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First Year Survival Manual

by Professor Richard J. Conviser, Chicago Kent College of Law Twentieth Ed. - 1996

Unnerving, isn't it? The excitement of starting law school somehow evaporates when you walk out of the bookstore with half a ton of study materials! Casebooks, hornbooks, restatements, and other strange texts thousands of pages, crammed with unfamiliar language and terminology. Then there is the talk of summaries, outlines, and "canned briefs." And perhaps you've even been offered dog-eared notes from some second-year student. How are you supposed to cope with so much reading material? Is all of this material the law? If so, how can you possibly digest it? To heighten your uneasiness, there's a gnawing uncertainty about class: What's this "Socratic method" all about? What's the purpose of the cat-and-mouse game? What are you supposed to do with all those hypos, and with the mountains of class notes you're taking? How will you get a handle on all this material when it comes time for finals? The purpose of this booklet is to answer some of these questions for you. First of all, you should understand that studying law is radically different from your undergraduate studies. Law school doesn't follow the usual undergraduate pattern of "read, memorize, and regurgitate." You won't get far simply by having a facile memory and a quick pen. Why? Because law is not a static subject that you can master by memorizing a set of rules. Indeed, there are few absolute rules that apply in all cases. (A hypo or two in class will open your eyes on this point ! ) Rather, "rules" of law develop mostly on a case-by-case basis and are subject to continued growth and change. Courts constantly review and evaluate earlier decisions in light of present realities; and, given the right circumstances, they may overrule or depart from those decisions.

Also, the real world being what it is, new and different issues constantly arise which aren't covered at all by earlier decisions. So, learning what's been decided in the past is only the first step. You must also develop the ability to reason from past decisions to solve present problems. What does that mean? For openers, it means that instead of simply memorizing the holding or "rule" of a case, you must be able to identify the particular factors that led the court to decide the case the way it did, and then determine whether those same factors are present in the case you're now considering. If different factors are present, you must decide whether they justify a different result. It also means that you must consider any changes in the economic or social conditions that surrounded the earlier decision, any conflicting rules or theories from other cases, and, most importantly, the practical impact of your conclusions in the particular matter at hand. In short, you must learn to analyze a problem rather than merely memorize rules. This is what "learning to think like a lawyer" is all about. As you may surmise, this process doesn't lend itself to any magical short-cuts allowing you to pass through law school without pain or strain. Nevertheless, there are techniques that will economize your time and help you get the most out of your study efforts. This booklet is designed to acquaint you with these techniques. It will also introduce you to GILBERT LAW SUMMARIES, relied upon by tens of thousands of students as an integral part of their law studies in addition, of course, to the immensely popular BAR/BRI First, Second and Third Year Programs.

Your law professors have probably warned you to spend at least two hours preparing for each hour of class. They're right. At least at the beginning of your studies, you'll probably find this is a conservative estimate of the time it takes to read and brief the assigned cases. Here are some suggestions to help you get the most from the time and effort spent preparing for class: (1) Use a "road map" for your reading assignments: Before setting out, it always helps to know where you're going. Therefore, before you start reading the assigned cases, look at the

chapter headings and the table of contents in the casebook. These will tell you the topic to which the assigned cases ostensibly relate, and where this topic fits in the overall course. Next, learn a little about the topic before you start reading the assigned cases. You will find it helpful at this point to look at the GILBERT LAW SUMMARY on the subject. Find the topic in the summary of contents, and skim through the materials. This will give you a quick overview of the broad principles and problems you are about to encounter and enable you to read the assigned cases much more purposefully. (2) Read - really read - the assigned cases: As you're already aware, your nose is going to be buried in the books for the next several years. So, your initial task is to learn to read cases. "Read?" you say, "I can read. I certainly wouldn't have gotten this far if I couldn't." All well and good. But you must now learn to read as a lawyer. As you'll soon discover, speed-reading ability is not going to help. You must now read carefully and critically; every paragraph, every sentence, every word may have some special relevance for you to decipher. To illustrate, read the following excerpt from one of Mark Twain's stories: It was a crisp morning in early October. The lilacs and the laburnums lit with the glory fires of autumn. Hungburning and flashing in the upper air, a fairy bridge provided by kind Nature for the wingless wild things that have their homes in the treetops and would visit together; the larch and the pomegranate flung their purple and yellow flames in brilliant broad splashes along the slanting sweep of the woodland; the sensuous fragrance of innumerable deciduous flowers rose upon the swooning atmosphere; far in the empty sky a solitary esophagus slipt upon motionless wing; everywhere brooded stillness, serenity and the peace of God. Twain received many letters about this passage, the gist of which was, "What in hell is an esophagus?" In response, he published a letter indicating that the entire paragraph was a spoof. He notes: Alas, if I had but left that one treacherous word out, I should have scored: scored everywhere; and the paragraph would have slidden through every reader's sodden sensibilities like oil, and left not a suspicion behind . . . Lilacs of course bloom in the spring. In the fall, the leaves simply dry up and drop off. They are hardly lit with the glory fires of autumn. A laburnum is a poisonous Eurasian bush. And what wingless things have you ever known that make their homes in the treetops? The whole passage was sheer nonsense! But it serves to make the point: You cannot read legal cases this way. Your critical faculties must be constantly in operation, analyzing and questioning everything you read. It isn't so much a matter of weeding out conscious trickery, as in the Twain example, as it is ensuring that you really understand what you're reading.

Don't read law cases when you're feeling tired. Don't attempt to skim or scan the pages. Don't let your eyes or your grey matter get lazy. Concentrate on every phrase until you are sure that you understand it - really understand it! (3) Keep a good law dictionary at hand: Part of your initiation into the legal profession is learning its special language. Law is a technical language with technical meanings, and you must absorb these meanings as soon as possible. So, when you're reading cases, always keep a good law dictionary at hand. When a word is used which you don't understand - or when a word is used in some unusual sense - stop immediately and look it up. The meaning of one word or phrase may very well alter or affect the whole case, and you'll be spinning your wheels mentally until you focus on the correct meaning. For example, consider the following passage: From a review of the affidavits filed by the moving party, it is apparent that the property has been restored so that the application for injunctive relief presents a question that has become moot. Said application is therefore dismissed. What does the word "moot" mean? Unless you know, you surely won't understand what happened. (As used here, it means that the question has become purely academic - i.e., no real controversy exists on this point between the parties.) For day-to-day use, some of the paperback law dictionaries are as good as the hefty, bound volumes. The better paperbacks usually have shorter and simpler definitions. They may not have all the Latin phrases and terminology contained in the bigger dictionaries, but you won't need those unless you have a casebook containing a lot of early English cases (or a particularly sadistic law professor). One good way of making sure you remember the meanings of legal terms is to use them in your case briefs. Once having done so, you'll tend to recall the context in which you used the word, and its meaning will sink in. (4) Briefing cases: Law school classes are still largely based on the "case method"; i.e., the professor leads the class through an analysis and discussion of significant cases, as opposed to a straight lecture. It's your job to come to class prepared to discuss the assigned cases, and that means learning how to read and brief those cases as efficiently as possible. That is easier said than done, of course. Long, hard hours have to be spent learning how to brief a case. But don't begrudge this effort. Briefing cases is absolutely indispensable in "learning to think like a lawyer." It gives you an organized approach to analyzing reported cases, and it forces you to distill the facts and reasoning down to manageable size. These are abilities upon which practicing lawyers rely for their livelihood, and which you must therefore develop and polish in law school. Here are some techniques and suggestions that will help you in briefing cases.

(a) Learn "law school shorthand": Use abbreviations for words commonly involved in briefing cases or taking class notes. Here is a suggested list of abbreviations:
AE ....................Assignee aff..................affirm(ed) agt ......................agent ans .....................answer AR.....................Assignor a/r .........assumption of risk b/c ................... because b/p ............burden of proof B ..................beneficiary BFP ........bona fide purchaser br/K ........breach of contract dir ex ......direct examination D ....................defendant dem ...................demurrer EE ....................employee eq ......................equity ER ....................employer ev ....................evidence F ........................facts g/r ...............general rule H ......................husband HDC .......holder in due course I ........................issue int ...................interest J .....................judgment J/D......judgment for defendant J/P .....judgment for plaintiff J/aff ........judgment affirmed J/rev ........judgment reversed j/t ...............joint tenant K .....................contract LL ....................landlord maj ............. majority view min ..............minority view n/a .............not applicable neg .................negligence OE .....................offeree OR......................offeror P ....................plaintiff p ......................partner PE ....................promisee PR ....................promisor p/f ................prima facie ............................complaint c/a ....................cause of action c/c .......................counterclaim c/d .....................corpus delicti c/l .........................common law c/p ............... condition precedent c/s .............. condition subsequent CP ................. community property Con ................constitutional(ity) corp .......................corporation ct .............................. court pp ...................personal property p'ship .............. ..... partnership R ....................rule (or holding) RAP ......... Rule Against Perpetuities rev ........................ reverse(d) RIL.................. res ipsa loquitur rp .......................real property RS .........................Restatement ............................. section S ............................. statute SC .......................Supreme Court S/F ..................Statute of Frauds S/L .............statute of limitations S/U ....................statute of uses T............................... tenant TC ........................ trial court t/c .................. tenant in common TE ............................ trustee TP ..................... .. third party TPB ............third party beneficiary UCC ............Uniform Commercial Code v .............................. versus W ................................ wife w/ ............................... with w/a ................weight of authority w/i ............................ within w/o ............................without x/c ........................cross-claim x .....................cross complaint x ex ................ cross examination

(b) Use a briefing system: Use a system that will force you to dissect the cases sufficiently for analytic purposes. Often, "misreading" a case is entirely the result of failing to break it into its essential elements. Here is a format that is useful for this purpose. (We'll use some abbreviations from the previous page.) F (facts): Briefly state the essential facts leading to the con controversy. For example:

D refuses to perform promise to paint P's house, claiming mistake in offer as result of D's underestimating cost of materials. P sues for damages. TC (trial court): State the judgment or decision in the trial court: J/P I (issue): State the issue or issues raised on appeal: Does OR's mistake in estimating cost of performance, unknown to OE, prevent formation of K or excuse performance of K? R (rule): State the disposition on appeal and the rule of the case: J/aff. OR's mistake was unilateral only and there is binding K on terms proposed to OE. Rationale: This is the most important part of your case brief. You must get the gist of the court's reasoning - i.e., why it arrived at its holding: Objective theory of Ks: To protect reliance on promises, OR is held to perform that which reasonable person would have under stood he promised. Fact that OR was mistaken as to some collateral matter (here, price of materials) does not alter his obligation since OE neither knew or had reason to know of OR's mistake. As further illustration, a judicial opinion and case brief of that opinion are included in the Appendix to this booklet. (c) Keep your "briefs" brief: Notwithstanding all the effort that goes into a case brief, it is not something to be retained for posterity. Its sole purpose is to help you recall the case in sufficient detail to discuss it in class and to integrate it into your class notes. Once class is over and your notes are in shape, it's unlikely that you will be reviewing your case briefs. Indeed, when exam preparation begins, you'll be relying on entirely different materials (more on this later). Keep this in mind as you do your briefing. Don't attempt a detailed restatement of the entire case. Avoid copying citations. (You can always look these up in the casebook if you need to.) Simply try to capture the gist of the facts and the court's reasoning, and put these in as few words as possible. Proficiency at briefing cases is absolutely necessary if you're serious about becoming a lawyer. Briefing forces you to summarize facts and distill reasoning and, equally important, to express legal concepts in your own words. There is just no substitute for the mental exercise of reading a case, picking it apart, and putting it back together in your own vocabulary. It is this ability that is tested on law school finals and on which you will rely for your livelihood when in practice. Case closed!

And now, a little good news: Learning how to brief cases is something that can be mastered by reasonable practice, and once you learn, it's like swimming or riding a bicycle - you're not likely to forget. So you need not commit yourself to briefing every case in every class throughout your law school career: You must simply commit yourself to fully briefing cases until you're very good at it, which for most students means throughout the first year of law school. (d) What about "book briefing"? This is probably the stage you will reach after - repeat, after - you've mastered the art of writing full case briefs. Most law students find that they can adequately prepare for class in the second and third years by "book briefing" the assigned cases. A book brief is an art unto itself. It is not simply a matter of underlining every sentence as you go through the case. Rather, you must first read through the case quickly to get a sense of what it is about, and then go back through a second time, annotating the margins with the essential points of the case. (Here's where your "law school shorthand" abbreviations will be invaluable!) Be very selective in your underlining - mark the highlights only. You may find it effective to use different colored pens to signal the various elements of your brief -for example, blue might be used for the "trial court" holding; red for the "issue" on appeal; yellow for the "rule," etc. Otherwise, the entire page may appear to be a confusing mass of lines when you are called on in class. In any event, strive to do as little underlining, and as much annotating of the margins, as possible. Putting the facts and reasoning in your own words (however terse) forces your brain to stay in gear; i.e., it makes you read critically and carefully and analyze what you're reading. And that's what briefing is all about.

Law school classes are a world apart from most undergraduate classes. There is little "recitation" as such, and relatively little lecturing by the professor. Instead, the professor usually directs a group discussion of the assigned cases. This is generally done by a combination of questioning, cajoling, encouraging, baiting, embarrassing, and reasoning with one or more members of the class. A favorite of many law professors is the Socratic method, sometimes known as "leading the helpless lamb to slaughter." In this venerable game, a student is led out onto the proverbial limb by a series of questions which ultimately forces him or her to adopt some totally indefensible position - whereupon the limb drops of its own weight, to the chagrin of the luckless victim.

