieve after a semester of hard work.

So, what is it you must do? (That is, instead of repeating back information about the law or re-interpreting it.)

You must use your knowledge from the course to generate legal analysis . More specifically, you must take the law you’ve learned in the course and apply it to the facts provided in the exam . Doing this demonstrates that you have mastered the material and gained corresponding analytical skills.

Applying Law to Facts: Making Purple

The key to law school exam writing is applying law to facts. (Or facts to law. Whichever way you want to think about it.) This is so because applying law to facts is legal analysis. And legal analysis is what you must do on the exam.

To create legal analysis, you necessarily must mix the law and the facts together in a way that produces some result. If law is blue and facts are red, then you want to make purple:

Why is applying law to facts so crucial? A little reflection will show you why this must be the case.

Providing the facts alone cannot indicate your mastery of the material. With an issue-spotter exam, you have the facts in front of you. Thus, I can’t give you any points for repeating them back to me.

Providing the law alone does not indicate your mastery of the material either. Thus, I can’t give you any points for repeating back to me the law. Why not? I will concede that regurgitating law on a closed-book test might prove your memorization of the law. But it does not show your mastery or understanding of it. I only know that you truly understand the law when I see you do something intellectually productive with it. To put the point differently, regurgitating law does not show me that you are capable of using the law in a way that would allow you to advise a client about potential liability.

Now a big caveat is in order: Some professors do want you to repeat the law as an initial step before doing analysis. I’ve asked around, and there’s clearly a split among law professors in this regard. Some professors award points for correctly stating a rule of law in an answer, and some don’t. I don’t know which view predominates, but both views are common. At any rate, even among law professors who give points for stating the rule, what those law professors prize above all is the analysis. On that, everyone I’ve ever talked to is in agreement. So I recommend that for classes other than mine, you inquire, in a nice way, about the professor’s views on this point.

As for me, I could see some sense in awarding a point for correctly stating the rule of law if the exam were completely closed-book, as that does show you’ve memorized it. But if you are taking an open-book/open-note exam – as mine have generally tended to be – then you have the law in front of you. In such a case, correctly copying statements of legal rules, even relevant ones, into your exam response does not, in my view, demonstrate your mastery of the material.

At the end of the day, the reason why merely regurgitating legal rules is ineffective in showing your mastery of the material is that the job of the lawyer isn’t to memorize the law. The lawyer’s job is to give clients advice and make arguments in court about how the law applies to a particular set of facts . And merely stating legal rules won’t get that done.

You’ve got to apply the law to the facts.

That’s how you show you actually understand the law. And it’s what you must do in advising a client, arguing to a court, and taking a law school exam.

Now, the application of law to facts is more complicated than merely mixing the two. (Although mixing is a good start!) What you must do is put the relevant fact with the relevant legal doctrine and explain what comes of the combination.

To accomplish this, as a mechanical matter, it is helpful to talk about the facts and the law in the same sentence and to use the word “ because .” Alternatively, if the structure of the sentence makes it appropriate to do so, you can use “ therefore .” The words “because” and “therefore” are what you might call analytical linkage words. Just making the effort to find a way to use these words will push you in the direction of explicitly setting out the legal analysis that supports a given conclusion.

Won’t it get boring if you just keep saying “because” over and over again? No! There’s no point in trying to use alternative, fancy expressions for “because” and “therefore.” Practicing lawyers value simple, straightforward language – and so do law professors!

In the course of writing this advice memo, I opened up copies of a number of amicus briefs written by other law professors, and I did a word search. The briefs are brimming with instances of “because.” There are also many instances of “therefore.” But “because” outnumbered “therefore” about 4-to-1. Occurrences of “since” were more rare. I found zero instances of “on account of” or “inasmuch as.” As pop singer P!nk put it, “Don’t get fancy, just get dancey.”

Here are some examples of mixing law and facts together, providing a conclusion, and using “because” or “therefore” as a connector – all in the same sentence:

Don’t those passages sound good? Doesn’t that sound like a lawyer or a judge talking? That’s what professors want you to sound like, too.

To help you see how to discuss both the law and facts together in order to create legal analysis, I have diagrammed the above sample sentences in color. Facts are red. Law is blue. Legal conclusions are purple. An underlined analytical linkage word (“because” or “therefore”) connects it all together.

Example 1 follows this pattern:

Example 2 follows this pattern:

Example 3 follows this pattern:

You can see that these examples present different ways of mixing facts and law together to create analysis. Don’t make too much of these particular patterns. There’s no magic in any particular way of doing it.

For instance, here’s a rewrite of Example 3 that’s no less effective:

I’d say Example 3A follows this pattern:

Many, many other patterns that are just as good are possible.

The indispensible point is to remember to make purple : Force the law and facts together and produce a conclusion from them. When you do that, you’ve got legal analysis.

And in pushing the law and facts together, I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to use the words “because” and “therefore.” Use them over and over. In fact, it’s long been my strong hunch that as a quantitative matter, the number of instances of “because” and “therefore” strongly correlates with the exam grade. I’ve never tried to validate that empirically, but I’d definitely put a wager on it.

Break It Down – and Get All You Can

You need some way of tackling the analysis to make sure that you hit all the points and don’t skip any essential parts of the analysis. You must break it down to bite-sized pieces that you can work through systematically. How you do this will depend on what class you are taking and what the specific call of the question is. If the course is centered around various causes of action and questions of liability thereunder (i.e., courses in torts, intellectual property, antitrust, and many other subjects), then a useful general strategy is to break things down by parties, by claims (i.e., causes of action), and by affirmative defenses as applicable – in that order . And within your discussion of each claim and defense, go element by element.

Just keep in mind that not every subject or every question on an exam lends itself to this approach. Courses on evidence law and constitutional law, for instance, are not centered on the question of “Is there liability?” Instead, the questions for evidence and constitutional law tend to be, respectively, “Is it admissible?” and “Is it constitutional?” Even within a liability-centered course, a given question you get might be centered on liability or it might not be. In a patent law course, the question might be about liability (Is the defendant liable for patent infringement?) or it might not be (Is the invention patentable?). No matter what, you have to break your analysis down into sensible chunks and be thorough. But since so many law-school subjects are largely organized around causes of action and focused on questions of liability, I’ll spend the remainder of this section discussing how to be thorough and systematic in that context.

Perhaps the most traditional call of the question in a liability-centered law-school exam is a simple statement such as, “Analyze the potential liabilities and potential recoveries for all parties.” In my exams, I often give particularized questions that I want answered in a particular order. Yet no matter how much organization is imposed on your response, you still need to think through all the permutations of parties, claims, and affirmative defenses. And within your analysis of each claim or defense, you want to work on an element-by-element basis to make sure your analysis is thorough.

If there are multiple potential plaintiffs and multiple potential defendants, then you should consider each pairing. Suppose you have potential plaintiffs A and B and potential defendants X and Y. You’ll want to consider A vs. X, A vs. Y, B vs. X, and B vs. Y.

Depending on the circumstances, you might be able to lump them. So, for instance, if A and B are in the same exact relation to X, then you can analyze A & B vs. X in one swoop.

If, on the other hand, the relevant facts are different for A and B, then you’ll need separate analysis, but I strongly recommend against copying and pasting text in your essay response. From the grader’s perspective, repeated text is very unhelpful. The grader of course wants to avoid awarding double points for duplicated text. So when text is duplicated, that just makes it hard for the grader to see what differences there are, if any. That means it’s harder to give whatever points are legitimately due for any distinct analysis.

So what should you do instead? Just be straightforward about what is the same and what is different. Suppose on a torts exam plaintiffs A and B were both passengers in a taxi that crashed into a lightpole thanks to X’s careless driving. But suppose the crash results in a broken bone for A and only economic damages from a missed business meeting for B. In analyzing negligence liability, a good way to proceed is to analyze A & B lumped together in terms of duty and breach of duty, but then provide different analysis for A and for B as to the injury element. Another good way to proceed is to first analyze A vs. X and then say, “B’s case against X is the same as A’s except that … ” after which you go on to note the differences.

There’s no formalistic requirement in how you set out your analysis among the various parties. The key is analytical substance. So consider all the pairings, and be comprehensive in analyzing them, but don’t repeat yourself in ways that adds nothing to the substance.

Claims (causes of action):

Once you’ve found one colorable claim to discuss, always consider what other claims might lie on the same facts. Take torts, for example. In the situation of an injury caused by a defect in a product, a claim based on strict products liability naturally comes to mind. So analyze that. But don’t stop with what’s most obvious. A claim based on negligence might also be appropriate. So unless it’s excluded by the call of the question, analyze that as well.

I have a slogan I use with my torts students about this: “Get all you can!” It’s a tagline I once saw in a television commercial for a personal injury attorney. I offer it to students as a way to remember that during an exam you should keep thinking, Are there any more claims that might work here? And the same admonition applies with different claims as it does with parties: Don’t copy-and-paste text to try to get double the points for the same work. If the analysis for one claim is the same as for another, say so and note the differences.

Affirmative defenses:

Affirmative defenses work the same way as claims. For each claim, think about what affirmative defenses might be applicable. And avoid copying-and-pasting repeated text.

Going element by element:

Perhaps the most important piece of advice about the sequence of your analysis – breaking it down and getting all you can – is to go element by element.

