1L Exam Q&A Forum

[Companion Cube]

Rules & policies. Most people's outlines suck - you're looking for at least comprehensive, but rarely find strong organization or synthesis.

Facts, procedural posture, and dissents aren't completely useless as background information and knowledge, but are usually just clutter in an outline.

I agree that dissents are generally useless (except in con law). I will say that they can be a free source of counter argument. "P will argue X. D will argue Y (the dissenting argument). P will likely lose because the majority in [case] held against Y.

[thesealocust]

Yeah, this is another question with a different answer for 1st semester 1Ls trying to gun their little hearts out vs. everyone else. Even 2nd semester it's probably fine to wait until near the end of classes to think about outlining.

First semester though, you're going to be slow and terrible at outlining, so it's worth putting that effort in early to save time at the end for refining and practicing. Forgetting isn't an issue - outlining isn't a once and done thing, you should be reviewing and revising and studying your outline all semester if you start early.

studying my outline all semester as in like memorizing it?

No. Your outline is just a document that lists all of the rules in a course. The entire point of taking the course is to learn its rules. You'll be thinking about those rules all semester, as you look at old outlines, supplements, take practice questions, review and revise the outline, etc.

It's not that you sit down and memorize it word for word, it's that the document itself is nothing more than a living reflection of the law you're learning, and you'll be learning it off and on all semester.

[Leonardo DiCaprio]

i gotcha

[Leonardo DiCaprio]

people on these boards have often mentioned typing speed as an important "skill" for exams. were they being facetious or is this for real? the focus on typing speed makes it seem like it's not so much about depth of anal but how much ground you cover in terms of issues

[thesealocust]

The most common essay grading method is to award a point for every reasonable argument you write.

Shouldn't be much of a stretch to see how typing quickly is helpful.

[PeanutsNJam]

depth of anal

180

I guess it makes sense, I mean how do you grade an exam when you can only award 5 As, but 20 people in the class basically know every single law forwards and backwards? You see who can spot/write down the most analysis.

[twenty]

Relying on super fast typing skills is not necessarily as great as it sounds. In fact, it can kind of be a siren song for a lot of people that don't understand how to write for exams.

Anecdotally, my class had a girl who was always mouthing off about how she was going to transfer to Harvard and how her (made up?) disability accommodations were going to place her in the top whatever percent of the class easily. After winter break I overheard her sobbing to her friend that she'd barely made median. I'm guessing her second semester wasn't phenomenal either, because she ended up not transferring anywhere.

On law exams, it's dangerously easy to write about things that won't get you points. I'd rather be the guy that barely types 60 wpm, has his (really good) outline memorized, and knows what the professor is looking for than be the guy that types 100 wpm, has an okay outline, and read some supplements and called it a day.

[A. Nony Mouse]

I think it depends on the prof/exam. I definitely had profs whose method of writing an exam that would generate a curve was to fill the exam with way more issues than anyone could spot and write about in 3 hours - they wanted to avoid the situation where they were faced with 80% of exams getting all the same points and they had to distribute them on a curve. You still need to know your outline and what the prof is looking for, but someone who can type/write fast gets more points than someone who can't, all else equal, because you just cover more of the issues. It's not what I would prioritize in studying and I think in practice it's a marginal benefit when all the other factors are considered, but I can see why people talk about typing speed as a factor (though in many cases I think it's a thinking/composing speed as much as actual typing speed).

[Companion Cube]

I think it's right that there has to be a balance of fast typing speed + knowing what will get you points and what won't. When you review your practice exams, good (and plainly obvious) advice I got from a professor is to ask for each sentence "will this get me points?" It IS obvious but people won't do it. Being a fast typer helped me because at the end I always had 15+ minutes to read over my answer or look for more issues. I think correct spelling and good formatting is highly underrated. You want to make it as easy as possible on your professor.

[PeanutsNJam]

So if we want we can use bullet points and things of that nature?

Also, how applicable are the legal writing rules/skills learned in the legal writing class?

[thesealocust]

Bullets are bad unless you're completely out of time and need to dump some issue spotting/arguments before the buzzer.

Be VERY careful about porting LRW rules/style to exams. That was a common mistake I saw while grading exams last year - some people would start with introductions, background law, restatement of facts, etc. - wasting huge amounts of time, gaining no points, and not even really framing or organizing their response any better than the people who (correctly) dive right into the analysis.

Compare and contrast:

One issue will be whether or not [lengthy description of Bob's conduct] was considered negligent. Negligence is [lengthy description of the law of negligence]. [Analysis of bob's conduct]. In conclusion, bob's conduct was likely negligent.