What's the purpose of such a sadistic game? Basically, to stretch your analytic muscles and (once again) to teach you how to think like a lawyer. The give and take between you and the professor forces you to think on your feet, by reasoning and analogy. It also gives you a taste of the adversary process at work! Here are some suggestions on how to handle yourself in classroom discussions: (1) Focus on the reasoning of the assigned cases: If called upon to present one of the assigned cases in class, you should be prepared to state briefly the essential facts of the case, the precise issue or issues decided in the trial court and raised on appeal, and - most importantly - the reasoning by which the appellate court reached its conclusion. As discussed below, for purposes of class discussion, the court's reasoning is usually as important as the "rule" or holding of the case. (2) Learn to make your own judgments of the case: The assigned cases should not be taken by you as "gospel." As a matter of fact, some of the cases will probably express views that have been discredited and are included in the casebook for purposes of comparison and criticism. So, keep an open mind on the merits of each case and, especially, on the validity of the reasoning expressed by the court. Analyze the decision with a little healthy skepticism. Don't be awed by the fact that a respected appellate court decided the case in a particular manner. Consider the issues involved as if they had never been decided before, and weigh the arguments raised by each of the litigants. Then make your own evaluation of the result reached and the reasoning expressed in the decision. (3) Make arguments that are practical and fair: Don't make the mistake of challenging a decision with generalities or loose talk. It never suffices to disagree with a case "as a matter of principle," or because the decision "doesn't make any sense." Your professor will promptly skewer you with questions probing your "principles" or "sense." Instead, make sure that your criticism of a decision is based on specific reasons, that these reasons are founded in logic, and that they will lead to a just result. Remember that the law is inherently practical. Therefore, always test your position by whether the result reached is a practical one. For example, wherever possible, try to argue for positions that will avoid or shorten the litigation or prevent further lawsuits. Furthermore, you should generally avoid positions based on pure technicalities that would impose an unconscionable hardship on some party or lead to obviously unfair results. (4) Answering class "hypos": So far, so good, but you're not out of the woods yet. The professor is still interrogating you, but now the questions have shifted from the assigned case to hypothetical fact situations - which may or may not resemble the facts in the assigned cases. You are supposed to decide whether the "rule" or holding in the assigned case should apply here as well. The purpose of this exercise is to test just how far the rules in the assigned cases can be extended. You're expected to determine whether the various facts in the hypo posed by the

professor are sufficiently similar to the facts in the assigned case that the same result should obtain. Be cautious in answering these class "hypos" - don't jump to conclusions. Before you decide that the rule in the assigned case applies to the hypo, always ask yourself whether the reasoning expressed in the assigned case justifies that application of the rule. You'll soon discover "pitfall" cases - mental traps for the unwary - where it would actually be inconsistent with the court's reasoning to apply the rule. You'll garner lots of points with your professor by being able to spot such cases. (5) Join in the skirmishes: After your initial experiences with "student baiting" and the embarrassment of being hoist on your own petard during classroom discussion, you may wonder what the whole process achieves that wouldn't be better served by a lecture clearly explaining the relevant rules, exceptions, and qualifications. The short answer is that these professor-student classroom skirmishes, like the process of case briefing, are indispensable in acquiring the tools of a successful lawyer. Your ability to analyze and argue a case is what your clients will be paying for some day. For this reason, you should approach law school classes as a valuable learning experience and participate actively in class discussion. It is a mistake to assume that "someone else can say it better," or that you will gain as much from listening and taking notes as from engaging in the discussion. Therefore, even if you were not a "hand raiser" during your undergraduate years, force yourself to take an active part in law school class dialogues. You will find the long-term benefits well worth the initial discomfort.

The work you do immediately following class is as important as your preparation for class. It is essential that you review your case briefs and class notes as soon as possible following class preferably the same day. There are probably corrections or additions to make in your case briefs, possible gaps in your class notes, or maybe you have some lingering doubt concerning a hypo or question raised in class. Don't procrastinate. Right after class is the time to fill in those gaps and resolve those questions. Your notes will be fresh, and your mind will still be attuned to the problems involved. So, get thee to the library, do whatever additional reading or research is required, and put your notes and briefs in proper shape.

At this point you may find it helpful to turn to your GILBERT LAW SUMMARY. You can check your class notes for completeness against the relevant portion of the GILBERT. The summary will show you how the various topics that you are studying relate to each other. It will also help you fill in the gaps and give you citations to other sources if needed. Another good idea is to take a look at the review questions and answers at the back of your GILBERT which cover the topic you are studying. These are short True/False, Yes/No questions which test your understanding of the rules and rationale involved. Going over these questions right after class is an excellent way of hammering home the materials, and clearing up areas as to which you may be vague or uncertain. Explanatory answers are provided which are keyed to the appropriate section of the summary.

When you come to the end of a chapter or section of your casebook, it's time to go back and summarize your notes and briefs for that part of the course. Otherwise, if you're like most law students, your notes and briefs will be a mountainous tangle of words by the time of your finals. Systematic summarizing of these materials will vastly enhance their value to you. Here's how to do it: First, focus on organization of your materials. Sketch an outline of the chapter or section showing where each topic and subtopic fits. This will enable you to include all materials pertaining to a particular topic at the proper place. Also, later on, as you study and review your summary, the more logical the sequence the quicker the material will sink in. (Your GILBERT will be of substantial assistance here, since it contains an analytical organization of the entire subject, and it is complete enough to set out each of the topics and subtopics you will need to cover.) Next, with this overall organization in mind, create a "mini-text" on each topic by synthesizing the legal principles from your class notes and case briefs pertaining to that topic. Your job is to extract the "kernels of truth" from each of the cases and problems discussed in class and work them into a logical sequence within each topic. It is generally best to start your summary of each topic by formulating as broad and general a rule as possible. Follow this with a concise statement of the reasoning or rationale supporting the rule. Then show any limitations or exceptions to the rule. You can follow this by referring to leading cases as illustrations or examples of how the rule and exceptions apply.

We heartily recommend this process of summarizing your notes. Creating your own summary from scratch is the surest way of mastering the subject matter. Expressing the relevant legal principles in your own words assures your comprehension of them and gives you a perspective on how the various principles interrelate. (Your GILBERT will be of substantial help to you in writing your own summary, as it contains all of the essentials in a logical outline format. You can cross-check each section of your own summary against the GILBERT for organization and completeness.) We also recognize that, due to time pressures and other factors, many students will find it impossible to prepare their own summaries from scratch in every subject. Where this is the case, you can effectively create "your own" law summary by annotating and expanding your GILBERT. After each class, simply plug in whatever additional material you deem significant from your class notes and case briefs. By following this procedure, you'll have everything you need when it comes time to study for law school finals.

Whatever your personal study habits, there are several important practices to follow in preparing for law school exams. (1) Use your own materials: Your own words and phrasing will always be far more meaningful to you than those of any other person. Therefore, don't make the mistake of slighting your own summary at exam time in favor of "cram" materials prepared by someone else. Stick to the material you have been developing during the course. This is the time to refine your own material, not to abandon it. (2) Study reasoning rather than case names: Except for rare "landmark" cases (e.g., Palsgraf in the field of negligence), it's not necessary to memorize the names or holdings of particular cases for law exams. Instead, focus on the underlying policies and reasoning in the cases you have been studying throughout the course. Your instructor is more interested in your ability to analyze and resolve legal problems than in your ability to memorize case names and holdings. Therefore, make certain that you understand the policy factors and rationale that the courts have expressed - particularly in the difficult or unsettled areas of the course, because these are the areas most likely to be tested on your exams. (3) Prepare study outlines: There's an old saw about the law student who prepared progressively shorter outlines of the course until he had it boiled down to a single word, at which

point he unfortunately forgot the word! It isn't necessary (or advisable) to go this far, of course. But it is essential that you prepare your own outline in preparation for your exams . You've got to get the "feel" of the course; i.e., how various issues and problems in one part of the course relate to each other. This just can't be done with voluminous case briefs and class notes, nor even with the comprehensive summary you have been preparing. A well-organized, manageable study outline is essential. This is another point at which your GILBERT will be of vast assistance. The "Capsule Summary" of each GILBERT is a condensed outline of the summary. You'll find that it contains an analytical organization of the course which can serve as the framework for your studies, and contains key words and phrases to bring to mind the essential materials in your summary, notes, and briefs. Use the Capsule Summary as a base for your own, personalized outline. Make sure that your outline is detailed enough to recall all the key points covered in your course, including divergent views and theories. At the same time, keep it in terse form so that you can distill the whole course into a manageable number of pages. A good study outline should probably be around 20 pages or so. When your outline is complete, review it repeatedly until every point sinks in and the organization of the entire course becomes clear. You'll probably find yourself shouting "Eureka!" as you finally get that overall picture of the course, which is essential to real understanding of the subject matter. (4) Develop an issue-spotting approach: Once you have command of the substantive materials, try to develop an approach that will help you spot potential issues on your exams. You do this by developing a checklist of important points in each of the major areas of the course, and by focusing on the interrelationships among the various rules and principles you have been studying. For example, where an exam question raises an issue involving negligent conduct, your approach should automatically cause you to consider not only the essential elements of the tort of negligence (duty, breach, causation. damages) but also each of the various exceptions or defenses that may operate to limit liability in the particular case. Again, your GILBERT will be of substantial assistance to you, as it contains both "Chapter Approach" sections, which give you an analytic approach to each major topic, and an overall "Approach to Exams" section designed to assist you in reviewing the entire course for examination purposes. (5) Practice exam writing: Most instructors make available copies of former exam questions they have given. By all means take the time and effort to work through these questions. They will help you sharpen your analytic ability and also give you a reliable gauge as to the number and kind of issues you are likely to encounter on that instructor's exams. Don't merely skim through them. Force yourself to sit down and actually write out an answer within the time limit given on the question. That's the only way to come to grips with the issues. If your instructor is willing, ask him or her to review your practice answer with you. If not, the next best thing is to work with a study group and critique each other's answers or to answer the GILBERT Sample Exam Questions and compare your answers to the model answers provided.

Most law school exams call for essay-type answers, designed to test your ability to analyze and resolve legal problems. Your answer must demonstrate the ability to spot the precise legal issues involved in the problem, and to provide a lawyer-like solution to those issues based on the materials studied throughout the course and your own reasoning ability. The following suggestions should be considered in writing your exams: (1) Analyze the problem carefully: Read the problem through once quickly and determine its general nature. Focus on the question asked at the end of the problem (e.g., "What are the rights and liabilities of the parties'?" or "What advice would you give P, and why?"). Keeping in mind the question asked, read the problem through again, slowly and carefully. Squeeze every word and phrase to raise all potential issues; you will later eliminate those that are not logically relevant. Ordinarily, it should not be necessary to read in or stretch the facts to reach the issues. Instead, confine yourself to the facts given and the logical inferences that can be drawn therefrom. Apply your "approach" (supra, page 19) to make sure that you have raised all relevant issues. (2) Organize your thoughts: After you have completed your analysis, chart the issues and the manner in which you will resolve them before you start writing. Arrange the issues in the sequence in which you would expect a court to deal with them, i.e., normally, jurisdictional issues first, then liability, then remedies. Jot down the points you will discuss in sufficient detail to force you to think the problem through to its conclusion. Make sure that your analysis is leading to a fair and practical solution; if not, recheck your analysis. (3) Don't start writing until your analysis and organization is complete: You'll usually find it necessary to spend at least one-fourth of the time allocated for the question in analyzing the problem and organizing your answer. Don't be concerned that others begin writing before you do; law instructors are usually more concerned in the quality than the quantity of a student's answer. Also, a logical organization and clear expression of ideas can do wonders for a solid substantive answer and can even bolster a weak answer. Finally, you'll find you can write faster than you'd suppose. (4) When you are ready to begin writing, use the I-R-A-C format for each issue raised: (a) First, specify the issue: State the issue in precise legal terms (e.g., "Did Defendant's mistake in computing his bid prevent the formation of an enforceable contract?"). Avoid generalizations and fence-straddling phraseology (e.g., "Can the offeree sue for breach of contract?").

(b) Next, state the applicable law - the rule and reasoning applicable to the issue: If the courts dealing with the problem have expressed divergent views, don't make the mistake of just discussing the "general view" or "majority view." Consider and evaluate all relevant views. Again, make certain that you express the underlying rationale behind each view or rule of law. (c) Then, apply the law to the facts: Avoid the common error of stating a rule and then jumping to the conclusion that the rule should be applied. Your instructor will not infer a supporting argument for you - you must spell it out. Therefore, with respect to each element of law involved, show which facts in the case support (or prevent) application of the rule. Discuss and weigh the facts given and logical inferences to be drawn therefrom. But again, do not read in or stretch the facts to reach some distorted application of the rule. (d) Finally, come to a conclusion on each issue: Make sure that you have answered the question asked (e.g., if the question is "What advice would you give?" state clearly and explicitly your advice). Never leave an issue "hanging," or end your discussion of the problem with a question. If a number of solutions are possible, discuss the merits of each, but always select one position as your decision and state why. Remember that in close cases, it is generally best to select the most practical and fair decision, and avoid a decision that disposes of the issues on purely technical grounds. Most law instructors appreciate and encourage independent and original legal reasoning. Therefore, don't consider yourself bound by the "general rule" or "majority view" in answering an exam unless the question clearly calls for such. (5) Remember these other helpful pointers: (a) Budget your time: If you have allocated one-fourth of your time to analysis and organization, you should write only in such detail that you will cover all points raised in your analysis in the remaining time. Also, always save at least two or three minutes at the end of the period to review your answer and to clarify and improve it. You may pick up grade points simply by making your answer more readable or by catching obvious errors. (b) Stick to the issues: It is not advisable to go into matters not directly raised by the exam question. Avoid the temptation to recite broad segments of the law which you may have committed to memory but which in reality have little to do with the problem raised. You will often find that you are short of time in writing a law exam, and it is therefore dangerous to digress from the actual issues. (c) Emphasize what counts: Law exams are usually graded more heavily on certain issues than on others. Therefore, in writing your answer, spend as much time as possible on the more controversial or difficult parts of the problem. You should not minimize or skip over preliminary points, but your instructor is usually more concerned with the way you handle the difficult issues of the problem, and will grade accordingly. Except where the question clearly calls for it, discussions of historical materials, superseded doctrines, or discredited cases should be kept to a minimum. (d) Make sure your answer is readable: A grader is not likely to be impressed by the logic of an answer that cannot be read or is difficult to decipher. Therefore, if your handwriting borders on the illegible, it will be helpful for you to learn to type your exams. (Typing is also a boon to

those whose handwriting is so slow that it puts them at a disadvantage timewise on law exams.) Whether you write or type, keep your sentences short and paragraph frequently. It is also a good idea to leave an extra line between paragraphs; it enhances readability and provides room for insertion of thoughts that occur to you later. A judicious use of underlining, for emphasis. is generally encouraged.