A good default rule of thumb would be to have a sentence of analysis for each element. For negligence claims, for instance, I teach that there are five elements: duty, breach of duty, actual causation, proximate causation, and injury. Often one sentence of analysis works well for each element, although if an issue is a close call or complex, more sentences might be called for.

Is it absolutely vital to tackle each element with at least one sentence? Probably not. Strictly speaking, you can show that a claim will not work – that is, prove the negative about a claim – just by showing that one element cannot be proven. But in doing so, you might miss out on an easy point or two by explaining what works about a claim even if it’s ultimately a loser. On the other hand, when it comes to demonstrating the positive statement – that a prima facie case exists for a claim – then you do need to address all the elements. That’s because all elements of a claim are necessary for making out a prima facie case. Yet if you are clever, you might be able to combine several elements into one sentence. Indeed, that might be appropriate for upper-level classes. But my advice is to learn to walk before you run. At least for first-year students, I strongly recommend that your default be at least one sentence for each element of each claim – such a sentence at least mentioning a relevant fact, some relevant law, the word “because” or “therefore,” and a legal conclusion.

I should also say that the order in which you consider the elements isn’t sacrosanct. For instance, given the circumstances, it might be more efficient to take them out of the order in which they are traditionally listed. For negligence, it might be easier to analyze whether or not there’s an appropriate injury before you analyze the causation elements. That’s because causation must necessarily link the breach to the injury. You can do whatever works under the circumstances.

The bottom line is that you should use the element-by-element breakdown as a way to make sure that what you’ve identified as a relevant fact gets matched up with the relevant bit of legal doctrine. For instance, for a negligence claim on a torts exam, suppose you notice that the plaintiff’s injury would have happened anyway – even if the defendant had not done something careless. But so what? What comes of that observation? Where does that come into play in terms of the doctrinal structure of tort law? The answer is actual causation – and you need to make that explicit. So instead of saying, “The plaintiff can’t win a negligence suit because his broken leg injury would have happened anyway since he was looking at his phone and wouldn’t have seen the warning sign,” you want to say, “The plaintiff will be unable to prove actual causation because the but-for test is not satisfied; even if the defendant shopkeeper had put out a warning sign, the plaintiff wouldn’t have seen it since he was looking at his phone, and he therefore would have fallen and broken his leg anyway.”

Use the Tests! Use the Factors!

Where legal doctrine has been articulated by courts in the form of “tests” or lists of “factors” to consider, then by all means use those. If you don’t, you are, at the very least, passing up an easy opportunity for points. And not using relevant tests and factors might even cause you to blunder into a wrong conclusion.

So when there’s a test to use, use that test. Are you discussing specific personal jurisdiction in civil procedure? Use the minimum contacts test. Are you discussing whether a statute can be used for negligence per se? Use the class-of-persons/class-of-risks test.

And if there are factors to use – use those factors. Are you discussing a fair-use issue in copyright? Use the four fair use factors found in 17 U.S.C. §107. Are you discussing whether someone is an indispensable party for joinder in civil procedure? Use the Rule 19(b) factors.

Use the Real Legal Words!

Don’t make up synonyms for legal terms of art. You should use the actual legal terminology whenever you are talking about the corresponding substance.

For instance, on an exam it would be a bad call to say “an item of tangible, moveable property” when “chattel” is the word used by the courts in that context. And it would be a needless error to say “a doctrine that construes a breach to exist based on the circumstances” instead of “res ipsa loquitur.”

It might make sense to avoid legal words and Latin when talking to your non-lawyer cousin. But in an exam, if you omit to use the legal terms used by lawyers and judges, you step away from demonstrating your mastery over the course’s material.

And as with the words “because” and “therefore,” there’s no worry about using legal terms of art “too often.” Trying to concoct synonyms for the purpose of varying the prose will just burden the reader or, worse, result in a lack of clarity or demonstrated knowledge.

Your Goal in Writing an Exam and Pitfalls to Avoid

Now that you understand the means for forming an essay response – breaking things down effectively and applying the law you’ve learned to the facts you’ve been given – let’s take a step back and look at all of this in a broader context.

What is your overall goal in writing an exam?

Your goal in writing an exam answer is to show your mastery of the material presented in the course and your skills in analyzing legal problems within the scope of the course’s subject matter.

I’ve put that in bold to encourage you to dwell on it for a moment. So go ahead and dwell on it for a moment.

An exam might just ask you to “analyze.” But even if it asks you to “advise a client,” or “write a brief,” those are just pretenses to help you frame an answer that delivers legal analysis. Your real goal on an exam is always to show your analytical ability and your mastery of the material from the course at hand.

As I’ve said, this means that you should take the law you’ve learned in the course and apply it to the facts provided in the exam. But it’s helpful to think about your overall goal not only in terms of what you should do, but also in terms of what you should avoid. So:

First off, do not make moral arguments . Do not argue what is fair. This seems to be a special hazard for first-semester 1Ls. But I’ve also seen it in upper-level courses. The problem with moral arguments is that they do not show mastery of the law.

Next, do not bring in material from another course . It’s a waste of limited time, limited words, or both. So, for instance, if you are taking an exam in intellectual property, do not include analysis based on what you have learned in a secured transactions course, even if doing so would provide a more complete analysis of the factual scenario. You might be surprised how often this happens. It seems to be a special hazard for people who are taking more than one exam on the same day – a tough circumstance, no doubt. But I’ve also gotten contracts and criminal law material on a torts exam, even when 1L exams are all calendared with a free day in between. Bottom line: Get some sleep and remember which exam you are taking!

Correspondingly, stick to the material from your lectures and assigned reading . That is, you should not waste time or words on material that, even if relevant to the topic of the course, was not presented in the course itself. There are many reasons you might have knowledge that goes beyond the course. Perhaps you learned this area of law as a paralegal before you came to law school. Maybe you read a commercial outline (which is perfectly fine, as far as I am concerned). Perhaps you are working on a law-review project that has caused you to learn a great deal about some particular aspect of law. The problem is that showing off knowledge from outside the course doesn’t correspond with the goal (i.e., “To show your mastery of the material presented in the course  … ”), and, thus, it won’t help you get a better grade.

Also, keep in mind that your goal is to show “mastery” of the subject matter. Inherent in that charge is the need to exercise judgment about what you choose to discuss and how much analysis you bring to bear on any particular part of the problem.

Substance Is What Matters (This Isn’t Drafting a Legal Memo or Brief)

First-year law students all take a skills-intensive course focusing on legal research and writing. The most common name for this course is probably Legal Research & Writing, but at any given school it could be called something else, like Legal Reasoning & Argument. In this course, students generally learn – among other things – how to structure a formal legal memo, how to write a brief suitable for filing in court, and how to use Bluebook or ALWD rules to format legal citations. In the legal writing course, adherence to technical formatting rules is very important, in addition to the substance of the analysis and argument.

In a “doctrinal” course, like 1L courses on civil procedure, torts, contracts, and property, the emphasis is generally exclusively on substantive law – particularly for exams. So when it comes to doctrinal course exams, while you shouldn’t necessarily throw out everything you’ve learned in your legal writing course (really, all law school courses are connected, as they all are looking at different facets of the same big egg), you should understand that essay exam expectations are quite different. The expectations of your legal writing course are much more like those of real-world practice. When you write an essay response on an issue-spotter exam in a doctrinal course, you get a huge break on the formalities.

Substance is what matters. I think most law professors are like me in that there are no points to be won or lost for spelling, grammar, or stylistic aspects of writing, so long as I can understand what you are saying. If grammar or spelling issues render text ambiguous, then it’s a problem. But not otherwise.

Aim for Lawyerly Lawyer Substance

I’m now going to proceed to answer some habitual questions that students have about exam writing, including “Should I cite cases?” and “Should I discuss theory or policy?” But before I address those particular questions, let me suggest an overarching guiding principle for coming up with answers to such questions. I’ll call it the “lawyerly lawyer substance” standard.

As I’ve already said, your goal is to “show your mastery” of the course material. But how does one gauge that? If you’ve taken torts, you know that the question of whether or not the defendant has breached their duty of care is generally answered with reference to a hypothetical, imaginary figure, the “reasonable person.” Similarly, in patent law, an analytical touchstone for many questions is the “person having ordinary skill in the art.”

Along those lines, when I am grading, I have an imaginary person as my analytical ideal. That person is a lawyer who knows the law and exercises lawyerly judgment about what should be said in giving useful analysis as to the substance of the question.

What Should I Do With Cases?

What about cases? Should you mention cases in your essay response? Should you cite them? Should your analysis reference their holdings, their facts, their analysis?

The answer is complicated. It really depends on the course and how it’s been taught. In some courses, the cases are the law. In other courses, the cases are generally just examples of legal doctrines in action. Other courses focus on statutes, codes, or promulgated rules. Still other courses are hybrids.

What it really comes down to is: Would the lawyerly lawyer mention particular cases in giving a great analysis of the hypothetical facts?

In Antitrust, Federal Courts, and Constitutional Law, you’ve got a body of law that has been developed essentially entirely through case law, and there’s just one court – the U.S. Supreme Court – that’s in charge of it. For the most part, the cases you read are, themselves, the law. For these bodies of law, I would expect the hypothetical lawyerly lawyer to be talking about cases and the implications they have for the analysis. Thus, in those sorts of courses, I would expect it may be quite useful – and perhaps crucial – to reason from particular cases in creating your analysis based on the exam’s hypothetical facts.

