Top Law Schools

So all my exams this semester are gonna be take-home. I know the traditional advice from TLS has been to shorten your outline to an optimal length from 12-(at most)25 but due to the fact that it's gonna be a take home, does this advice no longer be relevant?

Also I expect posters to comment how either they didn't outline and got an A or left their 100 pg outline as it was and pulled a 4.0. I'm more interested not in the outliers but what would yield the best outcome in most instances.

Also I would probably still edit it but no longer be concerned with knowing my outline cold or compact but would focus on it being very detailed more so than what I would from my other outlines. That's my guess. Also any general tips on how to take a take-home vs a in-class exam would be greatly appreciated.

Wearthewildthingsr wrote:So all my exams this semester are gonna be take-home. I know the traditional advice from TLS has been to shorten your outline to an optimal length from 12-(at most)25 but due to the fact that it's gonna be a take home, does this advice no longer be relevant?

Also I expect posters to comment how either they didn't outline and got an A or left their 100 pg outline as it was and pulled a 4.0. I'm more interested not in the outliers but what would yield the best outcome in most instances.

Also I would probably still edit it but no longer be concerned with knowing my outline cold or compact but would focus on it being very detailed more so than what I would from my other outlines. That's my guess. Also any general tips on how to take a take-home vs a in-class exam would be greatly appreciated.

The traditional TLS advice is wrong in the first place, and yes, your outline for a take-home exam should definitely be longer and more thorough than a 3 hour exam. "I'm more interested not in the outliers but what would yield the best outcome in most instances." Writing a law school exam is too subjective to answer this confidently, other than stating the obvious that you have 8 hours (or however long) to write often a word limited answer, so yes, you have much more time to dig through your outline and so it's worthwhile to make a more thorough and detailed outline.

You don't need to cut down your outline for a take home, but for many people the process of cutting down the outline is what helps them learn the material. So it might be a worthwhile exercise, even though you'll have time to use the big outline on the actual test.

Take home exams typically only expect you to do as much writing as you'd do on a 3-4 hour in class exam. Treat it like you would an in-class exam with four extra hours built in.

This is completely open book, right? What's the point of cutting anything down - you can just do control find to find whatever you need on your outline. Cutting it down is to make things easier to flip through and search. I mean, why would you even need to outline if you do all your notes in one document and you can just control find inside of your notes?

If it's some kind of take home that still locks down your computer (I've never heard of this, but I guess it could be possible), then yes you should cut down your outline to something easy to flip through.

I've found that for the 2 take homes last semester, time was not an issue. So digging through the outline is not gonna be a problem. Thanks everyone for the great advice.

Copy-paste from outline to exam.

Hand in.

Embrace the B+.