The key to success in the study of law is hard work, and there is just no way around this fact. You must learn now to do the reading, briefing, and organizing that are second nature to a practicing attorney. Accordingly, don't allow yourself to fall into the habit of skimping on your studies throughout the semester and then attempting to "cram" a course just before exams. This generally doesn't work at all. You must wrestle with the issues throughout the course in order to obtain the perspective essential to real understanding of the problems involved, and to doing well on your exams. It is our hope that the suggestions contained in this booklet will assist you in your study efforts, and in developing the abilities that will spell success for you in law school and as a practicing attorney. Good luck!

HOW TO TAKE A LAW SCHOOL EXAM

I.

General Tips before exam Before the exam, condense your outline to a short outline/ checklist.

 Practice old exams and possibly do one under time constraints. Compare with model answers and study group. II. Tips about exam In an open book exam, have your checklist next to exam. In closed book, you may want to write down your checklist immediately. Read instructions. Browse through exam and see how many questions and how much time to allot to each question. Think of your answer as a memo to a lawyer who knows nothing, not the teacher who knows everything. Thus, you have to explain everything to the reader. Think of yourself as advising your boss: you want to advise him or her of the strengths and weaknesses of the argument. Youre writing a memo, not a brief. Advise the reader of all reasonably possible outcomes (not simply a conclusion). Dont simply lay out different arguments and counterarguments tell the reader the relative strengths and weaknesses. You should evaluate which arguments are likely to be strong or weak.

III.

Beginning your answer Read the question at least twice before you start writing. Read it quickly the first time to get an idea of what is going on. As you read through the question a second time, start writing down thoughts concerning legal issues. Highlight important facts. After reading the question a second time, formulate a BASIC plan or outline (nothing too elaborate; you do not have time for that). About a of your time. Stylistic advice: in general, avoid introductions of any length (as well as summaries of your analysis at the end). This is hard advice because this is not necessarily good writing. Just jump straight to, the first issue here is . Goal is to score points.

IV.

What should you discuss?

 All issues that are potentially troublesome should be addressed. If the case before you were an actual case, and you were an attorney working on it, ask yourself whether a particular issue would be a point of contention. If so, raise it. When in doubt, cover it (if time permits, so leave it to the end). You will normally not lose points for saying something irrelevant. But at the same time, do not be non-responsive.

Also, even if an issue seems to resolve the entire case, keep the discussion going. However, if personal jurisdiction is found, then the next issue would be V. IRAC ISSUE: Identify the legal issue you are addressing. This must be clear and concise. It must be clear exactly what legal theory you will be addressing. RULE: This is a shorthand reference to the legal principles that govern the issue at hand. May be a statement, a definition, or a list of factors (this may involve describing important case law, although not usually). May encompass one or more paragraphs (maybe more), depending on complexity of governing law. Very important to make a statement of governing rules before you say anything about facts in question. APPLICATION OF LAW TO FACTS (ANALYSIS): Dont simply restate facts. Consider ALL facts. Professor probably is not going to put in irrelevant facts. Do not simply render superficial and conclusory application of law to facts. Professors expect a detailed treatment of the facts. Apply the rule you stated earlier. If you state three factors or prongs, analyze each in an organized fashion. CONCLUSION: Least important. Do not spend much time deciding which arguments should prevail; simply tell relative strengths and weaknesses.

VI.

GENERAL TIPS Keep Issues separate. Begin new paragraphs. Possibly use headings, if appropriate. Do not label IRAC. Do not underline key words and phrases (most of the time). People differ on this. Use full sentences. Keep sentences simple! NEVER try to present two distinct thoughts in the same sentence. Use short paragraphs to move from one point to another. Easier to read and forces you to organize your thoughts.

VII.

TIME MANAGEMENT

 Do not leave early. Youve studied forever, might as well spend a few extra moments re-reading exam and your answer. The more issues you find, the better. If a prof. gives time guidelines, use them.

If you run into time problems at the end, mention everything briefly rather than getting into detailed explanation of one type of homicide. Mention and define different types of homicide, rather than discussing one of them in detail. VIII. AFTER THE EXAM DO not speak to anyone after the exam

Try to take the night off after an exam. Start afresh the next day after a good nights rest. Hold off on drinking. Forget about it.

Time Required: Several hours

Here's How: 1. Use your syllabus.

Your professors syllabus will let you know exactly the subjects that may appear on your final exam. You should be able to create a working template for your outline based on the syllabus and the general IRAC format, although in this situation, the C will stand for case summaries, and youll include short summaries of the important cases for that issue.

2. Use your class notes.

Once you have your template laid out, you should go through your class notes and fill in blanks with important information for the issue, rule, analysis, and case summaries.

3. Consult hornbooks or commercial study aids.

These materials can be quite useful if there are particular areas of law you still do not understand after filling in your outline. Go through the outside study aids and either photocopy or remove only those pages that cover subjects that your professor covered in class; use them to fill in any missing information in your outline if it helps you understand the concepts.

Tips:

1. Don't wait until reading period to being your law school outlines. You want to use that time to study, so your outlines should be nearly completed by the time classes end. 2. Although study groups can be helpful for working through aspects of the material that you're struggling with, you should prepare your outline on your own. You can then go and compare and contrast with other students -- but you should do so only after yours is done. 3. Your overall goal in creating a law school outline is to synthesize your semesters notes into a cohesive document that you can use as your study guide for the major areas of law covered in the course. The big picture is important as you will be asked to spot legal issues on the exam and analyze them based on how they intersect with one another. 4. If your outline is much more than 15 pages, you should go back and cut it down; you probably still have a lot in there that isn't getting to the heart of the issues that will be tested.

What You Need

Casebook Syllabus and other handouts Class notes Case briefs you've prepared Hornbooks or other commercial study aids Computer

Exam tips
Here are a few practical tips to ensure that you get the best out of yourself in an exam. 1. Read the instructions at the top of the paper carefully. Usually you will need to answer some questions from part A and some from part B and mistakes can be costly. The format of the exam generally stays the same, but you cant guarantee this absolutely if you always take time to read the instructions carefully you wont get caught out! 2. Watch your timing! Typically you will have 3 hours in which to answer 4 questions (but see note above about making sure you read the rubric, just in case this is not your situation!). This means that you will only have about 40 minutes per question. After this time you need to finish and move on to the next, even if you feel you could say more. You can always leave a gap and go back to fill in any extras at the end, if you have time. To do this requires real self discipline, and can be very hard to do, but it is worth it. It is far easier to pass the exam with 4 complete so-so answers than with only 3 (or fewer...) good ones. Failure to answer all of the questions required is one of the most common causes of disappointing exam results, especially for otherwise very capable students, so dont let it happen to you!

3. Answer the question! This sounds very obvious, but you would be surprised at how many examination scripts fail to do this. Students are often disappointed because they have revised hard and remembered a lot of information but still gain poor results and this is usually the reason. Essay questions When you have spent a long time revising it can be a huge temptation to look at a question, see that it mentions, for example, consideration and launch into 4 pages of writing down everything you can remember about consideration....regardless of whether it relates to the question. Avoid this approach at all costs! Read the question carefully and make sure that your answer is clearly focused on it. Of course you want to display your hard earned knowledge, but you do need to make it appear relevant. Ensure that essays are always well structured (it pays to take a little of your time to sketch out a brief plan first) and have an introduction, a body and a conclusion. The introduction and conclusion must refer directly to the question asked, and it helps if you can refer back to it a time or two in the body of your essay as well. This will help keep you focused and will do wonders to persuade the examiner that you are well focused, even if you have wandered slightly! Remember that the examiner has probably slaved for hours selecting an appropriate quotation to use or carefully crafting a question to provoke interesting answers. Nothing is more annoying to an examiner than reading a pile of answers that have plainly failed to appreciate this artistry and have offered a whole lot of waffle that has nothing to do with the question! It is almost certain that every examiner will have to wade through a large pile of write all you know about... irrelevant answers. Imagine the joy when he/she happens upon your clear, relevant and well-focused answer! Commonsense dictates that a happy examiner is far more likely to be generous than an irritated one! Problem questions The same basic advice applies as to essays keep your answer relevant. Some problems can be very complex, so make sure that you lay out your answer as clearly as you can this makes it easier to mark and you want to keep that examiner happy! The basic technique for answering a problem question is to take each point as it comes and a) state the law, b) cite authority (if you dont use authority, you havent stated the law!) and c) apply the law to the facts of the question. Most answers fall down on c), but this part is vital. Anyone with a good memory can learn the law and slavishly recite it but only good candidates, with a real understanding of the subject, are able to apply what they have learned to the given set of facts. As with essays, above, the examiner has thought carefully about the question and created a set of facts to provoke certain responses...and its only good manners to show that you have noticed! Do refer explicitly to the facts in your answer. e.g. A question tells you that Farmer A said to Farmer B, I would like to buy that horse

from you for 30. If I dont hear anything from you Ill assume we have a deal. Farmer B was happy to sell his horse to Farmer A for 30, so didnt respond. Student 1 explains generally all about offer and acceptance and, as part of this explanation, comments on the fact that silence cannot normally constitute acceptance, citing Felthouse v Bindley as authority. Student 2 states that an offer should be firm and definite and clearly communicated to the offeree and notes that Farmer As statement I would like to buy that horse from you for 30 meets these criteria. It goes on to say that the statement if I dont hear anything from you Ill assume we have a deal is very close to the facts of Felthouse v Bindley and, in this case, it was decided that there cannot be an acceptance by silence, even when the other party is seemingly happy with the agreement, as is the case with Farmer B in this scenario. Which answer do you think would score higher marks? Both of the above answers appear to show knowledge of the law but in Student 1s answer there is a lot of general explanation and no real specific application. From the examiners point of view it is not entirely clear whether this student fully understands the law and is able to apply it, or whether the mention of acceptance by silence and Felthouse v Bindley was just a lucky hit! Student 2s answer is much better. The examiner is left in no doubt that the student understands the issues clearly and is confident in applying them to a given set of facts. This student has clearly recognised all of the issues within the facts and has made use of them to show detailed and specific application. The student in this case doesnt necessarily remember any more information than the Student 1 (he/she may even remember less!) but the answer technique is much better and will gain far more marks.

4. Finally..........you are aiming to revise well and remember as much information as you can for the exam, but do keep in mind the fact that showing a real understanding is far more important than proving that you are Mr Memory! Of course you need to cite authority for statements of law and, ideally, you need to remember cases and dates. However, no one is perfect and there may be a time in the exam when you just cant think of the name of the case....it can happen to everyone! If this happens, dont just skip the authority its far better to say as in the case where the granny, granddaughter and lodger filled in the competition than it is to miss it out completely. This will tell the examiner that you know what you are talking about, even if exam nerves got the better of you for a moment.

10 Dos and Don'ts for Note Taking in Law School

No matter how much material you think you can retain just by memory, note taking will be one of the most important skills to develop and perfect as you make your way through law school. Good notes will help you keep up during class discussions and will also become crucial when it's time to outline and study for final exams; here are:

10 Dos and Don'ts for Note Taking in Law School

1. DO choose a method of note taking and stick with it. There are now lots of options for law school note taking from software programs to the good old paper and pen method. Try some out early on in the semester, but decide quickly which one suits your learning style best and then keep going with it. The link section below has some reviews of note taking software if you need a starting point. 2. DO consider preparing your own notes before class. Whether you do the classic case brief or something more free-flowing and whether you're using computer software or handwritten notes, use a different color or entirely different pages to separate class notes from your personal notes. As the semester wears on, you should see the two increasingly converging; if not, you're probably not picking up important concepts and what your professors wants you to focus on, so get thee to office hours! 3. DO write down important concepts, rules of law, and lines of reasoning. These things may be difficult to pinpoint at first, but you'll get better at this as your law school years go on. 4. DO take note of recurring themes in your professor's lectures. Does he bring public policy into every discussion? Does he painstakingly parse words of statutes? When you find these themes, pay special attention and take particularly copious notes as to how the professor's reasoning is flowing; this way you know what questions to prepare for both for lectures and exams. 5. DO review your notes after class to make sure you understand what you've recorded. If something is unclear either conceptually or factally, now is the time to clear it up either with your classmates in a study group or with the professor. 6. DON'T write down everything the professor says verbatim. This holds especially true if you're using a laptop. It can be tempting to transcribe lectures if you have the typing ability, but you'll be losing valuable time in which you should be engaging with

the material and group discussion. This, after all, is where learning takes place in law school, not simply from memorizing and regurgitating rules and laws. 7. DON'T write down what your fellow law students say. Yes, they're smart and some may even be right, but unless your professor puts her explicit seal of approval on a student's contribution to the discussion, it's most likely not worth a spot in your notes. You will not be tested on your fellow law students' opinions, so there's no sense in recording them for posterity. 8. DON'T waste time writing down facts of the case. All the facts you need to discuss a case will be in your casebook. If particular facts are important, highlight, underline, or circle them in your textbook with a note in the margins to remind you why they're important. 9. DON'T be afraid to go back through several days of notes at the same time to try to make connections and fill in gaps. This review process will help you at the time with class discussions and later when you're outlining and studying for exams. 10. DON'T forego taking notes because you can get the notes of a classmate. Everyone processes information differently, so you are always going to be the best person to record notes for your future study sessions. It's great to compare notes, but your own notes should always be your primary source for studying. This is why commercial outlines and those prepared by previous law students aren't always the most helpful either. Throughout the semester, your professor gives you a map of what the exam will be like throughout the course; it is your job to record it and study it.

How To Study for a Law School Exam

In most instances, your grade in a course will depend entirely on one law school exam. If that sounds like a lot of pressure, well, quite frankly, it is, but there's good news! Some people in your class have to get A's, so you might as well be one of them. The following five steps will help you ace any law school exam:
Difficulty: Hard Time Required: Three months

Here's How:

1. Study all semester long.

Be a diligent student throughout the semester by doing all the assigned reading, taking great notes, reviewing them after each week, and participating in class discussions. Law professors love to talk about seeing the forest for the trees; at this point you should focus on those trees, the main concepts your professor is covering. You can place them in the forest later.