In Sales and Secured Transactions, most of the law is statutory, and the focus will probably be on the rules rather than cases. The cases you read are likely nearly all to be illustrative examples of the rule in action. Discussing individual cases might be entirely beside the point. I could imagine that for many fact patterns the lawyerly lawyer would never bother to mention a case.

In Civil Procedure and Copyright, you have a hybrid. Much of the law is set out in statutory text or promulgated rules. But much of the law is case law – doctrine set out in the form of U.S. Supreme Court opinions. That suggests that some issues might require engaging with a specific case.

In Torts, Contracts, and Property, you’ve got a body of law that has been developed essentially entirely through case law, but there’s more than 50 jurisdictions with more than 50 different high courts that are simultaneously developing more than 50 different versions of the law. So no cases are nationally controlling. In those courses, the cases you read are essentially just examples of doctrine. You should certainly be explicitly mentioning doctrines. And it’s plausible in those courses the norm is to not mention or reason from any particular cases at all. Yet I am sure there are some professors out there who expect their students to explicitly reason analogically from the selected state common law cases that were assigned as reading – treating those cases as if they were authoritative precedent in the hypothetical world of the exam. That’s not my expectation, but I can see some wisdom in such an approach.

But keep this in mind: Even in a course where case-based analysis is not the point, you may find that you have opportunities to make useful, insightful, nuanced points about the law by bringing up particular cases. For instance, cases from the reading might suggest ways in which the blackletter doctrine could be stretched, ignored, or even turned upside-down.

As far as I am concerned, if and when you have a point to make on the exam regarding a particular case, it’s not important to me that you identify it by its formal name. For instance, there’s no point in saying “Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service, Co.” For me, and I would think most professors, you could identify it any reasonable way – such as “Feist” or even “the white pages case” or “the phone book case.”

Now, regardless of whether or not there’s value in using particular cases in your analysis, I personally don’t see any point in merely citing to a case without using it. Other professors might feel differently, but I would suggest not bothering to namecheck a case when citing blackletter doctrine, for example: “Photographs can be copyrightable subject matter. See Burrow-Giles.” That seems pointless to me. This is an exam, not a brief for a court.

What Should I Do With Policy and Theory?

What about policy and theory? Should you incorporate that into your analysis? Again, it depends on the course, the subject matter, and how it’s taught. But I would come back again to the question: What would the lawyerly lawyer do? If policy and theory would be relevant to how a court would look at the matter – that is, if policy- and theory-based reasoning would likely factor into a court’s analysis, then I would include it. (For instance, in a past Copyright course, I specifically advised students: “[D]on’t ignore theory, policy, and history on the essay portion of the exam. As we’ve emphasized this semester, theory, policy, and history inform a lawyerly analysis because that stuff is baked into a lot of current copyright law and practice. We’ve seen again and again in the cases that policy concerns and theoretical justifications often exert a magnetic pull on the compass needle the court is using for guidance.”)

On the other hand, in a lot of other courses – courses focusing on other subject matter – policy and theory may only be relevant to abstract academic discussions of what the law ought to do. In such circumstances, policy and theory would seem clearly irrelevant to an essay question that asks for legal analysis. In fact, students sometimes lure themselves away from legal analysis by arguing what is fair – and that’s a pitfall you should work to avoid. (See, above, the discussion under “Your Goal in Writing an Exam and Pitfalls to Avoid.”)

All that being said, some professors might have different expectations. If you’ve got a professor who heavily emphasized theory and policy, and if the exam will have no separate question explicitly calling for a discussion of that, then I suppose it wouldn’t surprise me to hear that the professor will be expecting discussion of that in the context of the exam regardless of the call of the question. In such a case, you might just ask your professor ahead of time.

About IRAC and CREAC, and Concerning the Need to Concentrate on Analysis

Should you use IRAC (Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion)? Should you use CREAC (Conclusion, Rule, Explanation, Application, Conclusion)? (There’s also CRAC (Conclusion, Rule, Application, Conclusion) – what about that?)

I strongly suggest you do not use these in exam writing. I see these formats as useful models for more formal legal writing, like a legal memo or a brief. On an exam, trying to adhere to these formats could crush you.

I advise you to concentrate on analysis – and the conclusions supported by that analysis, which I think of as part of the analysis. (See “Applying Law to Facts: Making Purple,” above.) As I said there, I don’t give points for providing naked statements of the law – so merely reciting the “R,” the rule, can be omitted. Instead, you can just proceed to apply it, in which case you end up stating much or essentially all of it anyway, just in the context of its application.

Also, I don’t award double the points when something is said twice. So, where the CREAC and CRAC formats teach that you should state the conclusion twice, that is unavailing on an exam essay.

I’ve seen IRAC in particular be a burden to students who try to employ it on an exam. One big problem with IRAC is that it leaves open the question: What is the fundamental unit of analysis? That is, what counts as an “Issue” in the IRAC format? If you’re analyzing whether party A is liable to party B in negligence, is that just one issue? In that case, IRAC is an unwieldy tankard for a bunch of sub-issues sloshing around inside it, including prima facie elements, tests applied within those elements, and affirmative defenses, and consideration of sub-issues within elements within affirmative defenses. On the other hand, if every sub-issue is its own “Issue” demanding its own full-on IRAC treatment, then getting through the analysis of just one cause of action for one plaintiff and one defendant is going to take forever.

As I said above under “Applying Law to Facts: Making Purple,” I don’t give points for just reciting law. When grading open-book/open-note exam essays, I don’t give points for statements of law, even correct ones. Think about it this way: Anything you could copy out of your book, notes, or outline doesn’t prove anything to me about what you’ve learned. Instead, what I give points for is analysis. Legal analysis is the mixing of law and facts to create conclusions.

So, in the language of the “IRAC” model, you are usually best advised to just do “AC.” Or “CA” anytime that comes more naturally. One’s just as good as the other. Your identification of the issue and your understanding of the rule will be implicit in good analysis that incorporates conclusions.

Suppose, for instance, there’s a fair use issue on a Copyright or IP Survey exam. Consider an exam that says the following:

“Next I will address the fair use issue. The fair use determination requires consideration of (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.”

There’s no need to say any of that. I already know it. And you could have copied it out of your notes, so it doesn’t prove anything about your learning. So I won’t give points for that.

Instead, I’d advise that you just launch into the conclusions and analysis, for example:

“DD has a very strong case for fair use. The purpose and character of DD’s use is noncommercial and educational, which heavily favors the defendant, and [so forth like that ... ]”

Legal analysis is what gets you points – period. And legal analysis necessarily involves a productive mixing of law and facts to create conclusions.

Conclusions, Confidence, and Seeing All Sides

Don’t make up a conclusion if it is not warranted.

Look back at each of the examples at the beginning, nos. 1, 2, and 3. In each of those, there is a forceful conclusion, stating with certainty what comes of given facts. That is appropriate in many circumstances. But such sureness is not called for all the time. Good lawyers know that honest assessments of legal rights and liabilities are often phrased as a matter of how likely something is. Such a circumstance requires seeing both sides of an issue, articulating those sides, and providing a candid assessment of the range and likelihood of possible outcomes.

Consider the following, taken from a model response to the “Bad Days for Good Cheer” exam. This passage does a great job of considering both sides of a close issue and providing a lawyerly and insightful – yet indeterminate – conclusion:

The law is largely shades of gray, and a good attorney understands and recognizes that. On the other hand, sometimes the law is black-and-white, and when that’s the case, the good attorney says so. Law students should aspire to that model.

Matters of Style – Regular Paragraphs

I strongly advise you: Do not use bullet-point lists or outline structure. Constraining formats like numbered lists, bulleted lists, or outline structure tend to push students into writing things that are unnecessary and skipping things they ought to cover.

Regular paragraphing works best and, so far as I can tell, is the universal norm and expectation.

Matters of Style – Headings

A few simple headings can be very useful, but don’t get too carried away.

If your exam has separate, numbered questions, then by all means have a heading that clearly labels the portion of your essay corresponding to each question. So, for example, for question 1, you could put “1” or “Q1” or “Question 1” on a line by itself, maybe with an empty line above it.

If your entire exam has just one general call of the question (e.g., “Discuss the parties’ legal rights and liabilities.”), then you’ll likely need to break that down into some big chunks, and a simple heading for each big chunk is likely to be very helpful.

Other than those usages, creating headings can quickly veer into a waste of time and effort. If you feel that you need to show that you are transitioning from one major area of analysis to another, simply going to a new paragraph is a good way of helping the reader see that you are on to a new set of points. If you feel that won’t do, consider that a single-word or short-phrase heading might well be adequate.

As a typographical matter, you can make a heading just by hitting an extra paragraph return to leave blank space above and then putting the word or words that constitute the heading on their own line. If that’s not sufficient to make it stand out as a heading, you could additionally use all caps. Or bold type. Or underlining. But bold or underlining is getting close to the realm of the needlessly fancy. Combining any of those or having differing heading styles for differing purposes is yet more likely a ticket to too-fancy land.

Organization – Planning and Balance

You need to be organized with how you write. Don’t write stream-of-consciousness style. Have a logical plan for tackling the issues in a sensible order, and follow that plan. If the essay exam has a break-down of individual questions or subparts that specify a certain organizational structure for the answer – which I commonly do with my exams – then plan to put analysis where it belongs within that structure.