This is bad news bears for a few reasons. Most importantly, it can wind up with lots of space re-writing facts and dumping background law onto the page. Critical for LRW-style writing where you need to completely frame your arguments to a fresh reader, but overkill for an exam where you can presume familiarity with the facts and the law.

Bob will argue that [brief description of his conduct] was not negligent because [analysis that incorporates the applicable rule of negligence while making the argument].

Much better.

You can get a point with either formulation, but if you're good, you can do it in like 1/4 athe words using the latter format, saving time and helping get more points-generating analysis on the page.

You do still need some background to write a good exam, and clear rules statements listing elements and things like that are golden if only for organizing your own thoughts even if they don't earn points on their own, but you definitely don't want the full LRW mindset.

[Leonardo DiCaprio]

what's considered "background" here?

[thesealocust]

Things like introductory sentences, rules statements, transitions between paragraphs, conclusions. The "IRC" of "IRAC" that don't get you points, but can't be completely dropped since it connects your analysis and makes it flow.

[Leonardo DiCaprio]

I'm confused. your concise example doesn't have IC (unless Bob will argue... counts as "I"). but now you say they can't be completely dropped. do i IRAC or no, TSL!!!!!!!

[thesealocust]

It depends

You don't want to rigidly to IRAC, because it will cause you to waste time. But you can't always write only analysis, you still need words to string your paragraphs together and sometimes short, clear rules statements are very helpful. But it's a fluid thing, there's no single correct way to do it: just know (1) that you only get points for arguments/analysis and (2) rigid, LRW-style IRAC is not dense enough, and feel it out from there.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Keep in mind that one of the reasons why LRW looks like it does is that it's intended to help someone be able to pick up the memo/whatever weeks later and just get the info they need by reading one section, not the whole thing, which leads to a lot of the repetition/redundancies. An exam is purely a measure of your analysis at a given time - no one is going to go back and look at that thing again so you don't need to create the same structure.

[Leonardo DiCaprio]

okay so just generally have some IRAC structure but play it by ear and be flexible. got it.

so earlier this week, my prof talked about exams already. he basically said it's going to be a take-home issue spotter w/ strict word limit. i was hoping for no word limits so i can bury my class with my 150 wpm w/ 88% accuracy (per type racer lol)

[twenty]

strict word limit that's arguably going to be met by most of the class = unquestioningly go with TSL's approach
no strict word limit/racehorse = I dunno, the IRC parts are usually worth a very small number of points, and it would suck to miss out on those because you couldn't type 4-12 words each. Most of my professors would have been pissed if I didn't actually state what the rule was for sure.

[RSN]

This thread is such gold for us neurotic 1Ls. Just want to say thanks to everyone for the advice, it is greatly appreciated.

[BNA]

For those of you stressing about exams, grab the Delaneys series. I'm halfway through "how to do your best on LS exams" and feel a million times better about what I'm heading into. Anyone else read these and care to evaluate? I've got "learning legal reasoning" on deck

[Companion Cube]

strict word limit that's arguably going to be met by most of the class = unquestioningly go with TSL's approach
no strict word limit/racehorse = I dunno, the IRC parts are usually worth a very small number of points, and it would suck to miss out on those because you couldn't type 4-12 words each. Most of my professors would have been pissed if I didn't actually state what the rule was for sure.

Absolutely. The IRC parts almost invariably must be there. Many of the issues, contrary to popular belief, DO have a correct answer that the professor is looking for. To give a complete answer, that requires a conclusion. To get the full points, that requires the rule.

The absolute best authority you can have for what to do on an exam is model answers. If the professor doesn't make them available, ask. Sometimes they will provide one.

[BNA]

Searching for the ultimate civpro flowchart. Any suggestions?

[Companion Cube]

Searching for the ultimate civpro flowchart. Any suggestions?

If I had one for civpro I'd send it to you, but that class was closed book for me so I didn't make one.

I know it's not the answer you're looking for, but I'd suggest making your own if you can't find any you like. It really helped simplify everything in the other classes I made them for.

[Leonardo DiCaprio]

wtf do i do bros. my prof says she will upload past exams but NOT THE MODEL ANSWERS. ???????? am i fucked here. wtf kind of TTT behavior is this

[A. Nony Mouse]

Lots of profs don't provide model answers. You work through the practice exams anyway. You will probably find it helpful to find classmates to go through the past exams with to see if collectively you can spot all the issues. You can also go to the prof's office hours with questions about the past exams (usually. Depends on the prof) - not making model answers available doesn't mean they won't answer questions.