2. Join a study group.

A great way to be sure you're understanding key concepts throughout the semester is to go over the readings and lectures with other law students. Through study groups, you can prepare for future classes by discussing assignments and fill in gaps in your notes from past lectures. It may take you a little while to find fellow students you click with, but it's worth the effort. Not only will you be more prepared for the exam, you'll also get used to talking out loud about cases and concepts--particularly great if your professor uses the Socratic Method.

3. Outline.
Leading up to the reading period, you should have a good grasp of major concepts, so now it's time to pull them all together into the "forest," if you will, in course outlines. Organize your outline based on the syllabus or your casebook's table of contents and fill in blanks with information from your notes. If you don't want to leave this until just before the exam, do it gradually throughout the semester; start a document with the major concepts, leaving large blank areas that you can fill in with information as you review it from your notes at the end of each week.

4. Use past exams of professors to prepare.

Many professors put past exams (sometimes with model answers) on file in the library; if your professor does so, be sure to take advantage. Past exams tell you what your professor considers the most important concepts in the course, and if a sample answer is included, be sure to study the format and copy it as best you can when you attempt other practice questions. If your professor offers review sessions or office hours, be sure to come prepared with a good understanding of past exams, which are also great for study group discussion.

5. Improve your test-taking skills by learning from your past exams.

If you've already been through a semester or more of law school exams, one of the best ways to improve your performance is by studying your past performances. If you can get copies of your exams, look at your answers and the model answers carefully. Note where you lost points, where you did the best, and also think back to how and when you prepared--what worked and what may have been a waste of your time. Also be sure to

analyze your exam-taking techniques as well, for example, did you use your time wisely during the test?

What You Need

Casebook Notes Outline Time

Law School Exam Writing

This article was reprinted by permission from Study Partner .

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: MEMORIZE APPLY DISSERTATE 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. 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.

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

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

Majority/ Minority I.R.A.C.(tm) 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

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

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 issuespotting 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.

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: 2. Deft's murder of Sally. 2. Is Deft guilty of murder? 2. Deft's liability for killing Sally. 2. Murder. 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. Example:

USING THE FACTS GIVEN FOR SUPERIOR LAW SCHOOL EXAM WRITING.

2. Burglary. 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. CONCLUSION 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.

WRITING LAW EXAMINATIONS By John H. Langbein, Sterling Professor of Law, Yale Law School Author's Note: Some years ago I prepared this little essay for the guidance of my students. When the essay began to circulate elsewhere, West Publishing volunteered to publish it in these pages with the thought that it might be of help to a wider audience. I hope it is. Law examinations share a good deal in common with other stock forms of legal writing, such as the brief, the law office memorandum, and the judicial opinion. Developing proper skills of exam writing will have, therefore, permanent returns. Ideally, a good law examination tests how well a student has mastered the course material, and the ability to apply this knowledge to new situations. There are, however, some recurrent mistakes, oversights and unwise practices that prevent students from doing as well as they might. If you are alert to avoiding these pitfalls, you will improve your examination results. Lack of Organization. The most costly mistake an examinee can make is to fail to organize an answer well. An answer which flails at the examination question without a plan will overlook issues and connections between issues. There is no universal scheme of organization. Depending upon the layout of the question, it may be convenient to organize by parties or by legal issues.

When the facts set out a substantial number of transactions or events extending over time, it may be best to organize by dates, beginning with the earliest facts and working forward, explaining what issues and arguments change as the plot thickens. Especially in property and tax courses, it is sometimes quite sensible to key your answer to the treatment of particular assets or groups of assets. Regardless of the mode of organization, organize. You are not wasting time when you sit in an examination room thinking about how best to approach and argue the issues. Careful organization can also spare you the serious error of inconsistency in your treatment issues. I doubt that a mental checklist is enough - I think you need to jot down a little outline to which to refer as you write your answer. Of course, virtue can be carried to excess: it is possible to overorganize, to splinter your essay into useless subheadings that lose continuity and conceal interrelations. One mode of organization that is usually unwise is to segregate the pros and cons of a great number of issues ("Plaintiff makes the following eight arguments....Defendant offers the following nine responses..."). Usually, the time to say what's wrong with an argument, or what difficulties may ensue if a certain rule is applied, is right after you state the case for the argument or rule. I recommend that you try to address liability-creating factors before you discuss defensive ones. Defensive considerations are difficult to evaluate in the abstracts. You get the cart before the horse when you raise the defensive position in advance of the notional theory of liability that would bring it into play. Reading the facts. Before you can organize, you must know what you are organizing. It is the worst sort of false economy to hurry through the facts in order to start writing bilge. Examination questions are dense: every sentence, every word may have significance. You should read a question through to get its general drift, then reread it with care. You must question the question. "Why is this fact being told me, why this date, why these parties?" Above all, get the facts right. It is easy to confuse parties and places on an examination because you have not had long familiarity with the facts. Only your own commitment to avoid carelessness can save you from doing it. Here too excess is possible. Some answers display a preposterous suspicion of the facts, e.g., the examinee who has been told that Mr. Corpse is dead, but insists on reciting that "Mr. Corpse appears to be dead," or "If Mr. Corpse is in truth dead...." The importance of role. Pay attention to the role the examiner has assigned you. If you are told to be an advocate, you will necessarily approach a question differently than if you are put in the shoes of an impartial judge or legislative draftsman. Be alert to the common tendency of examiners to change role assignments when they change questions. Be sensitive to the significance of your role when looking at the state of the facts in the examination question: have the facts been found below in the lower court or are you being asked to shape them for argument to a trier, and if so to whom, a professional or a jury of laypersons? Read the instructions. I have been staggered by the amount of abject carelessness that is exhibited by examinees. Some students disregard plain instructions to begin a new question in a new bluebook. Some omit their examination numbers. Others misallocate their time although

told in advance and again on the examination itself what the relative weight of the questions will be. You should go into an examination with a schedule. When you have been told in advance that there are three questions of equal weight and that you will have two and one half hours to write the examination, you should work out beforehand that at 9:45 you will move on to Question Two, and at 10:30 to Question Three. The student who writes a total of four sentences on the last question, concluding with the breathless report, "Time!," is displaying a self-inflicted wound whose consequence is deserved. Padding. No examiner gives credit for quantity of words written. Nonetheless, a huge proportion of examination papers contain many paragraphs that should not have been written and for which no credit can be given. The two most common varieties of padding are regurgitating the facts, and what I call wind-ups (lengthy preliminary discussions of issues which might be involved, or of general policies or values like enforcing intention, or of the scheme of organization the essay is going to utilize). The examiner has written the question and knows what the facts are. You will never get credit for summarizing them all over again, even if your "role" in answering the question is that of the judge. Go immediately to the issues, then mention those facts that are relevant when they are relevant. A particular variety of padding is to write out quotations from casebook materials or statutes in an open book exam. Cite it, don't copy it. Inventing facts. An especially maddening trait of some examinees is the manufacture of facts. Usually these are very convenient facts that let issues be avoided. Typical: "The law in this jurisdiction is...." Or "It was argued in this matter...." Never add to what the examiner has told you about the facts. If you don't know what positions were taken into court, deal with them as possibilities rather than attributing them to particular parties. If the examiner hasn't told you what jurisdiction you are in, and you know that there is a conflict of authority on the issue, talk about the conflict, don't try to weasel out by assigning the governing rule. It may sometimes be in order to tell the examiner that particular additional facts, if present, would affect your analysis in some particular aspect, but do not dwell on such matters. Authority. There are two opposite extremes to be avoided in citing statutes and cases. If you are taking an open book examination, especially in a statutory course, don't neglect to mention the statute section numbers you are referring to. That is to say, when relevant authority is close to hand, take advantage of the opportunity to make your answer more precise and lawyerly by citing the statutes or cases you are discussing. The greater failing, however, is senseless reference to authority. It weakens rather than strengthens your argument when you cite case names whose relevance you do not and cannot explain. Negative issue spotting. It is usually quite appropriate to say that on these facts, a particular issue that might have arisen does not arise, having been foreclosed by such-and-such fact or factor. But this shades into a flagrant error that will cost you points. If you have come prepared to talk about the ABC issue, and are disappointed to find no ABC issue on the examination, it is not a solution to write an essay about the subject of your disappointment. ("Since I don't find an ABC issue on these facts, I'll tell you that there is no ABC issue here, and then I'll spend a page telling you about ABC.") The examiner knows what's on the exam.

Knowledge. A common failing in a needlessly weak examination essay is the tendency to try to barf back the contents of classnotes or course materials. What the examiner looks for is not memorized knowledge, but ability to use the knowledge of the course. To be sure, you have to have the knowledge. That's the essential precondition. But what distinguishes strong work is that the student brings that knowledge to bear on a new problem, or that (in response to a question) the student uses that knowledge as a basis for thinking about new facts or new issues. Another way to make this point is to say that you must not expect to employ everything you know about a course on the examination. Often a course starts with the basic concepts, then adds more advanced knowledge, and in these circumstances the examiner is likely to probe for the advanced knowledge. You have not wasted your efforts learning the basics that are not called for on the examination. Without the basics, you couldn't deal with the frontier. It is a major blunder in such circumstances to insist on emphasizing the rudiments when the question invites you to higher ground. Procedure and remedy. Common procedural issues cut across most substantive issues: does a particular party have sufficient interest to have standing; what are the remedy implications of the substantive legal rights you think pertinent; has there been delay such as to raise laches or statute of limitation problems? Remedy is especially important. It will be a rare examination that does not pose problems of remedy. Consequently, to speak in tort terms, get in the habit of asking yourself: "Now that I see there has been a wrong, which of the many conceivable things a court can do about the wrong seem appropriate here and why?" Question-begging. The most recurrent error that we all make in legal analysis is failing to justify our conclusions. The art has many forms. Beware the adverb "clearly" or the phrase, "It is clear that...." Examiners tend not to set questions that can be resolved by sentences that properly begin with the word "clearly." I do not mean to suggest that there are no easy issues on law exams. There are. One thing your examiner is testing for is your ability to distinguish straightforward problems from complicated ones: a hallmark of a weak answer is that the student spends time thrashing an easy point to death rather than facing up to the hard problems. Because legal issues do not involve the same degrees of doubt, you should signal your awareness of how open a particular issue is. Under the heading of question begging, the basic failing I am talking about is the practice of stating legal conclusions without giving the reasoning. You will get little credit for saying "Bloggs committed fraud and so his legacy fails." You have to show why the issues inheres in the facts (what conduct amounted to fraud and why), why your result follows from the facts and the law. The right answer isn't right unless you show why. Issue spotting is not enough. We emphasize issue spotting on law examinations because it is so central to the lawyer's job. Your client is not going to come in and say "I have a Section 1983 action I'd like you to bring." Instead you will hear something of what happened, or what the client wants to achieve, and it is your job (after getting at the facts) to see what legal issues may arise on those facts.

But however important issue spotting is, you need to do more. It is not enough to hit the side of the barn. Once you see that an issue is in question, that a doctrine or a statutory section applies, continue to ask yourself: what are its implications, its ramifications for the various parties, the difficulties it raises? Have you indeed spotted the applicable rule, or can the rule be distinguished? The examiner will commonly set a question whose facts suggest, but do not quite fit, some conventional rule of law. The student who displays sensitivity to distinguishing the particular case according to the purposes of the seemingly applicable rule is on the way to an A. If you are going to get beyond issue spotting, you must refrain from dealing with issues in generalized terms that prevent you from developing your analysis. Abstract discussions of legal doctrine are seldom justified. The examiner wants to know which facts raise the issue and how the issue affects the rights of parties. The other side. The hardest part of legal analysis, I think, is to keep one's mind open to all sides of an issue. We tend especially in the adversary process to blot out opposing positions. We take a stand and justify it. But there is almost always another side, or several. And you can't be sure that your view is (a) correct or (b) properly articulated and defended, unless you have asked yourself: "What can be said against my interpretation of the facts and the law, what would the other side argue?" A really good examination answer not only suggests the preferred solution, but it develops both sides of the problem. You should master the technique of arguing in the alternative. If you deal with an issue and resolve it, and you are aware that had you resolved it the other way you would have had to deal with other issues consequent to the other solution, argue the point in the alternative. Don't duck issues that the facts do invite you to discuss. Irresolution. It is usually best to reach results. Lawyers are paid to advise and judges to decide. Hence you are not doing your job on the typical examination questions if you say only that suchand-such doctrines may apply. Do they? Why and how? A strong essay constantly signals the weight being attached to various issues, rules and arguments, and it suggests in a reasoned fashion the probable outcome(s). Inspiration. It sometimes happens that the examiner puts an issue on the exam about which you have thought long and hard, or indeed, about which you find yourself with something daring to say even though you have not thought long and hard. You have an analysis that no prior legal thinker has ever suggested, or you think the relevant doctrines to be quite wrong for such-andsuch reason. It is quite proper for you to put such observations on your examination answer, they are the stuff from which A-plus grades can be made. But before you reach the unconventional, be prudent. Set out the ordinary analysis that would govern the problem in case the court or the examiner were to think less of your inspiration than you do. The seamless web. In statutory courses students have a tendency to overlook considerations not directly tied to code numbers. Statutes do not work in isolation in our legal system. The code may not reach all aspects of the problem. Furthermore, don't let course titles become blinders. Don't be afraid to use your knowledge from one course in another. It may be quite appropriate to point out on a torts exam that a problem would also be susceptible to contract analysis. On the

other hand, don't get carried away with such efforts. If it's a torts exam, the bet is good that the examiner has supplied you with lots of torts issues to write about. Writing. No matter what the level of your writing skills, there are some mechanical things you can do to present your work at its best. Break up the main scheme of your answer into paragraphs. Use complete sentences and avoid abbreviating ordinary words. Avoid slang; expressions like "to throw out of court" can conceal distinctions that your examiner regards as important. Write legibly; if you have a difficult handwriting, skip a line between each written line. Leave a conventional left-hand margin for your examiner's notations. Remember that if your examiner is spared having to decipher your script, more time will be available to concentrate on the nuances of your meaning. Format. I recommend to students that they consider word-processing examination answers whenever it is allowed. Even a hunt-and-peck typist is not at a particular disadvantage, because it will not be necessary to do copy-typing on a exam. My hunch is that for most students word processing facilitates clarity. Avoid jocularity. Your examiner takes seriously the questions propounded on the examination. I don't suppose that I mean to recommend against all levity, but rather to say that in my experience most attempts seemed strained and cloying, and most seem needlessly to have preoccupied the examinee. As an empirical matter humor is associated with error and bad-exam-writing in a surprisingly high correlation. (Some students think that jocularity is invited because the examiner uses bizarre names for the parties and places in setting a question. This is done in order to help students avoid confusing the parties. Even when the examiner uses very awkward names, a goodly minority of examinees still confuses them. You have no reason to imitate the examiner's art in this manner). Panic. Somehow it happens that a few students get all the way to law school without learning to steel themselves against panic psychology in exam taking. The thought process must be something like this: "Because this exam is important to me, I have to abandon my analytical good sense in a race to slop something on paper. I also have to jettison my usual attention to grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and I shall adopt stream-of-consciousness prose style in order to show the examiner how desperately urgent I thought it all was." No matter how important the exam, panic will not help. It only renders you less capable and less persuasive then you otherwise would be.