Regardless of how the call of the question is structured, I recommend you sketch out a very abbreviated outline of your response on a piece of scratch paper. At this stage, don’t write out complete sentences, just scratch out a list of what you are going to talk about and in what order. Then stick to that outline and use it to pace yourself as you write your answer. You’re likely to have more organized and balanced coverage that way.

Based on my experience doing exam reviews with students, I think the number one reason that students haven’t done as well as they were hoping – assuming they were well-prepared – is that they missed out on analysis of relatively straightforward aspects of the essay questions because they didn’t stop to think and instead just rushed headlong into writing.

Another top reason students haven’t done as well as they were hoping – again, assuming they were well-prepared – is what I think of as Question One Syndrome, where the first part of the essay is needlessly wordy and the later questions end up deprived of adequate attention.

You may think I’m crazy for suggesting this, but you might consider imposing on yourself an initial reading/outlining period where you don’t do any essay writing at all.

In recent years, I’ve usually mandated this on my essay exams. It’s an idea I adopted from a colleague. During the first 30 minutes students can read the hypothetical facts, consult notes, and scratch out an outline of a response, but they can’t type any portion of their essay. Since I adopted this format, I’ve gotten better essay responses. In particular, it has cut way down on the frequency of Question One Syndrome.

I’ve often used the 30-minute reading/outlining period within a total two hour time limit, and my sense is people can generally cover more substance that way than if they had had all two hours to write.

I know it seems counterintuitive that waiting to write could help you finish on time, but I do think it works.

Organization – Keeping Things Straight On the Page

Not only do you need to be organized as you write, but your essay needs to have some workable organization for the benefit of the reader/grader. With jumbled-up organization, you cannot communicate your thoughts effectively. As I said above, have a logical plan for tackling the issues in a sensible order, and follow that plan. That will help your professor give you all the credit you deserve for the substance of your analysis.

Now, if you find that you forgot to cover a particular point that belonged with a section of your answer that you already drafted, then, assuming you are using a computer, just scroll back up to that point and insert it where it belongs. No problem. If you are handwriting, and if there is no room for an insertion where the point would logically go, then use a large asterisk, an arrow, or something else to make a notation explaining where the remainder of your analysis can be found.

It is possible to worry too much about organization. As long as the reader sees where you are going and understands what you are talking about from one place to the next, there is no need to make your exam answer pretty. As I said above, I would avoid wasting time on elaborate headings – consider just going on to a new paragraph or maybe using a single-word heading. And there definitely is no need for a “roadmap” section in which you preview what will be discussed and in what order. It is possible some professors would disagree with me here, but it seems to me to be a waste of time and/or words to do this. Besides, I can’t give points for a roadmapping section if the same material is going to be covered below; to do so would be double-counting.

Don’t Dwell on the Obvious

Let’s move on to a fine-tuning issue to make your exam response as good as it can possibly be: Avoid dwelling at length on obvious points.

You will have a limited amount of time or words for your exam. Maybe both. So don’t squander your limited point-making opportunities by saying more than you need to, particularly when the issue is easy (i.e., not very interesting as an analytical matter).

For an intellectual property course, I once read an exam in which a student spent several pages explaining why a machine was patentable subject matter. If you are familiar with patent law, you might see why this is problematic: All machines are patentable subject matter. Subject-matter constraints could be a live issue with some kinds of inventions – such as, for instance, medical diagnostic techniques. But on the particular exam I’m thinking back to, the invention was a “machine.” That meant it was patentable subject matter, and that was all that needed to be said about it. The sticky issues in that exam had to do with other points of doctrine.

Whether obvious points are worth talking about depends on the course and the particulars of the exam. You need to exercise good judgment. For example, the elements of actual and proximate causation are required in various causes of action and various theories of damages studied in many different courses. Often these do not even rise to the level of being “an issue.” So in some upper-level classes, where actual and/or proximate causation are required elements of a cause of action that was studied, but where the doctrines of actual and proximate causation were not, as such, a focus of study and where they are obvious in a given problem, then you might be able to skip even mentioning them. But if you are taking a course in which actual and proximate causation themselves were subjects of study (as is the case with my torts course), then you should provide explicit analysis. Yet if it is obvious, keep it brief.

For instance, suppose in a torts hypothetical a driver fails to stop a red light, hitting and totaling a pickup truck. The pickup’s owner sues for the value of the truck. In such a case, actual and proximate causation are so clear as to essentially be non-issues. But I wouldn’t skip over them. I would just dispatch them as expeditiously as possible. For actual causation, you could say: “The damage to the pickup truck is actually caused by the red-light running because, but for the defendant’s failure to stop at the red signal, the pickup truck would not have been hit and thus would not have been damaged.” About proximate causation, you could say, “The plaintiff can establish proximate causation because it is a natural and foreseeable consequence of running a red light to collide with a vehicle in the intersection and damage it.”

But Don’t Pass Up Low-Hanging Fruit

Are you familiar with the expression “low-hanging fruit”? It denotes something you want that’s not difficult to get. In other words, in the exam context, easy points . So the advice for law-school exams is: Don’t pass up low-hanging fruit.

This is an important caveat to my advice about not dwelling on the obvious. Not dwelling on the obvious does not mean omitting to mention something just because it is straightforward. If something is a legitimate issue in the case, but it is easily analyzed, then note it, analyze it to the extent appropriate, and move on to the next issue.

At the end of the day, I can’t give you a formulaic way of determining what you should skip, what you should mention in passing, and what you should spend considerable time on. You will need to exercise judgment about how to spend your limited time or allotted word count. And that is as it should be: Part of understanding the law at a high level is understanding what really matters – that is, which issues are the crucial ones. Thus, showing that you have a strong sense of judgment about where to focus your analysis is an important way of showing your mastery of the material presented in the course.

The Twin Dangers of “If”

Be careful if you find yourself using the word “if” on an exam! There are two things that can go wrong if you find yourself speaking in the conditional: (1) You may be neglecting to engage with the facts, and thus not doing any legal analysis. (2) You may be going outside the scope of the exam.

Neglecting to engage with the facts: If you use “if” to dodge the facts, then you aren’t engaging in legal analysis. On a property exam, suppose a student writes the following:

This sentence does nothing more than restate the rule against perpetuities. There is no legal analysis. This sentence is correct, but it could be written by someone who totally lacks understanding of the rule against perpetuities and how to apply it. On a law exam, it is the student’s job to apply the law to the facts and explain what comes of that. In this example, it is the student’s job to say whether the will has created an invalid interest. The student avoided doing that in this case – and it would be appropriate for the grader to award no points for such a statement.

So, remember: Don’t use “if” to avoid applying law to facts.

Going outside the scope of the exam: Often, “if” can be a path to wandering away from the stipulated hypothetical facts of the exam. Suppose a contracts exam says nothing more about the signing of a contract other than, “The dealership put the document in front of Dirk, and he signed it.” Then imagine that the student writes this sentence in the essay response:

When “if” is called for – deliberate ambiguity, branching contingencies: While “if” is often problematic in an exam answer, sometimes it is called for, such as where a fulcrum for the analysis has been left ambiguous, leaving branching contingencies that beg to be analyzed. Suppose a secured transactions exam states that Midland Motorcycles sold and delivered a motorcycle to Gwen “in late July”; that Gwen then sold the motorcycle to Walter, who bought it in good faith with cash “sometime in August”; and that “the next day” Midland Motorcycles perfected its purchase-money security interest on the motorcycle with a filing. With no dates specified, these facts leave open whether Midland Motorcycles’ security interest was perfected within 20 days of Gwen having taken possession. That makes a difference as to whether Midland Motorcycles has priority over Walter in the case of a default. In this kind of situation, it is appropriate for a student to use “if” in order to fully analyze the given facts:

As with all things, you’ve got to exercise good judgment in accordance with the goal of applying the law you know to the facts you’ve been given to show your mastery of the material presented in the course and your skills in analyzing legal problems within the scope of the course’s subject matter.

If You’re Doing a Good Job, It Should Be Tough Sledding

Let me offer another thought about exam writing that gets at much of what I have said above, but from a different angle: Writing the exam should be tough sledding. That is, if you are going along writing, thinking to yourself, “This is a breeze!” – then chances are that you are neglecting to do legal analysis that will get you points.

Some people, as a way of coping with the stress of taking an exam, make the mental decision to just start putting something on paper, whatever it is. This might seem reasonable, and in fact, it is often offered as a solution to writer’s block: “Just get started writing something, whatever it is.” Well, that might be good advice for other kinds of writing, but I see this as bad advice for law school exam writing. The things you can write with little or no mental effort are precisely the things that will earn you few or no points – e.g., repeating facts from the exam without referencing the relevant law, providing lengthy recitations of law without reference to the facts, setting out roadmaps, dwelling on obvious points, or making moral arguments (all of which were discussed above). I have even read a few exams where students set out a lengthy list of abbreviations they would be using. I’m sure it was their way of coping with stress, and I sympathize, but their time would have been better spent doing legal analysis.

How to Study for the Exam

Now let’s talk about the most effective ways to study. Here I am talking specifically about how to study for the essay exam, as opposed to how to prepare for class each day during the semester.

