FIRST YEAR LAW STUDENTS EXAM (FYLSE) 2016 OCT Forum

[topherino]

DISCUSS

[wittywitless]

At some point, my school purports to put on an exam writing seminar. I do not know if yours does.

I feel like it would be of anybody's interest to maybe read through "Open Book" and "Getting to Maybe" before that, and start working through E&Es.

Hypotheticals appear to rule our lives, might as well start learning how to argue on both sides early...

[Shema]

Final exams are right around the corner and it’s time get your outlines exams. What I advise 1Ls to do is to key their outline to their exam. Wouldn’t it be really cool if when you spotted an issue on exam day your outline told you exactly what rule to use and what succinctly to say about the cases, hypotheticals, and policies from your class to support the specific issue you spotted. That's really optimistic but it would save you tons of time!

Here’s the problem students face. Most students will design their outline in the same chronological order the topics were presented in class. That’s just not smart. Here’s why. An outline is a tool to assist you in writing a strong exam answer. However, essay exam fact patterns are not often framed to be answered in the order they were presented in class. The parties and the facts are all over the place and design to confuse you or to test on how well you can synthesize legal issues into salient and concise analysis. Since your outline is the last step before taking practice exams or the final exam it’s a good idea to create a tool that is as closely keyed to the steps on an exam as possible.

You might be wondering how it is you can write an outline keyed to your professor’s exam. The truth about law school exams is that your professor has a pattern. If there are past exams then you can unlock the pattern and design an outline that’s keyed to your exam. This is better than relying solely on a study group who are no more experienced in law school than you are (although the right study group can totally dominate if I might add). If you are in the tough situation of not having past exams don’t worry. Use previous outlines, your class notes and your course syllabus to help you locate similar exam fact patterns that work with your professor. (Some law schools such as South Western or Pepperdine even have professor that give what are called "cut sheets" that detail the issues. But even at schools like UCLA, USC or Loyola there are quite a few profs that will have fairly good model answers and sometimes you can even track down a 2L with a grading rubric from a past exam. (those are god-sends for creating an outline keyed to the exam.)

Anyway, back to the reason why it's possible to writ an outline keyed to your exam...You see, there are three reoccurring sections of an exam answer. First are Issue headings. Second are rule statements and lastly is the application or analysis section which consists of pro-arguments and counter arguments supported by factual inferences, the cases you read for class, hypotheticals and important policy issues from class. Right now your notes or outline have some of these parts but they are probably not organized and keyed precisely to the exam. What you can do is construct your outline so that it is stream lined and organized in a way that makes writing exam analysis a lot more efficient and designed to be awarded points. This way when you spot an issue you will know exactly what rule to site and what exactly to say about the cases hypotheticals and policies that relate to the issue you spotted. The benefit is that you will save time and be able to study from an outline tailored to your professor’s class instead of wasting tons of hours writing an outline that isn’t exam tailored. Now that the outline is done you can begin getting practice with practice exams.

Here's one of many examples of what I'm attempting to describe. The example is based on a Personal Jurisdiction Exam topic outline. In an untraditional way this outline is more of an example template because it tells the 1L exactly what to analyze at each step and even includes what to specifically to argue about cases.

Here's the link:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Qqh ... sp=sharing

[TheSpanishMain]

I wish Brut was here

[A. Nony Mouse]

Shema honey, this thread is about the California baby bar exam people at unaccredited schools have to take after the first year, not regular law school exams. Also don't shill.