How to Outline for Law School Exams

In Academic on March 15, 2011 by NLLSA Attorney General Tagged: contracts, exam, law school, outline

The key to success in the traditional law school class is to focus on the exam. The pressures of the Socratic method often lead law students to dwell on their performance in class instead of on the only graded exercise in the course. Instead, spend your time creating a strong outline for the exam. Here, I will walk you through my first year Contracts Outline (attached in its entirety, below) as I describe my process of creating a solid law school outline. MORE

The curve - where do you fall? Why do law students outline? Its not because, ten years from now, you want to remember the fact pattern in Hawkins vs. McGee or because you want to force your yellowed outlines on your children as mementos of an age when we still used paper. You outline because you want to pass the exam.

This means you should not try to record every detail or write the next treatise on torts. Instead, keep the information in your outline concise, and organize your outline in a way that is useful to you when answering a law school issue-spotter.

{ Keep it Simple }

Preparing for class and preparing for the exam are two very different things. When you are worried about being cold-called in contracts, you tend to focus on the minutiae of each case. In an exam, you will not have the time to re-read your paragraph description and most of the facts will be irrelevant to your answer anyway. Heres an example from my first year class notes for Contracts: Lucy v. Zehmer, 196 V.A. 493 (1954) FACTS: Both Lucy & Zehmer are drinking in a tavern Christmas Eve. They draft a contract on the back of a receipt allowing Lucy an option to buy Zehmers land, re-write it (b/c it was in singular) get the wife to sign it. Lucy takes the contract, Zehmer says it was just a joke. Lucy comes up w/ the money, does a title search, gets a lawyer, and tries to buy the land. Cumbersome, and not very useful. I went on to describe the procedural posture, issue, holding, and analysis for half a page. A better option is to do this: Jokes that meet the Restatement definition of promise (above) are binding. See Lucy v. Zehmer (contact signed in a tavern on the back of a receipt are binding) [p. 32] This is how it breaks down: [concise and generalized statement of the rule]. Case Name (relevant facts) [page number] As you can see, the focus is on the generalized rule of law with the case name supplemental, just as you would use it on an exam. Then I include a short summary of the facts in a sentence I could drop directly, word for word, into an issue-spotter, and finally the page number for that

one unlikely occasion that I will actually need to know the specifics of the case in order to answer a question. Now that we have this simple two line case summary, where do we put it?

{ Organize }

There are two different types of information contained in an outline: area of law information and rule information. Area of Law information is the backbone of your outline. Getting a handle on overall organization is essential to navigating your outline and ensuring you dont miss any large issues on the exam. You can organize the areas of law in any way that is intuitive to you, but this is how I do it. For example, in Contracts I broke the course down into six questions that track the natural progression of a contract:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Is there a Contract? Is it Enforceable? What are the Contracts terms? Is there a defense against Enforcement or excuse for Breach? Was the Contract breached? What are the Remedies?

Within these six categories I can situate every legal area and issue we have discussed in contracts. This outline is easy to reference because I can quickly go down the list, asking myself each question, and identify which areas I need to cover in the issue-spotter.

On the day of the exam, I print out multiple copies of this meta-outline. For each issue-spotter I go down this list and mark which of the questions are relevant to the facts given. Then, when answering, I make sure to cover every issue Ive identified. Rule information fleshes out the organizational skeleton you created above. Rules describe the manner in which courts evaluate issues before them. For example, in addressing 2. Is it Enforceable? in my outline above, applying the Statute of Frauds breaks down into three steps:
1. 2. 3. Is it within the statute? Is there sufficient memorandum? Is there an exception that will allow us to enforce it?

Step 2 has three requirements in order for the memorandum to be sufficient, so I outline it like so: 2. Is there sufficient memorandum? It must :
[1] Be Written [2] Contain Essential terms: statement of quantity sufficient [2] Be Signed: by the party against whom contract is being enforced o Multiple Documents can be combined. See Crabtree (unsigned memo + payroll cards sufficient to establish employment contract) [306] [a] one is signed [b] clearly relate to the same transaction

Note how the Crabtree case is embedded in the outline, referencing the generalized rule the case establishes and including a succinct and specific description of the facts that could be dropped directly into your answer.

{ Copy your Outline onto the Exam }

An answer would look something like this:

In order for the memorandum to be sufficient, it must be written, contain certain essential terms, and be signed by the party against whom the contract is being enforced. Here, the contract was written by A on toilet paper. The writing notes that B is purchasing four pieces of breach-front property in Idaho from A for $50, and is signed by B. Even though the pieces of toilet paper are separate, and only one is signed by B, Crabtree tells us that multiple documents such as a memo and payroll cards are sufficient to establish a contract so long as one is signed and they clearly relate to the same transaction. Here, the first piece of toilet paper is signed and the rest all reference various beach-front properties in Idaho. Therefore memorandum is sufficient in this case. Notice how my outline did the heavy lifting for me, all I did was restate what I already had, plug in the specific facts, and determine whether those facts fell within the rule. At the end, I review all of my meta-outlines to ensure I have talked about every major issue in the course. Although not all professors will include all issues on their exams, I always spend my last twenty minutes figuring out ways to stuff unaddressed issues into my responses. It wont count against you, and can only get you extra points.

{ Get an A }
Easy, huh? Its as simple as that, now go make me proud. (Here is my Contracts Outline, as promised, for your enjoyment)

Outlining
Why do law students outline?
Law students outline to organize their notes, cases and information from other sources into a document to use in studying for exams. The outline pulls together and organizes all the rules from the cases and materials that you have read for that course.

Why not just buy a commercial outline or use one that an upperclass student has prepared?
Outlining is more about the process than the finished product. Much like a traditional law school essay exam is not about "the answer," but more about how you derived your answer. You must construct your own outline to achieve maximum reward. If you struggle with putting an outline together throughout the semester, you will begin to see "the big picture". This doesn't mean you must avoid other outlines because often other outlines may fill in the gaps or spark further ideas when you are stuck. But you must not substitute someone else's work for your own. If you do, you will never learn what you need to know. The value of an outline comes from making it, not having it. As you prepare your own outlines, you develop the skills necessary to understand the

law in a way that will help you apply it to resolve the issues in an exam question, under pressure, and with time constraints.

What do I need to begin an outline?

Three things:
1. 2. 3. Your Casebook Your Notes Your Syllabus

Like many students, you may also need an outside source, such as a hornbook, a commercial outline, or other student outline. These sources are used to supplement your reading from the casebook and class notes. A hornbook is best used as an authoritative source that ties together and explains legal concepts in a straightforward, informational format. A commercial outline generally is a clear, concise source of the black letter law. Note: Some professors will tell you not to use commercial outlines, and some very successful students do not use them. You must grapple with the material to understand it, and this can be difficult and time-consuming--but when the light bulb goes off in your head, you will see that the time was very well-spent. However, if you cannot understand the material from reading the casebook, class notes, and from talking with the professor and other students, you need to seek help from other sources.

When do I outline?
Throughout the semester. After the first few weeks, try to outline each course, every week. Certainly, outline when you finish a section or chapter in your casebook. You might want to set aside Saturdays for outlining. Each week, add to the previous week's information. Some students outline a week or two before the exam. This is too late and results in extreme stress and "information overload."

How long should an outline be?

Long enough to be comprehensive, but not so long that the length is oppressive. Meaning--the length varies. You should have one comprehensive outline when you finish outlining at the end of the semester. You should condense that outline to several pages of black letter rules, principles and phrases that you can commit to memory during the study period and use as a checklist during an open-book exam. Other student outlines of the same professor's course might give you an idea on the length of your outline, but again: another student's work could be used as a guide; it should never become a substitute. An outline should not be a word-for-word regurgitation of your notes and case briefs. An outline is a summary of what you've learned. Think of an outline as a completed jigsaw puzzle; it should represent your attempt at putting all the pieces of what you've learned into one cohesive picture.

How do I put an outline together?

Step 1 Look at the table of contents of your casebook. What are the major categories listed (such as negligence, strict liability)? As an analogy, imagine you're putting together a puzzle; the first thing you need to do is look at the cover of the box to see what the completed picture should look like. Step 2 Write down all of the categories listed in the table of contents. These should be the major sections of your outline. Compare the order of the table of contents to the order that you covered the material in class. If your syllabus covers the material sequentially, from beginning to end, then your outline can follow the order of the table of contents. If your professor covered the material out of order or skipped certain sections of the book, use your syllabus as a guide in establishing the order of your outline. But still use the categories listed in the table of contents as the major sections of your outline. Let's say you're outlining torts and the first section, according to the table of contents, is "negligence".

Torts Outline
1. Negligence

Step 3 Directly following the heading, write a general sentence/paragraph about the topic. While the information may come from a casebook, hornbook or class notes, use your own words to explain the subject to yourself.

1.

Negligence

Unintentional conduct that falls below an acceptable standard of care....

Before continuing with the rest of the outline, ask yourself these questions about that section of the textbook:
What is this section about? What set of problems are presented by the cases in this section? How were the problems resolved in the cases? What do the case notes add to your understanding of this section? What issues arise from these problems? What rules (and principles) can be applied to solve the problems? What policy purposes are served by the rules and/or principles? What were the societal conditions which required the rules to be developed?

These questions set the stage. They help you put the topic in context and see the big picture. Step 4 Now that you have the main category, look for some parts that you can use to further break down this large concept. Sometimes, the table of contents will give you these parts; sometimes you've talked about them in class. Look for the parts and further subdivide your outline, as below. (To go back to the puzzle analogy, imagine that you've decided to work on the sky, so you gather all the smaller pieces that are blue -- somehow, all these pieces need to be fitted together so that you can construct the sky.)

1.

Negligence

Unintentional conduct that falls below an accepted level of care.

a. b. c. d. Duty Breach Causation Damages

Step 5

Flesh out each subpart with a definition, rule(s), explanation, or, in some cases, further subparts. Using the puzzle analogy, sometimes the sky is a good starting point for putting together a puzzle because of the color used in each piece--blue. But even the sky may have further subparts, like clouds, sun, stars, etc. Similarly, you may think you've isolated a sub-issue in your outline, but you may need to make further divisions. For example, you may find in doing the torts outline that you can further define and divide duty, like below:

1.

Negligence

Unintentional conduct that falls below an accepted level of care.

a. i. ii. 1. Duty Defined: _____________ To whom owed: Traditionally, only those who were in privity of contract were owed a duty. (majority rule)

As you consider the rules that relate to each legal concept, ask yourself whether you know the different types of rules or other considerations that might apply. You need to know more than the majority rule. Generally and depending on the course, you should understand and add to your outline the following:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Common Law, If different from the majority rule. Minority Rule Statutory Rule Modern Rule UCC Restatement Policy Considerations The particular view of your professor (very important).

1.

Negligence

Unintentional conduct that falls below an accepted level of care.

a. i. ii. 1. 2. Duty Defined: _____________ To whom owed: Traditionally, only those who were in privity of contract were owed a duty. (majority rule) Under the modern view, ...(minority rule)

Step 6 Find relationships among terms. Make sure that when you are constructing an outline, you stop to think about the relationship between and among terms. What is the relationship between duty and breach? Should duty come before causation? Why? Unless you know how each piece of your legal puzzle is connected, your outline will not bring you maximum results. Think about where each piece of the puzzle goes and how and why it belongs here and not there. Be flexible. Sometimes, you might have to move a piece from one place in the puzzle to another. However, as any good puzzler knows, you should never force a piece in where it does not belong. If you can't figure it out, ask another student, or better yet, a professor. Step 7 Add cases and hypotheticals. Notice that this is one of the final outlining steps. Cases and hypotheticals should be used to illustrate concepts or explain rules - they are only a piece of the puzzle, not the puzzle itself. Ask yourself what concept was this case meant to illustrate? You generally do not need to memorize the names and holdings of particular cases. You need to use what you have learned from the cases to analyze and resolve legal problems as they appear on exams.

1.

Negligence

Unintentional conduct that falls below an accepted level of care.

a. Duty

i. ii. 1.

Defined: _____________ To whom owed: Traditionally, only those who were in privity of contract were owed a duty. (majority rule)

For example, in the case of the belladonna,...

2. Under the modern view, ...(minority rule)

Step 8 Review and test. Having gone through your draft outline, make sure you aren't missing any pieces of the puzzle. Once you think your picture is complete, test it with a hypothetical. If the outline does not help you answer your hypothetical, you need to readjust. Your goal is to complete the outline with enough time to use it to answer practice exam questions.

Summary
The following are important summary points to remember when outlining:
An outline represents your understanding of how the various aspects of a course fit together, so you must create your own outline. Outlining is a process that takes place throughout the semester. Cramming to create an outline at the end of the semester does not work. Your outline should be built logically around legal concepts, not cases. Use cases and hypotheticals to illustrate those concepts.