Exam technique: The most important thing to do heading into exams is to make sure you have the generic knowledge of how to write a law school exam. (Happily, you are attending to that right now by reading this memo!) But you will have to gauge for yourself whether you will need to do more. Most 2Ls and 3Ls know how to write an exam, although it never hurts to do some more thinking about it. But if you are new to law school or if, despite your experience, you are unsure of your exam-taking abilities, then you will need to spend more time developing your exam-writing technique. Read other people’s advice, do exercises, etc. Ultimately, if you can’t effectively use an exam to show your mastery of the subject matter of any given course, then it doesn’t matter how well you know the course’s subject matter. Thus, if you perceive your exam-writing technique as a weakness, then working on your exam-writing technique has to be your first priority.

The next priority should be to focus on the course at hand. But don’t go crazy with your outline just yet.

Old exams: The absolute best way to study your course’s material is to actively practice spotting and analyzing issues, particularly with old exams. Old exams do not have to come from your professor. You can use an issue-spotter exam covering the same course subject matter no matter who wrote it. Look for old exams retained by your own school and those archived by other schools. (I’ve put links to other publicly accessible exam archives on my own Exam Archive page .)

Don’t worry about finding old exams that are paired with model answers. The usefulness of an old exam is the opportunity it gives you for active studying. Model answers can be helpful, but they can also lead you astray. Note that if the model answer was written by a professor, then it will be far better than what even the best student would be capable of drafting during an exam. So it likely sets too high a bar. On the other hand, if the model answer was written by a student, then you can bet it is imperfect, and if you put too much stock in it, you may wind up drawing the wrong lessons from it. For example, you might mimic some aspect of its style, when perhaps the exam answer was good in spite of its style. Also, even if you can get a model answer that springs from your course and your professor, you will still be looking at something from a different semester, and every time a class is taught, it is at least slightly different – perhaps very different.

I recommend, if possible, that you use old exams in the context of a study group. Look at an old exam, draft or at least outline an answer, then get together with some classmates and compare your results. I believe this is the single most effective use of a study group, and it is actually pretty fun, insofar as studying goes. Doing this will allow you to see what you are missing and what you don’t understand. Then you can go back to your outline, book, notes, etc., and focus your studying where it’s needed the most. What’s more, seeing other people’s responses will allow you to develop your own ideas of what works and what doesn’t. If you really want to make the most of this, I would recommend that everyone in your study group draft a full mock exam response and give that to every other member of the study group. Reading other people’s exam responses will allow you to develop the same sort of perspective that your professor has when grading.

One last thing about studying with old exams: I remember toward the end of my first semester of law school, I asked a classmate if she had looked at any old exams. She said she had not, because doing so would only stress her out. Do not make that mistake! If you feel anxious about exams, that’s all the more reason to look at some old exams sooner rather than later. Better to stress out a little now than to stress out even more during the exam.

Active studying: When you are doing a more regular sort of studying, such as working with your notes or outline (as opposed to working through old exams), try to make your studying as active (i.e., non-passive) as possible. Don’t just read and re-read. Ask yourself questions. Talk to yourself. Look for connections among disparate points of doctrine. For instance, you might search for overlapping themes, factual similarities in cases, political trends, historical patterns, etc. I know, many of you are thinking, “Hey, I’m not going to be tested on historical patterns!” It doesn’t matter. The point is that it can be helpful to give your brain multiple ways to embed the doctrinal knowledge.

Menu Outline (a/k/a Attack Outline)

I strongly recommend for any essay exam that you prepare a miniaturized outline of the course to serve as a quick-reference sheet for issue spotting on the essay portion. What I’m recommending is a very simplified list of what you learned during the semester. It’s not an outline that explains anything, just an outline that reminds you of what was covered in the course.

I tend to call this a “menu outline.” If you like videogame analogies, you could think of what I’m talking about as a “weapons inventory.” Some students might use the term “attack outline.” But what you or your schoolmates think of as an “attack outline” may or may not correspond to what I’m talking about. The “attack outlines” students have shown me are generally quite a bit longer than what I have in mind.

The point is, it’s a list of the doctrines, tests, and so forth that you can bring to bear on the hypothetical facts for the purpose of producing a thorough analysis. I keenly encourage you to use one page only for this. I emphasize this because, for an exam that allows access to notes, many students work to accumulate a huge volume of materials they can reference during the exam. You need to decide what’s right for you, of course, but I tend to think this kind of accumulation provides a false sense of security. At any rate, the larger the volume of materials you have, the more important it will be to have an ultra-concise one-page outline to use as a ready reference.

If you’ve tried at least one old exam as practice, you’ll probably begin to perceive the usefulness of a menu outline. Then if you make one and use it in doing another old exam, you may see how to further hone it.

Be confident that you have the raw ability to succeed. Most law schools only admit people they are convinced will be successful law students and, eventually, successful attorneys. So put aside the self-doubt and see law school as something that’s challenging and difficult but eminently doable.

So, to summarize: The key is to provide legal analysis. To do this, you must actively make use of both the facts and the law together. Even if you feel anxious or pressured, do not recite law or facts at length without applying them to each other, and do not use “if” or other devices to avoid doing legal analysis.

Finally, don’t worry too much. The top students almost always hand in exams that are far short of the ideal. If you work hard and if you are smart about how you approach your studying and your exam writing, you’ll do just fine.

© 2023 Eric E. Johnson. Konomark – most rights sharable – contact the author for gratis permission to reuse, remix, etc., at ericejohnson.com .

Top law school final exam tips

High-level tips to help you prepare for your law school finals.

1. What to expect 2. Professor preferences 3. Read the facts 4. Answer the question 5. Organize your thoughts 6. Before you start writing 7. IRAC format 8. Argue both sides of legal issues

What to expect from your law school final exams

A full semester of taking copious notes, reading, briefing, outlining, classroom discussions, and surviving the Socratic Method culminates in one final act. Writing law school final exams.

Most professors give essay exams for law school finals. Some are single-topic, short-answer questions. Others can go on for pages — known as issue-spotter exams. Some are taken in class, while others are take-home, allowing students more than the traditional amount of time to answer the essay questions. There are open-book and closed-book exams. And there are those few professors who create multiple-choice exams or (in rare cases) give oral exams.

Whatever type of exam your professor chooses to administer, you will be tested on your ability to analyze and resolve legal problems and demonstrate your grasp of the materials. Your course grade will be largely, if not exclusively, based on your final exam performance.

Here are some high-level tips to help you prepare for your law school finals.

Understand your professor preferences

The foundation for success on your law school finals is to know who is grading the exam. Your mission is to make that person’s life easier. Ultimately, different professors prefer different types of answers. Some want extreme detail — every possible interpretation of every possible fact. Some like answers straight to the point within a page count. It’s okay to ask your professor.

It’s a given that all professors expect well-organized, legible answers, no matter how brief or expansive.

Read the facts carefully

Read the entire problem through once rather quickly to get a general understanding. Focus on the question you are being asked to respond to at the end of the problem.

Then, read through the scenario again, slowly and carefully. This time, evaluate every word and phrase to identify all potential issues. Applying the law to the facts presented is critical in any law school exam. And changing the facts even slightly could result in a completely different result.

Answer the question that is being asked

Always keep in mind the specific question you are actually being asked to answer. Although you may receive credit for ancillary information provided in your answer, you will only receive maximum credit if you specifically answer the question that is presented. Therefore, you must determine what role the professor is asking you to assume before answering. Are you the defendant’s attorney, or do you represent the plaintiff? Are you a judge trying to resolve the dispute? It makes a real difference in how you answer.

Attempts to include unrelated material in your answer could backfire if your professor believes you are incapable of ruling out irrelevant information.

Organize your thoughts

Organization is critical to writing a strong essay answer on any law school finals. After all, if the professor cannot follow your analysis, how can they grade it fairly and appropriately?

Before you start writing, chart the issues in the manner in which you will resolve them. Again, make sure the issues are related to the actual question you are being asked to answer. Arrange the issues in the sequence in which you would expect a court to address them (i.e., normally jurisdictional issues first, then liability, then remedies). Capture the points you will discuss in sufficient detail to prompt you to think the problem through to a fair and practical solution.

Complete your analysis and organization before you start writing

You may find that you devote a solid one-fourth of the time allocated to reading, analyzing the problem and organizing your answer. That’s okay. A logical organization and clear expression of ideas will strengthen your answer. This purposeful approach may even bolster an answer that’s somewhat weak.

Use the IRAC format for each issue raised

As you begin to write out your answer, we recommend you analyze each dispute using the IRAC method.

First, state the issue in precise legal terms (i.e., “Did the defendant’s mistake in computing his bid prevent the formation of an enforceable contract?”). Be careful to avoid generalizations or oversimplification of the issue.

Next, state the applicable law. Be sure to define the pertinent elements of a rule as well as any terms of art.

Application

Then, apply the rules to the facts using arguments. Avoid the common error of stating a rule and then jumping straight to the conclusion. Your professor will not infer a supporting argument for you — you must spell it out. Remember to use the Issue T you created earlier to remind you to discuss which facts in the fact pattern support (or prevent) application of the rule. Discuss and weigh each fact given and the logical inference to be drawn from it. Be sure to include counterarguments where possible.

Finally, come to a straightforward conclusion on each issue. Make sure you have clearly answered the question asked, and you have not left an issue hanging. If a number of outcomes are possible, discuss the merits of each, but always select one position as your conclusion and state why. In close cases, it is generally best to select the most practical and fair conclusion. Just don’t consider yourself bound by the “general rule” or “majority view” in answering on a law school final exam unless the question clearly calls for such.

