Finally, I just finished my spring semester exams yesterday (the last of 6, yes SIX, final exams). I don’t write about the law and law school much at all, although my original purpose for this blog was to capture such experiences. So this post is meant to restore some meaning back into this blog, if that makes any sense…
Anyway, it looks like people are really coming to this blog to get info on Linux and Rails tips for common problems that I’ve faced and written about. Most of the search terms look like that. So, in the same spirit, here are some tips for studying for law school exams/finals:
- Get as many past exams (along with the model answers) from the instructor of your class. Usually your law school will have these in the library or have them as PDFs for you to download online. Get them, and if your instructor does not have any past exams (e.g., for those newbie professors or adjuncts), then get past exams from other instructors who’ve taught the same class, but preferably the old veteran professors (the old people). Once you have them, you should at least read ONE of the answers straight out. You might read more than one answer (two or three seems like a good number for me). If you want to actually spend 3 hours on an essay, be my guest — that’s OK, too. But what I’m trying to stress here is that, once you read the model answers, you should try to extract the short, simple formulations of the rule and write them down. Chances are, you will find a treasure trove of short, quick, cute sentences that are easy to remember, instead of long ISSUE-FACT-HOLDING tripartite chains of sentences that might be found in your case briefs/outlines (depending on how detailed you are). The great beauty of this technique of extracting rules from model answers, is: (A) you get rules that are neither too simplistic nor too detailed, and just enough to get you the full points, and (B) you gain the insight of the instructor — how much ambiguity or un-detailedness the instructor is going to allow. And another minor bonus is, if you haven’t asked the instructor about it before the exams, you gain a sense of whether the instructor likes to see section numbers of statutes or case names (some instructors don’t like it when you don’t mention these explicitly, so you’ll know what their expectations are when you read the model answers). No one ever really spoke about these aspects of studying past exams — people (and even instructors themselves!) kept telling me to do the exams in “testing conditions,” and then to just look at the model answers for comparison. I think it’s some sort of conspiracy. Anyway, my tip to you as a somewhat experienced 3L-to-be is: extract the rule from these model answers, and use them in your own answers in the exam.
- Get sleep. Sleep is necessary for your brain to repair neural connections (and strengthen other ones), in preparation for the waking hours to come. Don’t squeeze in an extra hour or two to get that one last hypo into your head. You remember things better with clarity if you get enough sleep prior to an exam — and especially for those essay exams, it’s clarity and preciseness that counts, not volume of material that you’ve mastered. So get some sleep!
- When you’re two days away from any given final exam, a good way to measure how much you know something is to (in addition to tackling bite-sized sample hypos from supplements) get a blank piece of paper, and your outline. Randomly select any single “topic” of your outline to yourself (just un-staple the outline and shuffle the pages around blindly if you have to), and then once you select a topic, put your outline away and write down all the key concepts of that topic onto the blank sheet of paper. I use a plain white piece of printer paper for this, because that’s the same kind of paper used in my law school for blank sheets for notes. This exercise is helpful because it forces you to not just think of the rules or even say them from memory, but makes you write them down in an unfamiliar setting (on a completely empty piece of paper). It’s one thing to look at your outline filled with detailed notes about other topics in your peripheral vision, and another thing to work with a blank sheet of paper without any such unconscious reference points. I’m a visual learner, so this helps me get to know the rules cold, rather quickly.
- Get a study partner. The exercise you should engage in is taking turns pretending to be the professor of the course. Select a topic (preferably one that is your strong suit), and begin to tell the other person everything that you know about that topic. History, policy, modern developments and variations — everything! Do it comprehensively, like a lecture. Give your partner examples to stress distinctions. Meanwhile, your partner should be busily asking you questions to try to throw you off. Answer all questions. If you cannot answer them, forward them to your professor. This should take you about 30 minutes or so (you don’t want to make them too long because you’ll lose track). When you’re done, switch places, and have your partner give a lecture on some other topic. Repeat as necessary — I recommend doing this as much as possible (biweekly is great, weekly is even better), because it forces you to understand something in its bare essentials. Trust me, if professors stopped writing about their subject matter or stopped giving lectures, they’d forget things, too. If you really can’t find a study partner, then do it yourself to an imaginary audience. Or force your roommate to sit down for 30 minutes.
- Finally, study in as different places as possible. If you’re just re-memorizing some portion of your outline (at any time during the semester), try to do it in the gym when you’re on that walking machine, or at your local coffee shop, or anywhere else. Mix up the time of day as well. If you can’t find decent places to do this (although I highly doubt it), then what you can do instead is to study in different positions. For example, you could study on your desk, then standing up on some podium, then lying down on the floor, then upside-down holding up your outline to the ceiling, etc. The point of this exercise is to detach any muscle-memory/environment-memory that may be associated with your knowledge of the law. It’s going to force your brain to use law-only neurons to strengthen existing connections, not those neurons that are about “the library” or “the desk.” As an added side effect, you’ll feel little to no stress facing the dreaded “exam atmosphere” of the final exam room, since by now, environments should have little effect on your ability to recall the law.
I hope you find these tips useful. As with any piece of advice, only use those suggestions that help you, since chances are, you’re different than me, and not all five tips will work for you to your advantage.
Generally, in those classes where I did poorly in the midterm, I got poor grades. I suppose everyone studied harder than me. What does this mean? I have to study more to raise my GPA. I might even consider studying with other people in study groups, but I am not sure. The upcoming fall semester will prove to be even more important.