How to Outline in Law School

Law exams can be very daunting, as they are usually the only grade for the semester and tightly curved. Law school outlines are key to organize thoughts and prepare.

Read more at Suite101: How to Outline in Law School | Suite101 http://suite101.com/article/how-to-outline-in-law-school-a64679#ixzz2LIAJZc1M Follow us: @suite101 on Twitter | Suite101 on Facebook

Though not every law student outlines, law outlines are an indispensable tool for the first year of law school. Law school outlines help a 1L figure out whats important and make the transition

from cases to legal rules, a gap that can be difficult to bridge at first, given the heavy focus on cases in class. Start Outlining Early and Find Out About the Exam Format Many professors will reveal the exam format on the syllabus, or very early on. If not, it never hurts to ask. The library may also carry old exams. In most closed-book exams, students can ignore cases entirely. Even on open book exams, professors rarely require that students remember the name of a case, with the possible exception of two or three big ones. What are important are legal rules. If the exam is multiple choice, it will be essential to understand legal rules and how they might apply to fact patterns. Multiple choice fact patterns, as with essay patterns, may resemble the facts of a case, but often there will be small changes. For this reason, its better to understand why a case was decided how it was, as opposed to every little detail of the fact pattern. For open-book exams, a clear and concise outline is essential. The student should always organize the outline in a way that makes sense to him or her, and be sure to highlight key points, especially those that are emphasized in class. Exams normally focus on what the professor considers important, not what the book does, so those points should be boldfaced or highlighted. Fine Tune the Outline Before the Exam and Create Additional Study Aids It is crucial to work on the outline throughout the semester. Outlining at the last minute often turns into not outlining at all, or being very unfamiliar with the outline. The last few weeks should be used not for creating outlines, but for fine-tuning them. If the exam is closed-book, the outline can be used as a study aid. Visual learners may be better able to remember important legal rules if they are bold-faced or highlighted. For open-book exams, students should keep in mind that there will not be enough time to flip carefully through materials or learn anything new. The best strategy for an open-book exam is to have all the information easy to access. This includes using colored flags to mark each section of the outline and casebook, using boldface or highlights for the most important legal rules, and creating a separate guide for supplements (the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, for example, or the Model Penal Code) with each sections topic listed and the most important topics bold-faced and easy to find. One final useful strategy for exam preparation is to use other materials to fill in any gaps. If part of the outline seems fuzzy or doesnt make sense, a good way to figure out what goes there is to consult an outline done by another student who had that professor (these may be available for legal fraternity members, or can be found just by asking around). Commercial outlines can also be useful, but students should always check the date of the outline and be wary of errors Read more at Suite101: How to Outline in Law School | Suite101

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Law Outlines

Good Law Outlines are For Memorizing the Law.

A student who has and knows how to use good law outlines will do significantly better than a student without law outlines. Law outlines are essential to a full understanding of the law and the process of making your own custom outline will assist you in the structural memorization of the law.

Law outlines are important because they cover the volumes of information that you are expected to know but are not covered in class because of time constraints.
The main purpose of class is to teach you the application of the law. Law classes are very similar to a chemistry lab. The cases are the experiments. The students and the professor apply rules of law to the facts presented and discuss the results to help the student achieve the ability to apply law to facts. You are expected to have already studied the applicable law and know it dead cold. You are in class to learn how to apply the law. You are not there to do a comprehensive review of the law on a particular subject. Thus relying on class discussions alone to create a good law outline is a serious mistake.

You Must Know the Law Before You Walk Into Class; Use Hornbooks or Get a Good Law Outline
All the law that you are supposed to know before going into class is usually contained in Hornbooks on the subject. Hornbooks are many thousands of pages of text. They are difficult to read because they contain so many case quotes and use the legal talk that mostly no one but professors of the law use. Legal talk is easy to understand if you understand the concept behind the words used. Legal talk is impossible to understand if you do not understand the particular concept behind the phrases used. A good law outline explains the concepts of legal talk in easy to understand English and a good law outline can relate the concepts to the words used in legal talk. This allows for a faster learning process with less confusion. You need to memorize the law. Hornbooks are very useful in helping you with areas of the law that present special problems for you, but they are useless as a tool for memorizing the law. A good law outline can be of enormous help in memorizing the law and in learning the application of the law. Some are formatted to allow you to memorize the information efficiently.

A Law Outline makes Memorizing the Law Less Difficult.

Your actual law outline selection process is usually dictated by choice and by your own personal understanding of the law. However, a few general rules do apply. Most students select law outlines to help them do better in classroom sessions. This is a mistake. You need to use a law outline to help you memorize the law so you will do well on the exams you are given. If you have classroom anxiety, buy a casebrief book. Professors, law students, and legal authors will tell you to make your own law outline from the material covered in class. This is a fatal error because classes are not a general law review. If you rely on class materials alone to make your law outline, you will only have a small snapshot of the law that you need to know to do well on law school and

bar exams. Most classes and courses only cover about 60% of the law you need to know and are expected to know. Therefore a good law outline will supply the additional law that was not covered in class. What the professors and other law students really mean to say is get a law outline that you can easily customize to cover the extra areas that your professor fails to cover.

A Good Law Outline Covers all the Law and is Not 800 Pages
A good law outline should contain most of the law covered by the hornbooks on the subject. That law outline should take that law and distill it into easily understood definitions and present it in manner that is easy to memorize. Most important is to get a law outline that is on computer so you dont have to waste a lot of time retyping or adding information. A custom law outline is the goal but you really want to spend most of your time memorizing the law outline and not in creating the law outline. So modification of a digital law outline to a custom one is the way to save the most time. Once you have decided on a law outline it is best to customize the information in a format that you like and is easy for you to memorize. We like the advice we learned about using law outlines and creating them from the How to Get A's in Law School. You can see that material reviewed by clicking on Get An A In Law School in left link column.

Law School Exam Writing

This article was reprinted by permission from Study Partner .

Law School Exam Writing 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: MEMORIZE APPLY DISSERTATE 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.(tm) 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: 2. Deft's murder of Sally. 2. Is Deft guilty of murder? 2. Deft's liability for killing Sally. 2. Murder. 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. Example: 2. Burglary. 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. CONCLUSION 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.

===================

Two Reasons You Need a Law School Outline (Loosely Conceived)

October 10, 2011 By Alison Leave a Comment

Making a law school outline serves two purposes: 1. youre forced to review and synthesize the material 2. its a useful reference when youre taking the exam You might think these two reasons have little in common. Youre right.
Outlining Forces You to Synthesize the Course on Your Own

The first purpose of an outline (and Im not necessarily talking about some 100-page monstrosity that includes everything that came out of your professors mouth over the course of the semester) is to force you to sit down and really pay attention to everything covered in the course. This is why its dangerous to rely too heavily on someone elses outline, even if they aced the class if youre just reading a great outline from the year before, youre not actively synthesizing the material yourself. Reading an outline someone else made can be useful as a starting point, or as a check on your own understanding, but its fundamentally different from struggling to understand the material on your own. Think about how much harder it is to write a book, than it is to read a book. It should be clear that a lot more mental effort is required to produce your own synthesis of the material, versus simply reading a summary someone else spent hours producing.
Is Outlining a Waste of Time? Or is it the Holy Grail?

Outlining is a funny aspect of law school. Id managed to go through my undergraduate and graduate education, pretty successfully, without ever once making an official outline of anything. Suddenly, in law school, the buzz was that you were doomed to abject failure unless you started outlining from day one. As exam day approached rumors started to fly about how so-and-so had a two-hundred page outline (based on a secret passed-down outline stored in a Swiss bank vault in the off season), until I was pretty sure that I, and most of the rest of the class, would flunk out after the first semester. Obviously that didnt happen.

How Did I Avoid Flunking Out of Law School?

What saved me from flunking out? Colored pencils. Yes, seriously. At some point towards the end of the first semester, I was so overwhelmed with how much material I needed to know that I decided to stop trying to update my perfectly crafted, beautifully typed, extremely long outlines (which Id no doubt based on a lovely prior example and updated, well, infrequently), and just decided to write down what I knew. I got out some blank paper, a pen, and a set of really nice colored pencils I had left over from architecture school. For each class, I looked at the syllabus (focusing on the subject headers), I flipped through the table of contents of the case book, and I thumbed through a commercial outline. Then I started to write. I made a list of what seemed to be the key principles of each course. Contracts, for example, probably had: Offer, Acceptance, Consideration, and Damages. Each of these became a header at the top of a new piece of paper. Slowly, I expanded each header, combining my class notes, information from prior outlines, and basic principles from commercial outlines and hornbooks until each class started to make sense. Critically, because I was doing all of this by hand, and Im inherently lazy, I didnt write very much. Each main principle fit on a single page or two, and I could spread out all the papers on the living room floor and see the entire course at a glance.
Why Was This Approach Helpful?

For me, the idea that everything I needed to know was spread out in front of me on the floor was soothing. Id been completely overwhelmed by all of the information in my computer outline, and hadnt had any way to really access it. Seeing everything spread out in front of me made things seem manageable. But having the short, hand-written outline also made my computer notes more helpful. Since I obviously couldnt put every single detail into my hand-written notes, I started to cross reference my typed class notes and prior outlines. If I wanted to be able to look up more detail about a particular aspect of the Statute of Frauds (which, to this day I refuse to commit to memory), for example, Id write Statute of Frauds with a one line explanation to job my memory, then note what pages in my other materials covered this topic in more detail. With these notations, I knew Id be able to quickly cross reference pesky details I was unlikely to remember during the exam, by simply flipping to the correct page in my longer notes.
Make Sure Your Outline is a Useful Reference for the Exam

Lots of people intuitively understand (or are told) that they need to outline to understand the material. However, its less obvious that your outline, however you make it, needs to be usable on the exam.

What does this mean? Think about your typical three-hour law school exam. You come in, read the exam, spend some time making notes, then write furiously for most of the allotted time. Its a high-stress, time-pressured environment. Consequently, its a perfect setup for NOT BEING ABLE TO FIND THINGS in your notes. Think about what its like to be really stressed out, and know that some piece of information is relevant, but not be able to remember where it is. You flip through your notes, knowing its just around the corner. You cant find it. Your blood pressure starts going up, your hands start sweating, and you start silently cursing: Damn it, I know it was right here! Where is it? Ack! I cant find it!!! Where is it?!? I am going to fail this class if I cant find the answer to this!@!@@! After a few minutes of this, youre in no state to think logically about anything.
Practice Makes Perfect

To avoid a stressful meltdown, figure out a system for finding details in your notes, and practice using it before you show up to an exam. After all, having the worlds most perfect outline doesnt do you much good if you cant find what you need!
Read On:

More law school advice, coming right up:

Law School Tip of the Day: Start Thinking About the Exam on the First Day of Class Should You Join a Law School Study Group? My Three Best Tips for Time Management Awesomeness

Return to Exam Prep 101.

How to Improve Your Law School Exam Grades

I just finished grading my fall semester exams. I am sure some of my students are not happy with

their grades, while others are. The old adage is that students make A's, but they are given Cs. Or Ds. That's not the case, of course. But it does raise this question: what are some of the critical factors in successful exam taking? What did you do well that you can replicate in future semesters? What did you do not so well that you can improve upon? Here are some common exam taking mistakes that I see. 1. Not answering the question. Law school exams rarely test the entire semester. Rather, they focus on a subset of what was covered and test it in detail. So if the exam question is on, say, rulemaking (Administrative Law), don't talk about other topics unless they have bearing on the question. If you do, that's wasted time and zero points. Corrollary to #1: If the question gives you clear facts, don't discuss what might happen if those weren't the facts. They're the facts, and you are supposed to apply them. Not pretend they are not there. If there is an ambguity in the question, fine--address it. But if a law is declared to be constitutional, don't waste time discussing how it might not be. 2. Not organizing your answer. Many law school exams are 3 hours only. You have a limited time to shine. And the way to shine is not to freewrite. Take time to figure out how to organize your answer, instead of just plunging in. 5 or 10 minutes up front may save you half an hour in answering the question. In fact, my rule of thumb is that perhaps 25% of your time during an exam should be spent reading the question carefully and outlining your answer. 3. When you outline your answer, include the outline at the top of your answer. That way if you run out of time, the professor can see where you were going to go and give you a few points. It makes a difference if the professor can see, in at least skeletal fashion, that you understood the basic parameters of the question. 4. Not citing to cases or materials covered during the semester and not using proper terminology. For better or worse, law is a verbal field. So proper terminology matters. You might have a solid grasp of what was discussed during the semester, but do you know the jargon? Think of law as a foreign language. When you speak in German, what words do you use? German ones. As for cases and materials, the exam is asking you to apply them to the fact pattern. So do that expressly. So much for exam taking. What about exam preparation? The following points are critical in my view to exam success. 1. Adequately preparing during the semester. Daily preparation matters, folks, especially in the really hard courses. Did you read the materials and work to digest them? Did you keep up with the reading? Did you prepare your own outline? Waiting until the last minute to study is the kiss of death. 2. Going to class during the semester. It's important to remember that you are taking both a class

and a professor. What does the professor like/dislike? Emphasize/not emphasize? In figuring this out, there is no substitute for going to class. That is not to suggest that you should only take notes and not do the reading, since often there are materials in the reading that are not discussed in class but can appear on the final exam. But if you can figure out what the professor expects, how she approaches the course, and so on, you have a better chance of writing an exam the professor will like. This, by the way, is good training for law practice: if you give the client something in the form he prefers (e-mail versus hardcopy mail, meeting versus memo), you are more likely to have a faithful (and paying) client. 3. Not asking the professor about the format of the exam. The professor should discuss this in class, but just in case, ask. Essay? Open book? Take-home? How many questions? When you show up for an oral argument you may not know what questions the judge will ask, but you do know the format. And there is some comfort and strategic advantage in that. The same is true for law school exams. 4. Not having a study partner. Two (or 3 or 4) heads are better than one when it comes to dissecting and analyzing a course. Others will think of problems and answers you haven't, and vice versa. That will make you better prepared come exam time. 5. Not asking a professor where you went wrong on a test. Did you do poorly? Go ask why. Not to challenge or argue, but to figure out what happened. It's too late in that class, but in a few short months you will be neck deep in exams all over again. So don't repeat the same mistakes twice. And frankly, it shows maturity and professionalism. Professors like that.

