Editor’s Note: “Getting to Maybe: How to Excel on Law School Exams” by Richard Michael Fischl, professor at University of Connecticut School of Law, and Jeremy R. Paul, professor at Northeastern University School of Law, has been the best-selling book on law exams since its original publication in 1999. Law students recommend it to each other, law schools include it on summer reading lists and law professors teach it in class.
Over the years, Fischl and Paul have adjusted their approach to encompass changes in technology, study aids and exam structure. This has generated new ideas for the book, which Carolina Academic Press released in July in an updated and expanded second edition.
The second edition includes a new chapter on multiple choice exams, which the authors felt the need to address as an increasingly common form of law school testing. There is also a new exercise, developed in the authors’ workshop, that presents a classic exam question and walks readers though the answers that get progressively better.
The following excerpt from the book includes tips on preparing for the exam.
The tips we offer here are designed as a supplement to good old-fashioned studying, not as a substitute for it. You can’t expect to do well if you don’t attend class, read the assigned material, and struggle to understand it — case closed. Often, however, students who spend what should be adequate time preparing for exams don’t study as efficiently as they might. And once you’ve read all the cases and reviewed your class notes until you just can’t look at them anymore, what should you do then?
Try these tips as a way of studying smart while you are studying hard — keeping in mind of course that these are “tips” and not iron-clad rules.
Tip #1. Exam preparation takes all semester
Here’s the part where we tell you to prepare diligently for class, to attend class regularly, and to take good notes. We understand how tempting it is to ignore such advice; of course a couple of law professors are going to tell you that you need to go to every class well prepared and to write down every word we say! But consider the possibility, however remote it might seem, that the reason we want you to do these things is not to feed faculty egos, but because experience has taught us that this is your best route to success in your legal studies. [The book explains] why:
• Regular class attendance is crucial to exam performance.
• The better your preparation, the more you’ll get out of class.
• Attendance and preparation may be even more important at the end of the semester than at the beginning
Tip #2. Focus your exam study on your class notes
The reading period is nearly over, and you’re spending another late night in the library. On one side of the desk is a beautifully printed, carefully organized commercial outline summarizing the main points of the topic you are studying. On the other side rests the virtually indecipherable chicken scratch that you call class notes. Although it’s tempting to focus your flagging energy on the easy-to-read work of the so-called experts, don’t do it. For at least two very important reasons, your class notes are your best bet. [As the book explains:]
• Most professors test what they teach.
• Your class notes can help you predict questions likely to appear on the exam.
Tip #3. Prepare your own outline of the course
For virtually every law school course, there’s a 1,000-plus-page casebook; a statutory and/or new-case supplement; and an extraordinary number of hornbooks and other commercial study aids. So you might wonder why we are telling you to duplicate all this professional effort by preparing your own outline for each course. [The book explains] why:
• Law exams test rule application, not memorization.
• Commercial study aids are poor substitutes.
• Outlines prepared by other students are only marginally better.
Tip #4. Pay special attention to newly added course material
Many of your professors will be teaching a course they have offered a few or even many times in the past. They will see it as part of their responsibility to freshen the course at least a little each year, and the most common way they do so is by adding new material — most often cases, statutes, or articles of recent vintage. You can identify the new material by consulting the previous year’s syllabus (if you can’t get it from a fellow student, you might try the academic dean or the library’s course reserve); by checking dates on this year’s assigned readings; or by asking the professor directly what material is new, perhaps explaining that you are reviewing old exams and want to know what they did and didn’t cover. But however you track it down, we encourage you to give new material prime place of study during your review, because it’s highly likely to find its way onto your exam. Here’s why.
Exam construction is a creative process. Your professors are looking for fact patterns that resemble key cases in some respects and differ in others. And they also strive to write questions that don’t simply mimic those on past exams, so the issues you’ll encounter — and the settings that present them — are fresh and inventive. You need not sympathize with your professors to recognize that this can be a challenging endeavor. With material professors are teaching for the first time, however, there’s no risk that this year’s exam will fall into the rut of previous patterns. The new material may thus have enormous appeal to faculty as a source of exam questions.