Argue both sides of legal issues you spot and remember policy concerns

Once a dispute has been framed and a legal theory has been asserted, identify any problems surrounding the theory’s application as well as arguments that each side can make in support of their position.

Also, if time allows, include just a sentence or two regarding the policy implications of your conclusions. Law is meant to provide order in society and, when imposing laws, you should always predict the impact that they will have.

Take a deep breath and try not to panic

If you find yourself panicking, not understanding the issues presented or not remembering the rules related to such issues, don’t panic. Instead, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Then, start working systematically through the information with these tips and do your best on your law school finals.

BARBRI 1L Mastery

The most complete and effective 1L resource available.

Using the IRAC method

Learn more about using the IRAC method in law school

Outlining 101

Tips for developing your law school note-taking and outlining system.

LawSchoolSecretstoSuccess

Law school exam writing.

This article was reprinted by permission from Study Partner ™ .

Exam Writing is a skill that you cannot learn 1-2 weeks before your first exam.

In order to better understand the issues that affect your proficiency at  exam writing , it is important that you review some basic concepts. The two most important are your ability to spot issues and your proficiency at dissertation. The following is a short recap on those two subjects. Examples are taken from the Study Partner™ first year law series on the M.A.D.™ STUDY METHOD for TORTS, CONTRACTS, and CRIMES and from the R&R™ ISSUE SPOTTING METHOD.

THE M.A.D.™ STUDY METHOD

THE M.A.D.™ STUDY METHOD IS UNIQUE TO THE STUDY PARTNER™ METHOD OF LAW OUTLINES, AND FLASH CARDS. IT CONSISTS OF THE FOLLOWING STUDY METHODS:

Your success in law school and in  law school exam writing  will be in direct correlation to the amount of effort you put into memorizing the law as well as into learning how to apply the information in class. The law that you need to memorize is contained in a concise and easy to learn format in the Study Partner ™ first year law school series on Torts, Contracts, and Crimes. Contained in these study guides are all the elements of the law and the definitions that you need to write essay exams in school and in Bar Exams.

You must dissertate the law in order to get proficient at law school exam writing.

Success in  law school exam writing  requires in addition to the memorization and application that you learned in class, you will have to spend a significant amount of time dissertating on the law. Dissertation of the law is a proprietary study method of Study Partner™. Dissertation is essential to your complete understanding of the law and cannot be overlooked.

In order to dissertate, simply choose a topic and write down everything you know about the topic in five minutes or less. When you are finished, compare the completeness and accuracy of your writing with what is contained in the Study Partner ™ Study Guides and with your own class notes on the topic. What you did not write down is what you do not know about the law.

The five-minute time limit is important in that it will help you quickly organize your thoughts on the topic into a general outline. This will give you a significant advantage in  law school exam writing  in exams with time limits. Pay particular attention to dissertating majority and minority law, as this will aid you significantly in answering both MBE questions and essay questions.

MAJORITY /MINORITY I.R.A.C.™ EXAM WRITING IS GREAT FOR ISSUE SPOTTING

Majority/ Minority I.R.A.C. ™   law school exam writing  is somewhat similar to the Issue, Rule of law, Application, and Conclusion, IRAC, writing to which you may have already been exposed, except that with practice it can result in superior exam writing skills.

There are two well founded reasons for this statement; the first is that by using majority/minority law as the basis for your answer you will be able to dramatically shorten the outlining and writing process; the second is that by using majority/minority law, you will spot more issues in the fact patterns than most examiners are looking for.

If you have been dissertating on majority/minority law, you will already have all the law outline that you ever need to create memorized. Thus all you will need to do is to dissertate on the exam with the facts applied to each element of the issue. If the answer is organized in adversarial format, with the winner arguing majority law and the loser arguing minority law, then the organization of your writing will take care of itself. When reading the exam for issue spotting, simply write down one word to remind yourself that the issue is present. Afterwards, when you return to write the answer, just skim the facts looking for words and phrases that support the argument for each particular element of the issue.

If you have been practicing your dissertation skills, your speed in dissertation should have progressed to where you can concisely state in writing all applicable points of law in less than two minutes. That leaves you an extra three minutes per issue to add some facts to create an answer that is complete beyond any examiner’s greatest expectations. You can thoroughly discuss all of the elements of the issue, and the answer will read well and make sense because it is organized in a well-defined adversarial format of majority/minority law and you will not waste a lot of time writing in the original IRAC format.

It takes about 100-200 hours of practice and another 100-200 hours of dissertation on the subjects you wish to write about to become extremely good at using this method of  law school exam writing . Once you have the ability to write in this fashion it never leaves you. All you will then have to do for the rest of law school is spend enough time dissertating on any subject to completely master it in a short period of time.

The first strategy of law school exam writing is to split your exam time into two periods. The first period is the issue-spotting period and the second is the  exam writing  period.

THE ISSUE SPOTTING PERIOD

The issue-spotting period must take at least 1/2 of the time allotted for each question. During the issue-spotting period, you must read and reread the fact pattern presented to spot all the issues and to formulate the structure of your answer. If you do not spend 1/2 of the time allotted on issue spotting, your answer will be disorganized and you will not spot all the issues presented by the facts.

The average exam question can be read once every 3-5 minutes. The average exam length is one hour. In the thirty minutes allotted for issue spotting, you should by able to read the question at least six times.

The first reading should familiarize you with the interrogatory and the basic facts. You will begin to spot issues, but you will only spot 40% of what is really there. If you begin writing after reading the question just once, you will miss 60% of the issues and will not be able to use the adverbs and adjectives used in the fact pattern. Failure to use the adverbs and adjectives presented is a strong indication that you lack knowledge of the facts presented in the problem.

The second, third, and fourth readings should allow you to spot all the issues presented as well as focus your outline and exam answer to the adjectives and adverbs used in the answer. If a blue cow committed the crime, you should use the words ‘blue cow’ in your answer. This is known as writing about ‘blue cow law.’

By the fourth or fifth reading, if time permits, you should have memorized the actual facts of the problem. In addition, if the issues are word sensitive you will be able to determine which words support hidden issues or presumptive issues. This will allow you to find the hidden issues that are not obvious until you start asking the question, “Why was this word chosen to describe the action or problems encountered?”

The key to good  law school exam writing  is to not start writing the answer until you understand the facts given in detail and their relation to the interrogatory presented.

OUTLINING FOR LAW SCHOOL EXAM WRITING

Each time you read through the facts of the question your key word outline should expand as you spot more issues. The  law school exam writing  outline should not be formal in nature, it should be a series of abbreviations with elements of law highlighted as being the key to the legal analysis presented. Your outline should be incomprehensible to anyone but yourself.

However, before you begin to write your  law school exam writing  answer to an interrogatory you should make a final organization of the outline. This is to create maximum efficiency in writing the answer. A good example of this is felony-murder. It makes no sense to separate the inherently dangerous felony from the discussion on felony murder. Combining the felony into the murder discussion is essential if you want to complete the writing using the least amount of words and time.

Spending 3-5 minutes to do a final organization of your  law school exam writing  written answer before beginning to write will save significant amounts of time.

USING THE FACTS GIVEN FOR SUPERIOR LAW SCHOOL EXAM WRITING.

Most students have great difficulty in realizing that most of the facts given in the problem should be repeated in the answer. The average person can write 20-30 words per minute. The average exam answer should be 600-900 words in length At least 100-150 of the words written in any law school exam writing should be taken directly from the problem presented. Adjectives and adverbs taken from the problem should be used to describe the actions and quality of the parties.

Basis IRAC skills.

Law school exam writing  exam answers can be broken into four main parts. They are identification of the issue, statement of the rule of law, application of the facts to the law, and conclusion. The basic structure that a student should use in writing exam answers is I.R.A.C. IRAC stands for Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion. It is good for a basic structure, but do not write in I.R.A.C. from for an answer because that method of writing is too inefficient and takes too much time. This book, will focus on writing with the I.(RA).C. structure. The I.(RA).C. method combines the rule of law and the application of the law to save valuable time and reduce the overall amount of words used. This makes your arguments more clean, clear, and concise (C3.)

In addition, to using the I.(RA).C. structure, you must use majority/minority law to create an automatic law outline and counter-arguments for each issue. Many students have difficulty in putting down the first few words in an exam setting, and they lose valuable time frozen in a mental block. The use of majority/minority law will alleviate any serious problems you may encounter in beginning to write an exam answer.

IDENTIFICATION OF THE ISSUE AND THE PARTIES.

This advice is easy to give and easy to follow. Do not identify an issue with a question. For example, if you are answering interrogatory #2 on a crimes exam and it asks if Deft is guilty of murder, do not write the following:

2. Was Deft guilty of murder when he went to Sally’s home and shot her in the head after she told him she was moving out and going with Charles because Charles was a real man?

This looks good and it reads well but it takes 35 words and at least one minute to write. There are usually ten issues on an exam and a student who writes in this fashion will spend 10 minutes of valuable time writing nonsense. It is far better to write any of the following:

All of these  law school exam writing  alternatives are better than the first example with 35 words. If you identify your answer as listed in any of the alternatives, you will have approximately 9 more minutes of writing time to discuss in detail any issue you may raise about Deft’s culpability for the crime.