How to Learn to Do Well on a Law Shool Exam

By Scribe. Published October 2010.

Introduction, background, the major law school mass-delusion

OK, here it goes: When you are in law school, you have to learn how to take a law school exam. To take a law school exam, you must apply law to fact. Thats it. Simple. Easy money. If you do it, you will put your peers to shame. What WONT help you learn how to take a good law school exam? Having that special hornbook, that special outline from last years class, being the last person to leave the library, or taking notes in a special way. In order to do well you must learn how to take a better exam. Pick up your copy of getting to maybe (you dont own a copy of getting to maybe? You probably should) and turn to page 3. Getting to Maybe, Page 3: Chapter 1 Youre Not in Kansas Anymore

---------------------------------------------------------------------------A Place Where Knowing the Material Is Not Enough Thats the first of many pieces of golden advice in that book. When approaching law school, people's questions are invariably the same how do you study? How do you outline? Which hornbooks do you use, and how do you use them? The problem is that it all plays into the major law school mass-delusion: that if you somehow study harder/better/faster/stronger than your peers, you will get better grades. Put another way: At the end of the semester, everybody has a handful of grades within a very narrow spectrum, and nothing else to show for their work. As a result, people turn to the things they did or saw others doing more overtly - the studying of the law. But those grades are the result of two distinct elements: The first prong, how well you know the law. The second, how well you apply it to a novel fact pattern. A constant problem is that a lot of advice out there focuses on detailed descriptions of individual studying; the time spent doing it, methods of briefing, methods of note taking, which hornbooks were or were not found useful, etc. All of that is important to a degree, but it doesnt even border on sufficient. How any individual person studied for law school is, to be trite, only half the battle. Its all the first prong, knowing the law. To their credit, that advice also talks to a degree about how to approach taking exams, and what aids (LEEWS, GtM, etc.) to use to hone examtaking skills. But the most overt pieces of information, especially to somebody new to law school, are study methods. That first pronglearning the lawrequires reading cases, taking notes, going to class, taking notes, consulting hornbooks, making outlines, and studying. Guess what? Its not much different than anything else youve ever tried to learn. If youre going to law school in the U.S., youve gone to class, taken notes, and studied that information for at least a decade and a half before getting the chance to try it at law school. Nothing has changed. The case method is a little weird, but judicious (note I did not say overwhelming, furious, or comprehensive) use of hornbooks and old outlines will help you pick out what information you actually need to be learning, and help you better extract info from cases down the line. That's prong one - the law intake part. Some people mistake prong two, exam taking, for raw academic horsepower. Some people think the LSAT predicts it. Many nervous 1Ls think you can obtain success at it by doing prong one until your eyes bleed and they drag you out of the library an hour after closing on a Tuesday night. A growing number of people realize that they need to figure prong two out, then take a pass at getting to maybe, but never really get there. Hopefully this post will serve as a guide to the non-obvious task you face in law school: deciphering the concept of the law school exam.

Prong 1: Learning the law, or getting to getting to maybe

Law School Confidential, Page 128: Imagine that Law School is a horse race. On the first day of classes, the professors pass out the syllabi, the gates spring open, and the horses (thats you) burst forth from the cages. In a real hose race, however, the thoroughbreds charge forward on a beeline course down the track toward the finish line. In law school, however, when the gates open, the first-year students charge out of their cages and spray out in any number of directions in a zealous but aimless charge. Not surprisingly, after fourteen weeks barreling off in the wrong direction, many of these hapless 1Ls cross the finish line exhausted, frustrated, and completely confused. Worse yet, many of them end up bombing their first-semester exams, and their dismal results hang on their necks like albatrosses for the rest of their law school careers. Prong one has been done to death, so Im going to keep it short. Read your cases, try to decipher rules from them. Write down SOME notes as you read them, but theres no need to brief fully. Watch out for highlighters, they can make you think youre learning when really you just highlight what you dont understand. Pen or typed notes work better, they engage your brain more fully. At some point (early or late) create your own outline. Consult hornbooks when lost, confused, or new. Never read about topics that were not covered in class. Learn well the fact that every professor (and by extension, every hornbook author) has a different take on exactly what the law is and how it applies. Feel free to try flashcards, dont worry about the length of your outlines. Memorize your shit whether its open or closed book. Done. Hopefully that cursory treatment hits home my main point: Its the least interesting and least important part of law school. Pro tip: once you get good at exams, you realize that 1Ls work way too hard for their grades (good or bad). Thats fine, theres something to be said for overpreparing / covering all of your bases. But the kids who grade on to law review stay at the top of the class even while spending dozens of hours per week cite checking, flying around the country doing interviews, and participating in other ECs. How? They realize that learning a body of law doesnt require memorizing 3 treatises and constructing a 4,000 page outline. Theyve learned how to properly take a law school exam, they understand how much law they need to learn, and they do it quickly and efficiently. Their grades do not suffer. Joseph Glannon, The Law of Torts 3rd Edition, page 575, wrote: Its a dirty little secret that you really dont have to know an awful lot of law to do well on a first-year exam. Sure, you need to study the material and have a good grasp of the basic doctrines you studied. But most of the issues even those much more difficult than the [issue discussed in a prior paragraph] involve sophisticated application of basic doctrine rather than encyclopedic knowledge of the farthest reaches of the torts landscape. Most students spend inordinate amounts of time learning more and more rules, and very little time practicing the skill of applying the fundamental rules to new facts. You would be wiser to spend less time memorizing rules and more time applying them. To emphasize: The name of the game is sophisticated application of basic doctrine.

Prong 2: Learning how to take a law school exam

This is the prong thats important. And its taken me hundreds of words to get here oops. Ah well, yall have to get used to the fact that law school involves a lot of reading sooner or later. Note that the title of this section is not taking a law school exam. I want to talk about the process of teaching yourself the skill, rather than laying down precisely what I think the skill should be. (Spoiler: the skill is 'apply law to fact')

Prong 2A: Foundation how a law school exam is graded

Professors have many different ways to grade exams. Some do it holistically and apply a letter at the end. Others sort into piles. Some use checklists, some just add points when they see proper analysis. Most professors grade exams by awarding points for correct application of law to fact. The significance of this should not escape you. Theres a way to get points on a law school exam, and your job is to figure out how to GET POINTS on a law school exam. Not learn as many rules as possible, but learn how your application of those rules will turn into check marks, ticks, pluses, smiley faces, and large numbers scrawled all over your exam in red ink. 42 Vand. L. Rev 433, 449, wrote: The contemporary discourse among law faculty about law students and Blue Book exams provides additional evidence of the shift to an objective method of grading Blue Book essays. Law faculty today do not talk much about A exams, B exams, and C exams, or A students, B students, and C students, as they apparently once did. Instead, our discourse is about the theological niceties of point scales for grading essay answers; about score sheets, answer keys, and model answers; about high and low C grades or near As and near Bs (distinctions within distinctions); and about excellent, average, and weak students, whom we tend to characterize exclusively by examination scores and class ranks rather than by statements about their professional promise. Youre going to encounter (written on TLS, discussed in the halls of your law school) a lot of pushback with respect to law school exams and how arbitrary they are. When you encounter this pushback, remember that just because you dont see the grading process and arent taught well how to handle it doesnt mean there isn't method to the madness behind the black box of exam grading. Approach the process as rational, put in the work, and enjoy rational results. Heres a quick example of how points might be awarded on a law school exam for a particular issue: 2004 Mich. St. L. Rev. 1 wrote: 5 - precisely identified issue, argued from facts, precedent and policy as appropriate, examined

both sides of arguments, evaluated relative strength of argument, noted relationship of issue to other issues and overall outcome 4 - clearly identified issue, noted arguments for both sides but presented well developed argument for one side only, drew conclusion with some relationship to overall outcome 3 - clearly identified issue, argued one side only, drew summary conclusion 2 - identified issue, articulated but did not apply legal standards for resolution of the issue, drew summary conclusion 1 - identified issue and drew summary conclusion 0 - missed issue, stated rules without identifying issue Nothing scary there. And even if thats just one rubric from one exam, I guarantee you that it strongly resembles the methods that will get you points in other contexts. Law school exams, for all of their many pedagogical flaws, do have a lot to do with the fundamental work of lawyers. Analyzing, arguing, showing the strength of both sides, and evaluating the strengths of those sides eventually favoring one over the other. Having a lot of Plaintiff will argue __________. Defendant will respond ____________. On your exam is a good way to ensure youre racking up points. (How did that random bit of advice about taking law school exams sneak in there? This is supposed to be about teaching you how to teach yourselves...)

Prong 2B: Learning how to get points

Practice exams are a good way, and Ill discuss those shortly. In general you need to think about some mechanical things: If your professor is going to grade with a checklist of some kind, you should approach your exam in a checklist friendly manner. Use LOTS of headings and subheadings. In fact, put them down before any of your analysis to help guide your answer. Make sure you cover issues from every angle, and consider bringing in an issue checklist to make sure youre not missing any big premises in the fact pattern. Beyond that, you need to read, read, and re-read information about law school exams. Dont skim Getting to Maybe the week before class and call it a semester. It's just not enough - you've got to think about, learn, and practice the process of taking a law school exam over and over and over again. I read Getting to Maybe 3 times once before law school, once a week into law school, and once just before exams. I wish Id done it more. Read it with a pen just like youd read your cases, and engage it. Put thoughts on the paper. Circle concepts that will give you points. Marvel at the insight on the top of page 191, and imagine how you too can approach an exam playfully. The key isnt necessarily just reading the words over and over. What's important is to read the concepts over again as you gain experience reading cases, taking practice exams, and putting

together an entire area of law. You'll get more out of it each time; the advice will become more concrete. Other strong sources are out there, including many linked below. You certainly dont need every perspective on the matter, but the more the merrier. Another absolutely critical aspect is getting inside your professors head. I can tell you how most law professors do things (in no small part due to the level of inbreeding in the legal academy) but I cant tell you how YOUR law professor will do things. Pay attention to his/her favorite topics, consult recent on-point law review articles (not always useful) to see what they think is important, and religiously study released practice exams and model answers. The more you know what to expect from YOUR professor walking into the exam, the better you will do. While I recommend many out of class sources such as law review articles and practice exams, the most important source by far is just what your professor covers in class. Sure, an issue they only talked about for one day may be a highlight on the exam youre on notice, go to class and learn the material. But youll never see obscure info from the notes section of your casebook play a big part on the exam if it was never covered in class. Still, the best way to get points is to APPLY LAW TO FACTS. Ill let a law professor sum it up for me: Eric E. Johnson, on PrawfsBlawg, wrote: Heres my boiled-down counsel to law-exam newbies: Unsurprisingly, its mostly variations on a familiar theme: apply the law to the facts. In fact, to save everyone time and annoyance, I will omit repeating myself by adopting this convention: Everywhere you see " * ", insert this phrase: "Youve got to apply the law to the facts." (1) Do not make moral arguments. Dont argue whats fair. * (2) Do not write at length about the law without referencing the facts. * Merely regurgitating the law does not show your mastery of the subject or demonstrate your analytical abilities; it therefore earns you no points. (3) The reciprocal is just as important: Do not write at length about the facts without referencing the law. * Merely rehashing the facts does not show your mastery of the subject or demonstrate your analytical abilities; it therefore earns you no points. (4) No matter how nervous, anxious, or pressured you feel during the exam, do not rely on a crutch to keep writing to the exclusion of doing the hard work of legal analysis. Making moral arguments, regurgitating law, and rehashing facts (see 1, 2, and 3, above) are all dangerous temptations they offer a way to keep writing, and thus provide the illusion that you are making progress. They are a Sirens' song. Resist.

(5) IRAC is not the Holy Grail. If you can write a good exam without IRAC, then you should absolutely forget about it. On the other hand, if some kind of structural aid is essential to get you to perform legal analysis in writing, then IRAC might help you.

Prong 2C: Taking practice exams

Heres something key. Just like I know a lot of people who read getting to maybe only to find it was far from a panacea, I know many people who took a pile of practice exams and didnt get a lot out of them. Whatever, a TLS poster, wrote: Yeah this is entirely true. I probably worked harder than most people my first semester and was still bottom 10%. It's not a function of what you know, it's how you apply it, and if you're not thinking about how you apply the knowledge during the semester, you're in trouble. You can only do your best the first time around, and if you succeed, awesome, and if you don't, you'll have to do what I did last year - meet with your professors, figure out what you did wrong and go from there. I can guarantee you that there will be people you think are kinda bozos that end up on law review, and there will be people you think are total geniuses who will not end up on law review. The person who studies the most won't get the best grades, either. Practice tests are great but I found them useless my first semester since I was taking the exams wrong anyway. I could have taken a million exams and done terribly anyway. Taking practice exams only helps if you know how to take a law school exam. I read all the books and understood what I was *supposed* to do beforehand - I don't know. I just needed that sample set of grades and I needed to talk it through with my professors before I knew what was going on. When you take your practice exams, keep the mindset of doing all of the right things. Apply law to fact, apply law to fact, apply law to fact. Then apply some more law to fact. Dont worry about conclusions, and dont worry about solving the legal problem before you start writing about how to solve it. The moment you finish writing the exam your work has just begun. I cannot stress this enough find a likeminded law student or two and dissect the shit out of your exams. For bonus points, actually try to grade them. How would you do it if you were a professor? Focus on specific issues. If youre doing a contracts hypo, take the issue of fraud and compare everyones treatment of it. How could it be better? How often were people restating legal rules without analysis (which wont get you points), how often were people re-typing facts without applying legal rules (Which wont get you points), how often are the rules and facts combined to come up with a conclusion in an overly conclusory manner (which not only wont get points, but many law students will mentally feel counts as spotting the issue)?