And that’s not all. Most professors truly enjoy the process of thinking through the implications of material they are covering for the first time. Like the first bite of an ice cream cone, a new case or statute is likely to stand out as a course highlight. Writing an exam question covering such new material — and seeing what students do with it — provides an invaluable vehicle for further exploring recent legal developments. Many professors will readily seize this opportunity, and so you can seize yours by devoting extra study time to ensuring you have a handle on material recently added to the course.
Tip #5. Review the professor’s old exams
We believe that reviewing exams your professor has given in previous years is the most effective way to prepare for finals. Prior exams, especially recent ones, are likely to reveal the issues the professor finds significant or interesting enough to examine, and they may offer clues as to format (e.g., lengthy issue spotters vs. short-answer problems vs. policy questions) as well as content. Simply put, nothing else — not the most thorough studying, not the most popular commercial outline, not even the best book on exam-taking (this one!) — can provide you with this kind of insight into your own professor’s approach.
We understand that looking at old exams can instill panic if done too early, when the questions will almost surely seem unimaginably difficult. Accordingly, you’ll need to pick a time for this somewhere near the end of the course — though given the importance of the task, don’t wait till the last minute either. But whenever you do it, by all means don’t pass up your best opportunity to find out how your professor goes about the task of examining students! [As the book explains, it is well worth your time to adopt each of the following strategies:]
• Gather intel about your professor.
• Simulate the exam experience at least once.
• Go over old exams with your classmates as often as you can.
Tip #6. Consider what questions you would ask
It’s often said that there is no better way to learn a subject than to teach it. After teaching for most of our lives, we’re convinced that the most learning of all occurs when we sit down to write the exam. Exam-writing forces you to look at the course as a whole; to identify the interesting issues; and to imagine where the law is headed.
This is exactly the kind of thinking that can prepare you to take an exam as well. Here are some helpful hints for thinking about your courses from the “top down,” almost the way a CEO would think about her company. We suggest you try them after you’ve spent a good deal of time mastering the course material from the “bottom up”!
Pull the forest out of the trees
There is no substitute for knowing the material covered in your courses. But don’t let a blizzard of detailed knowledge substitute for some quiet reflection. As the exam approaches, try to identify a small number of major issues that the professor has covered — three to six would capture the typical law school class. Have dinner with a friend unfamiliar with law and, focusing on those issues, explain the course in broad strokes — or try to before your friend falls asleep! (Do not — we repeat, do not — try to do this on a first date or there won’t be a second one.)
Look for important cases pointing in opposite directions
Such hybrid fact patterns form the core of many exam questions. If you invent enough of them, you might even be able to approximate the questions on your final. But even if you don’t get that lucky, you’ll be developing one of the key skills you’ll need for top performance, because you’ll know exactly what kind of problems to look for on the exam.
Identify underlying conflicts
Before the final, try to identify the key conflicts from your course and the situations you’ve studied where it’s particularly difficult to reconcile those conflicts. It’s a safe bet that your professor will be doing the same thing as she drafts your exam.
Look for trends and limits
Law professors frequently identify “trends” in the topics they cover, priding themselves in their forecasts of issues that are likely to arise in the future and the direction the law may take. Don’t be surprised if they ask you to do the same thing on your exams.
Consult your casebook as a source of questions
During the press of class preparation, it’s sometimes difficult to take time to focus on the problems in the casebook that typically appear at the end of a chapter or a particular block of materials. These problems are designed to make you reflect upon complex topics, but you may feel pressed to move on with the assigned reading. As you begin your exam preparation, however, it’s time to go back and look at these problems again, for many professors use them as inspiration for exam questions. And even if your professor doesn’t build a question based on any of the problems you study, this exercise is nonetheless terrific practice for the kinds of problems you are likely to encounter on the exam.
What interests you?
Last but not least, take a few moments to consider what you find most interesting about the course. What problems would you want students to grapple with if you were writing the exam? If you’ll forgive us for indulging a professional conceit, much of what you know about the subject you’ve learned from the professor, so it wouldn’t be a coincidence if the two of you have ended up on a similar wavelength!