APPLICATION OF THE FACTS TO THE LAW USING MODIFIED IRAC

IRAC  law school exam writing  requires that your state the Issue, Rule of law, Application, and Conclusion. For the crime of burglary it would be necessary to write the following:

2. Burglary.

Burglary is the breaking and entering of a dwelling house of another in the nighttime with the intent to commit a felony therein or larceny.

When Jake threw a brick through the window of Sally’s house he satisfied the element of breaking. By crawling through the window (entering) immediately thereafter in the nighttime to murder Sally, he showed his intent commit a felony.

Because Jake broke and entered into the house of another in the nighttime with the intent to commit a murder, a felony, he has incurred liability for common law burglary.

Comments: By carefully looking at the Rule of law and the Application, it is obvious that the definition and the application can be combined, thus saving 23 words. That’s almost a full minute of writing. The better way to write the answer is to not waste time listing the definition and applying the law to the definition in two steps. Just apply the law and make sure the elements of the definition are present in the application of the facts to the law.

When Jake threw a brick through the window of Sally’s house (house of another) he satisfied the element of breaking. By crawling through the window (entering) immediately thereafter in the nighttime, with the intent to murder Sally (felony) Jake has satisfied all the elements for culpability of common law burglary.

There is no difference in the quality of the answers, but the second requires a lot less time to write, which makes it the better alternative for a student in a hurry. That’s the advantage of combining the Rule and Application of the law in I.(RA).C. exam writing.

The conclusion in the I.(RA).C. example merely lists the definition again and concludes that Jake is liable for common law burglary. The conclusion in the second example states the same conclusion but with 17 fewer words.

Learning the Skill of Law School Exam Writing

If you think you can learn the skill of  law school exam writing  in two weeks you are the village idiot. The sooner you start the better you will get. Before your first exam you must do at least 30 practice exams in each subject you are taking. If you in fact do what we tell you to do, and become proficient you will notice something very reassuring when you take your first law school exam; you will see those less fortunate souls who start writing an exam answer in the first 5 minutes of the exam.

These methods work and we know it because over 250,000 law students have used them in the last 21 years. Don’t think for one second that you know better because you don’t. There are two types of law students in this world; those who call us in February gushing about their fantastic grades and those looking for help.

Why are we so arrogant about our methods? Simple. Our  law school exam writing  methods work and they have worked for a vast number of students. If you do them you will see immediate results in about two weeks and the process of law school will become easy to understand. There is a lot of work but once you take our path the anxiety will disappear and you will get grades like you did in undergrad. Those of you who cannot spend the time or find an excuse for everything; Good luck to you in your  law school exam writing . For more information check this Law School Success

Go to bsmsphd.com to find more on these materials.

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• Studying for a Law School Exam

Students are often tested on their legal knowledge through examinations given at the end of the semester or year. While students may be familiar with final exams that cover a large amount of material, they may be less familiar with the hypothetical format of many law school exams or the unique nature of a law school open book exam. A bit of preparation and practice will help even the newest law students succeed.

How should I study for a law school exam?

Studying for a law school exam can be a daunting task. Some professors may point students to specific topics to study, but often anything covered during class or in the syllabus will be fair game. It is a good idea to gather any study materials recommended by your professor, as well as any of your professor’s old exams or practice exams, which may be posted online in places like your library’s course materials webpage. You may also want to review your outlines and use some of your study time to draft more concise outlines to study or use on an open book exam.

What if my professor allows me to use notes?

You may feel relieved to learn that your exam will be open book, but this does not necessarily mean that you will be able to earn a great score without any preparation. Law school exams are typically limited to two or three hours, and you will probably use all of the allotted time. Crafting specific notes (sometimes called “attack outlines” or “mini outlines”) for open book exams is a great way to ensure that you are using this time efficiently. Your notes should be structured with your particular professor and course in mind, but a good place to start is to make a condensed one-page or half-page outline for each major topic that will allow you to access the relevant information with the flip of a page. For example, a portion of a mini Torts outline may look like this:

• False Imprisonment
• One person intends to confine another without consent or legal authority
• Their actions directly or indirectly cause confinement, and
• The other person is conscious of the confinement or is harmed by it
• The person confined knew of a reasonable means of escape and declined to use it
• Shopkeeper’s privilege — a store owner reasonably believed an individual stole or attempted to steal their property and detained the individual for a reasonable time in a reasonable manner
• Threats of immediate physical force may be sufficient
• Withholding important property, such as a passport, may be sufficient
• Big Town Nursing Home, Inc. v. Newman

As you can see, not all of the information that you will have learned will be contained in these condensed notes. Instead, they should provide you with the bare bones of each topic and jog your memory as to the details. Some professors award extra points when students cite specific cases in their exam answers, but it may be best to leave cases (or at least full case names) out to save space if your professor confirms that citations will not be necessary. Whether or not you include case names, you may also want to include summaries of important concurrences and dissents studied in class. Finally, remember to include notes about the specific points that your professor has noted are important and your professor’s personal interpretations of the law, which may be more helpful on an exam than the general rules that you may find online or in commercial study materials.

Justia provides outlines of key cases for over 30 law school topics, which contain links to the full text of each case. These outlines may be helpful in preparing notes and studying for law school exams.

Once you have completed your attack outlines, you may want to put them to the test by taking at least one practice exam and timing yourself. You will learn not only whether you need to include different information in your notes, but also whether the length or format of your mini outlines is slowing you down.

What is the best way to answer a law school exam question?

While law school exam questions will vary in style and structure, especially for advanced courses, many of these questions are posed as hypotheticals that students must analyze. You may have already heard of the “IRAC” formula: I ssue, R ule, A pplication (or A nalysis), C onclusion. The best exam answers will typically follow a rough outline of this formula, with students identifying each relevant issue contained within the question, correctly recognizing the rule(s) of law implicated, applying the rule of law to the issues, and drawing a clear conclusion based on their analysis.

A student’s issue-spotting section should be little more than a recitation of each issue that the student will address. In the rule section, a student should strive to synthesize a clear rule based on the many cases and resources studied in class. It may be helpful to have already written such a rule in an attack outline in preparation. Students should be careful to save all of their analysis for the application section, where professors are likely to be looking for a few key points. The best students will often also include the caveats or arguments that go against their analysis and distinguish them. Finally, in the conclusion section, a student should be sure to write one clear sentence stating their conclusion and reiterate their issue, rule, and application sections very briefly. Students are sometimes taught to begin their conclusion with “probably yes” or “probably no,” acknowledging when their application may be subject to interpretation or they are lacking sufficient information.

In addition to IRAC, some students are taught “CREAC”: C onclusion, R ule, E xplanation, A pplication, C onclusion; or “TREAT”: T opic sentence, R ule, E xplanation, A pplication, T opic sentence. These formulas are more or less the same and should be used only if required by professors or genuinely helpful to students. Otherwise, clear and organized answers, in whatever form, are best.

The best way to answer a law school exam question is to be as clear and organized as possible. Most students should avoid legalese and superfluous phrases. Outlining answers before answering in full may help students keep themselves on track. They may also find success with using introductory paragraphs, topic sentences, and descriptive headings to distinguish each section of an answer.

How are law school exams graded?

There are many different ways in which a professor may award points for a law school exam question. One professor may give equal weight to each IRAC section, while another may award the majority of points only when a student arrives at the correct conclusion. Some of the nicest professors will actually note, either before the exam or within the exam, how many points each question is worth and how they recommend that students divide their time. It doesn’t hurt to simply ask your professor how they grade exams during class or their office hours. If in doubt, it will likely pay off to give the most attention to your application section.

What are some common mistakes that students make in exams?

The biggest mistake that students can make is assuming that they do not need to prepare for open book exams or neglecting to ask their professors questions. However, even prepared students can make mistakes. One mistake that new law students commonly make is misreading the “call of the question.” The “call of the question” refers to the specific question that the exam is asking the student to answer. While this may seem obvious, law school exam questions, especially hypotheticals, can be extremely long and complicated. Some exam questions even include completely irrelevant information. If a student is not careful, they may end up answering a question not even posed by the exam. Many students find it helpful to highlight or underline the call of the question (there may be more than one!) as they read and to double-check that they have answered it by the time that they are finished drafting.

Another mistake that some law students make is not showing their work. Much like math teachers, many professors will award partial credit when students show their work, even if they do not arrive at the correct conclusion or run out of time answering. One way that a student can show their work is to mark up the question sheet. For example, a student may circle or underline each issue that they spot in a question and outline their answer on the question sheet or within the answer box. If the student then runs out of time or forgets to include something in their answer, a professor may award partial credit. It may be a good idea to mark up each exam question and outline all of your answers before going back to write them out in full.

Is there a difference between law school and undergraduate essay questions?

Undergraduate essay questions are often answered with a recitation of information learned throughout a course, with little of a student’s personal additions. However, law school essay questions are best answered not by regurgitating rules and cases, but by taking the rules that may be extracted from the materials studied in class and continuing your analysis by using the same strand of logic. While it is important to demonstrate to your professor that you can identify the relevant issues and rules, it may be more important to show that you can think like a lawyer by fully analyzing a legal situation.

Last reviewed October 2023

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Create Essay Answer Shells/Outlines For Your Exams

Hi guys, 2L here, will be entering my 3L starting in January of 2021 (took a full course load this summer because of COVID).