This exam post-mortem, with a focus on points, is the most important thing you can do. I dont mean to fetishize check marks or rubrics, but I strongly believe that if you can take two exam answers written live by earnest law students and figure out why one got more points than the other, you will gain a powerful advantage over your peers. First, law school exams will stop being quite so scary youll be the bearer of the secret knowledge that even if at first blush exams seem similar, it is quite possible to figure out which is better. Second, youll be able to use that knowledge to focus your keystrokes come exam time on those sentences and thought processes that you know GET YOU POINTS in advance. Hint: It will be those sentences and thoughts in which you apply law to fact.

Prong 2D: Sources for learning about law school examsmanship

Arrows nearly legendary advice: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=77628 Xeoh85's Advice on Success in Law School viewtopic.php?f=2&t=36635 Wahoo1L's Advice for doing well at a T10 viewtopic.php?f=2&t=78769 JayCutler'sCombover's blog / advice viewtopic.php?f=11&t=77498 TLS article about success in law school (unique perspective): http://www.top-law-schools.com/success-in-law-school.html Pay special attention to high-performing TLS members who provide useful advice all the time. A far from exhaustive list of helpful TLS posters with a rich history of providing solid advice: TTT-LS, steve_nash, edcrane, BradyToMoss, ToTransferOrNot, PKSebben, and the above mentioned guide-writers (Arrow, Xeoh85, Wahoo1L, JayCutler'sCombover)

Finale: Odds and Ends

Prep before law school: Absolutely not. Im not convinced it would hurt, but you wont be getting a leg up. Trust me on this one. LEEWS: Yes, but the formula wont actually work if you follow it word for word. Use it as an insight into law school exams, heed especially the advice on outlining. Getting to Maybe: Yes. Read it at least twice during the semester, dont expect to get anything out of it if you read it before school starts except fun and a little direction for studying.

Cold calls: If class participation matters, be ready. Even if it doesnt, youve read the case so it shouldnt be that bad. DO NOT let yourself get caught up in cold call mania. It doesnt matter if you look dumb when youre cold called. Many of mine were terrible. Hornbooks: Glannon for civ pro (I didnt use it though) and probably for torts. Chemerinsky for Con Law. Otherwise wait, listen to your professor for recommendations. Look for a hornbook your prof wrote. Look for a hornbook the casebook author wrote. Failing all of that, consult a few at the library and see which seem to match the way the material is taught in your class. Be adaptive, dont just buy everything or take the advice of somebody who was a 1L last year at another school. Exam length: Doesnt matter as long as youre not a painfully slow typer. Many people do well by typing a lot, many people do well by not typing a lot. Try to avoid the anxiety-inducing pissing contest.

Conclusion
That was exhausting. Good luck, try to have fun. Its way too much work and stress to do this if youre not loving it. Hardly every second of every day, but in the end if you cant look yourself in the mirror and say Im happy to be at law school then no amount of advice can motivate you to get the As/Hs and the opportunities that they lead to. Yikes this wound up being long. Oh, apply law to fact. It'll get you good grades. Gather class notes, briefs, case book, any study aids (including other outlines), the syllabus ORGANIZE THE OUTLINE AROUND ISSUES NOT CASES...SYNTHESIZE! Use the syllabus, the table of content of the case book, and commercial outlines to help organize the issues...develop rules of law and use cases as examples USE YOUR OWN WORDS!! Of course there are legal terms you need to use, but the outline is for you. Use language that makes sense to you. Even if use another outline, rewrite in your own words. Go from general to specific

Start the

Not starting soon enough is often a problem. You should be working on your

Outline Early!

outline within 2-3 weeks after classes start. Use the table of contents of your textbook and/or commercial outline BUT follow the order that your professor follows

Decide on the Theory, Organize around the cause of actions (Battery), Theory (Consideration), Concept Concept, (Due Process), or Defense (Self-Defense) of the Course Cause of Action, Defense Arrive at the Primary Rule for the Theory, Concept, Cause of Action, or Defense Break the rule into elements (component parts), define the standard or test for each element and any exception to the definition Use case in casebook Use notes in the case book Use notes from hornbook or commercial outlines Use note from class

Arrive at this definition: same as arriving at rule In law school you will be tested on the elements You will need to know definition quite well Tackle the element in the order covered in your textbook, professor or casebook

Identify Alternative or Minority See above Rules. Break the rule(s) into elements Illustrate Use two or three very short fact patterns

the definitions and the exceptions Identify the policy reasons behind the rule(s), element(s), standard(s) and test(s)

Illustration makes it easier to memorize the rule The more fact patterns you expose yourself to, the easier for you to know which rule is called into use

Wish I Would Have Known

Advice from law students on how they would do things over.

Outlining 101
This was originally posted at Thanks, But No Thanks. Nobody, the author, alternates with the Legal Underground and writes the weekly law school roundup. Reposted with permission. Recently, one of the test prep companies on campus made the (grievous) mistake of inviting me to come in and speak to the 1Ls on "Survival Tips for Your 1L Year." Hey. Quell your laughing, guys. They were serious, though I sort of suspect I was their backup choice. I love this sort of event, for the same reason I like blogging: giving out unsolicited advice is one of my favorite hobbies. Anyway, I spoke on a panel of 4 upperclassmen from varying backgrounds and of varying academic interests. We had to answer all the token questions: Do you have any smart survival tips? (Obviously. Some more useful than others.) Is there anything you wished you knew? (Yes. Enough to write a book on it), Do you have any Socratic method horror stories? (I gave them the gory details of my first day of school) We also got this one: What do I do about outlining? This is what I said: 1. Just Do What Works for You: Mwhahahahah. Kidding. Sorry. Everyone says this in law

school. What "just do what works for you" actually means is "I'm not that confident about my own system, and frankly, I've stumbled through so many that I can't remember how I got here anyway." The Just Do What Works For You approach isn't all that helpful if you have no idea what works for you. The approach I recommend is the Don't Freak Out If Someone Else Does It Different approach. Someone is going to have a longer, more color-coded, outline than you do. Someone else will have an index. It will all be ok: you are good enough, smart enough, and you've spent enough damn hours on this outline that you're going to have to live with it. 2. Remember, Outlining is About Access: You do not need to know what Justice Storey said on page 49 of that opinion. I promise. Your outline should not contain this material. What your outline should do is provide a roadmap to the class. This means that major themes are featured, recurrent questions are addressed, and materials are synthesized (more on that later) in a way that makes them easy to access in your mid-exam flurry. 3. Class counts: If a topic is highlighted in class, you should have it in your outline. Your book notes will be helpful filler, but in 2.5 years of law school, I have yet to encounter an exam that favored topics exclusively covered in the book over lecture notes. Think about it. Your professor has several hours a week to hear himself talk about whatever he'd like. If he wanted you to ignore what he was saying, he would have made this a paper class. My rule is this: if it is mentioned more than two days in class, the topic gets its own heading in my outline. Less than 10 minutes, and it doesn't make it in. 4. On the role of the book: One of the biggest mistakes I made 1L year was trying to synthesize the enter textbook into my outline. I ended up with a torts outline that was 109 pages long. This made people look at me like I was a crazy person (accurate) and was pretty much impossible to use during the exam, because it was so long and bulky (see #2). I think this is a common 1L problem. Laying too heavily into the book not only ties up the time that would be better spent outlining or studying, but it can cause you to neglect the information that was focused on in lecture. 5. Easy there, turbo: Step slowly away from the squib cases. It is hard, when you're outlining, to resist the urge to put everything in there. To avoid this temptation and assuage my neurosis, I bring (a) class notes, (b) reading notes and (c) a copy of the assigned texts into my finals, when it is allowed. Here's the beauty of that approach: you don't have to put everything in your outline. If your professor throws you a curveball question, you will have your class notes, reading notes, and your book (which you've been taking notes in the margins in all along) to help you out. If none of those things help you, take a deep breath: everyone else is screwed too. 6. The Best Outline Prep is Reading: Seriously. Stay up on your reading. You're going to be almost $100k in debt for this- you might as well make your class time worth it by being prepared. That said, if you get behind (and you will)- it is ok to focus on the "big" cases and let the shorter ones slide when you start outlining. If it comes down to really understanding International Shoe or not, you're going to need to damage control. Get the big 'uns, and resist the urge to "catch up" on all of your reading when do you your outline- you do not need to have assiduous notes on every case, so long as you can find a case if you need it.

7. On Timing: I started outlining in mid-October, realized that nothing I'd done was useful, and started over again in November. This was later than I would have preferred, but not the end of the world. On a 4 unit class, I spent approximately 20-30 hours on my outline, over the course of the semester. I suspect this skews to the heavier side, but I could be wrong. I say this to warn you: it is easy to underestimate how long this process takes, especially first semester 1L year. I recommend starting in early to mid-October. I don't recommend starting earlier- its hard to figure out the big picture of your courses when you're still trying to figure out what the hell is going on. As a 2L, I outlined in the last 2 weeks of the semester. That was about perfect for my purposes. Here's What Works for Me: Candidly, this is how I outline. No one would give me a straight answer when I was a 1L, so I've done my best to explain my system. If it doesn't make sense, feel free to ask for clarification. There will be 2L and 3L readers that think I am full of crap- they may be on to something, but this is the system I have worked out:
1. First, I grab the professor's syllabus*: He writes the test, so I figure he probably knows whats important. I use the syllabus as the framework for my outline. So, if Section I on the syllabus is "Personal Jurisdiction"guess what is Section I in my outline? Then, I grab my book: I take the assigned reading, and I go through section by section, incorporating it into my baby outline. If it is bolded in the book, it goes into the outline. I add each case as well, noting the casebook page for each case. Then, I grab my class notes: I go through my class notes and fill out the "meat" of my outline. I like doing things in this order because, once I've incorporated my class notes, I can really see where the gaps in my learning are. This is also a great way to check (a) that you have all the class notes, and (b) see graphically what the prof has focused on. Then, I incorporate my reading notes: My reading notes fill in the gaps where my lecture notes are missing stuff. For cases, I include a bullet point or two summarizing the reasoning or significance of the case, and a quick byline that reminds me what the case is about. When I am feeling particularly anal-retentive, I make sure that each case is labeled with the page number of the reading material it is on (disclaimer: I have never used this feature). For example: Hawkins v. McGee (hairy hands case), CB 321 - Damages should be difference between what was bargained for and what was recieved. - Pain and suffering are not compensable here because pain and suffering are part of the deal for surgery. - It is way too easy to make a masturbation joke here. Finally, I "synthesize": Every prof will tell you to do this. I am not entirely clear on what it means, but here's what I do: I go through my outline, and I read it, top to bottom. I go section by section, and I rewrite. During this stage, I do a lot of condensing- this is helpful because (a) it helps me to recognize recurrent themes in the course, and (b) it makes my outline less unwieldy. Often, this is where I discover that there are some unanswered questions in my notes- I start to realize what I don't understand, and what I have a good handle on. More generally at this point in the game, I try to figure out what each case stands for, and the major themes of each section. Looking at the notes, I ask: what was the point of including this case? (note: this is differnet than "what was the point of this case?") I edit my outlines frequently, and re-read them frequently- outlines are all about the process of outlining, so this is basically review, channeling my OCD tendencies into something productive.

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Last but not least, I share: This is not a required step, but it is often very helpful. Once I have a solid outline (or at least a solid outline section), I go through it with someone else. Often, in talking about the material, we each tease out new questions. Two heads are better than one, in many cases, but be careful: just copying someone else's outline is often more confusing than helpful.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Law school time savers: Typing

This post was originally posted at i don't wear skinny jeans, a blog written by a current NYU 1L. Reposted here with permission.

The comments on his post may have more useful shortcuts added since he wrote this text. You should check it out. Also, you should read his blog.

It can be tiring to take lengthy class notes and write briefs on your computer (for those of us that still brief). To make it easier, we use shorthand. I thought it would be useful to compile a list of the keyboard shortcuts and typing shorthand that people find helpful. Typing Shorthand
Attorney = atty Common Law = c/l OR cLAW Consideration = or cx Constitution = C Contract = K Court = ct Defendant = D or Federal = fed General Rule = GRULE Jurisdiction = jdx or juris Majority Rule = majR Minority Rule = minR Negligence = neg or negc Plaintiff = P or Rule Against Perpetuity = rap Standard of Review = sor State = st Statute of Fraud = sof Statute of Limitations = sol Strict Liability = SL Summary Judgment = sj Supreme Court of the United States = SCOTUS OR SCt Two part words (e.g., affirmative action) = x/y (e.g., a/a) About = a/b Amendment = ame

Argument = arg Because = b/c Between = btw or b/w Commercial = comm Different = diff Discrimination = disc Each = ea Employee = EE Employer = ER Employment = emp Ending with -ion = ^n Especially = esp For = 4 From = f/ Government = gov OR govt Not = ! or or % Point = pt President = pres Probably = prob Property = prop Reaction = rxn Required = reqd Review = rev Should = sd Something = sthg Standard = std Statement = stmnt Within = w/in Without = w/out With Respect To = w.r.t. Would = wd

Keyboard Shortcuts OneNote

Ctrl + (Shift + L) OR . = Bullet point Ctrl + / = Numbering Alt + Shift + (Left Arrow OR Right Arrow) = tab line left or right Ctrl + 2 = Star Ctrl + 3 = Question Mark Ctrl + 4 = Yellow Highlight (of the entire line of text) Ctrl + 5 = Green Highlight (of the entire line of text) Text + Tab = Creates a table

Microsoft Office (for Macs, Ctrl = Apple button)

Alt + 0167 (or customize as Ctrl + Shift + S) / Mac: Option + 6 = Alt + 8710 (or customize as Alt + P or Ctrl + Shift + P) / Mac: Option + J= Alt + 227 (or customize as Alt + D or Ctrl + Shift + D) / Mac: Option + P = Alt + 0248 / Mac: Option + O =

Ctrl + (B or I or U) = Bold OR Italics OR Underline Ctrl + (C or V) = Copy OR Paste Ctrl + (Z or Y) = Undo OR Redo

If you have any to add, leave it in the comments and Ill update this post. I realize I may be a minority in doing stuff like this. Obsessive and compulsive, i.dont.wear.skinny.jeans