7 Tips to Help Law Students Avoid Essay Exam Pitfalls…

by Irene Basdakis, Esq.

BarMadeEasy.com

1. Although interesting, reading and briefing cases is not the best use of your time in law school. (It’s also extremely time consuming).

2. If preparing study outlines for your law classes, try not to perfect them. If you cannot apply the law in your outlines to exams, your “perfect outlines” will become useless. An alternative would be to purchase commercially prepared outlines that will help you to identify more issues easily on an exam, provide you with mnemonics for law retention, examination organization and rules of law.

3. Obtain your professor’s previously tested law examinations directly from your professors, from the reserve desk at your library or online if the student section of your school’s website. Know what and how your professor tests prior to taking any examinations.

4. Ask your professor if he/she is willing to accept practice examinations from you. What better way to improve your test taking skills by receiving feedback directly from your professor. You can also write assigned essays and submit them on line for an actual law professor’s critique. Constructive feedback will be made in red on your exam answer and emailed back to you. Comments may include whether you identified enough issues and how to see more issues from the facts, evaluation how you wrote your analysis and other suggestions to help you improve. It is your commitment to writing essay exams and learning from your professor’s and/or on line critiques that will help to develop into a very good test taker .

5. You should review at least ten (10) essays per subject prior to your finals. Exposure to these exams will increase your issue spotting abilities and your test taking skills. Review previously tested California Bar and Baby Bar Exams (First Year Law Student’s Examination questions and answers). The exams are listed by the date they were administered. Scroll down and click on a date under the Essay Question and Selected Answers section. There you will find all the essays that were tested on that particular exam along with selected answers. Please note the Bar’s published answers are not professionally written but were written by students during the actual examination itself. http://www.barmadeeasy.com/2011/04/19/ca-bar-publishes-bar-candidate-answers-only-not-model-answers. These previously tested costs are great to practice your issue spotting technique.

6. Obtain and review professionally written model answers to learn how to write and structure your exam answers. Copying is the best compliment so study these answers and incorporate their approach into your answers.

7. Remember, it is not how much law you know but the application of the law to fact patterns that will ensure your success. So, Practice! Practice! Practice!

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