Currently studying for finals right now, but wanted to make this quick post to help all the struggling 1Ls (or anyone else just trying to make it through finals). I wanted to share a tip I've used throughout law school while studying and preparing for tests that has allowed me to excel on my prior midterms and finals (I'm actually working on them right now!).

For every exam I've had that has an essay portion, in addition to creating my standard outline, I've always created an "Essay Outline" that is essentially a pre-written answer to the questions I'm anticipating being asked on the final. Whether an issue spotter or a straight up call of the question, creating essay shells not only helps you study and prepare, but it also saves you an incredible amount of time actually writing the exam. If you think about it, there are only so many questions you could be asked, and so many multi-step/factor things you've learned in each class, that you could essentially guess what you will need to write about on the final. Of course, you still need to be open to spontaneity on the exam and willing to tweak your answers to meet the needs of the fact pattern, but creating essay shells is incredibly helpful because you're doing all the work prior to the exam.

For example, in Civ Pro, I created pre-written essay shells for every topic we covered: PJx (general & specific), SMJx, etc. Same for Constitutional Law: all justiciability doctrines, commerce power, dormant commerce clause, 10th Amendment, 14th Amendment, etc. Same for all other classes that had an essay.

I would start creating shells early in the semester. After each major topic was covered, I'd create the essay shell and meet with my teacher to confirm my understanding of the material and to make sure I was properly analyzing it in essay form. Some teachers were more than happy to help me and go over my shells, while others just straight up refused.

Say you covered 20 major topics in your class, all of which you know could be tested on in essay form. That means you create 20 essay outlines for each topic, even though you'll only be tested on 5. You would create pre-written answers for each of the 20 topics. These shells of course contain all your rule statements, exceptions to the rule, steps you need to follow, where the analysis goes from one step to the next, and leaves areas for you to fill in the blank with the facts from the fact pattern. The shell is pre-written and organized in such a way that it is a step-by-step version of how your teacher taught you to analyze the topic. This is vitally important, especially when you have confusing topics with multiple steps and multiple avenues of analysis. For example, if you conclude the answer to Step 2 is "yes", the remainder of your analysis goes one way, but if you conclude "No", the analysis would have gone another way. Having a pre-written essay outline for all major topics you could be tested on is so incredibly helpful because it allows you to already have organized your thoughts and the analysis prior to the exam.

And if you have an open note test??? Well ... all you need to do is copy your essay outlines! Even if its closed book, having already created pre-written essay shells will allow you to finish those race horse exams because you've already essentially pre-written your responses and know how to analyze each question.

Of course, this doesn't work for EVERY single class, but I guarantee you there are classes this tactic will be extremely helpful in. If you haven't been doing this all semester, maybe make shells for the areas of one class you know you're struggling in, rather than creating a shell for every topic in that class. At the very least, make sure to start doing this next semester.

Oh yea ... once you finish all your essay outlines, TAKE PRACTICE TESTS!!! Take them over and over and over again. Use your shells, spot the issues, and write the essay. I guarantee you that when the actual exam comes, you'll have sufficiently practiced and studied enough that the final will be just another practice exam.

Sorry for the lengthy post. Hopefully I explained this "Essay Answer Outline/Shell" tip clearly enough. I can further elaborate in the comments and clarify anything if anyone has questions. Happy studying!

TLDR: create pre-written essay answer outlines/shells for questions you anticipate will be on the final

Bar Exam Toolbox Podcast Episode 267: Quick Tips -- Using Past Bar Essay Questions for Practice

In this episode, we See more + Welcome back to the Bar Exam Toolbox podcast! In this week's episode, we're talking about using past bar exam essay questions as part of your study process. In particular, we talk about when to start practicing, how to practice, how much of your study time to spend practicing, and how to self-evaluate your answers.

In this episode, we discuss:

>When to start practicing essay questions and how to practice effectively

>Allocating study time for essay practice

>Self-evaluating your answers

>Resources for practice questions and feedback

>Private Bar Exam Tutoring (https://barexamtoolbox.com/private-bar-exam-tutoring/)

>Brainy Bar Bank – UBE (MEE + MPT) (https://barexamtoolbox.com/brainy-bar-bank-ube-mee-mpt/)

>Brainy Bar Bank – California Bar Exam (https://barexamtoolbox.com/brainy-bar-bank-california-bar-exam/)

>NCBE: National Conference of Bar Examiners (https://www.ncbex.org/)

>The State Bar of California (https://www.calbar.ca.gov/)

>Podcast Episode 51: Making the Most of Your Bar Exam Practice (https://barexamtoolbox.com/podcast-episode-51-making-the-most-of-your-bar-exam-practice/)

>Copying Model Answers Isn't "Practice" (https://barexamtoolbox.com/copying-model-answers-isnt-practice/)

>Benefits of Practice Questions (https://barexamtoolbox.com/benefits-of-practice-questions/)

Download the Transcript (https://barexamtoolbox.com/episode-267-quick-tips-using-past-bar-essay-questions-for-practice/)

If you enjoy the podcast, we'd love a nice review and/or rating on  Apple Podcasts (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bar-exam-toolbox-podcast-pass-bar-exam-less-stress/id1370651486) or your favorite listening app. And feel free to reach out to us directly. You can always reach us via the contact form on the Bar Exam Toolbox website (https://barexamtoolbox.com/contact-us/). Finally, if you don't want to miss anything, you can sign up for podcast updates (https://barexamtoolbox.com/get-bar-exam-toolbox-podcast-updates/)!

Thanks for listening!

Latest Posts

• Bar Exam Toolbox Podcast Episode 267: Quick Tips -- Using Past Bar Essay Questions for Practice   Audio 
• Law School Toolbox Podcast Episode 456: Top 10 Tips for Getting Ready for Your 3L Year   Audio 
• Bar Exam Toolbox Podcast Episode 266: Quick Tips -- Pre-Writing Outlining for Bar Essays   Audio 
• Law School Toolbox Podcast Episode 455: Top 10 Tips for Getting Ready for Your 2L Year   Audio 
• Bar Exam Toolbox Podcast Episode 265: Quick Tips -- What If You Run Out of Time While Writing a Bar Essay Answer?   Audio 

See more »

Other MultiMedia by Law School Toolbox

Law School Toolbox Podcast Episode 456: Top 10 Tips for Getting Ready for Your 3L Year

Bar Exam Toolbox Podcast Episode 266: Quick Tips -- Pre-Writing Outlining for Bar Essays

Law School Toolbox Podcast Episode 455: Top 10 Tips for Getting Ready for Your 2L Year

Bar Exam Toolbox Podcast Episode 265: Quick Tips -- What If You Run Out of Time While Writing a Bar Essay Answer?

Law School Toolbox Podcast Episode 454: Top 10 Tips for Getting Ready for Your 1L Year

Bar Exam Toolbox Podcast Episode 264: Listen and Learn -- Concurrent Estates (Property)

Law School Toolbox Podcast Episode 453: Law School Applications (w/Hamada Zahawi of Write Track Admissions)

Law School Toolbox Podcast Episode 452: Standardized Testing Equity (w/David Klieger from Aspen Publishing)

Bar Exam Toolbox Podcast Episode 263: Navigating Accommodations and Self-Advocacy in the Legal Field (w/AJ Link)

Law School Toolbox Podcast Episode 451: From Application to Acceptance: The Law School Admissions Timeline (w/Anna Ivey)

Law School Toolbox Podcast Episode 450: Pre-OCI Hiring (w/Sadie Jones)

Bar Exam Toolbox Podcast Episode 262: Listen and Learn -- Motions for Judgment as a Matter of Law and Motions for New Trial (Civ Pro)

Law School Toolbox Podcast Episode 449: Implications of AI for the Legal Profession (w/Kevin Surace)

Bar Exam Toolbox Podcast Episode 261: Quick Tips -- Bar Exam Accommodations Basics

Law School Toolbox Podcast Episode 448: 10 Things to Consider When Applying to Law School (w/Steve Schwartz)

Bar Exam Toolbox Podcast Episode 260: Listen and Learn -- Elements of a Crime

Law School Toolbox Podcast Episode 447: Managing the Workload in a Summer Law Job (w/Sadie Jones)

Bar Exam Toolbox Podcast Episode 259: How to Minimize Borrowing for the Bar Exam (w/Jesse Mecham from YNAB)

Law School Toolbox Podcast Episode 446: Quick Tips -- Doing the Reading for Your Law School Classes

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Final high-school exams start for over 500,000 pupils

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ROME , 19 June 2024, 10:21

ANSA English Desk

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The 'maturità' final high-school exams got under way for around 526,000 Italian students on Wednesday with the Italian test.     The students have to write an essay choosing from one of seven questions.     This year's questions included one inviting a reflection on Nobel-winning Italian scientist Rita Levi Montalcini's In Praise of Imperfection and questions on works by Luigi Pirandello and Giuseppe Ungaretti.     Another question asks the pupils to consider the use of the atomic bomb in relation to historian Giuseppe Galasso's 'History of Europe'.    

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Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025

The former president and his backers aim to strengthen the power of the White House and limit the independence of federal agencies.

Donald J. Trump intends to bring independent regulatory agencies under direct presidential control. Credit... Doug Mills/The New York Times

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By Jonathan Swan ,  Charlie Savage and Maggie Haberman

• Published July 17, 2023 Updated July 18, 2023

Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.

Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.

Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.

He wants to revive the practice of “impounding” funds, refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like — a tactic that lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.

He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.”

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