Exam Help/Advice Forum
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cubslions
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Sat Oct 08, 2016 11:56 am
Exam Help/Advice
If my professor doesn't make past exams available, what would be the best alternative for preparing for the exam? Should I just go through all the hypos in the E&Es? Any advice is appreciated, thank you!
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texas1100
- Posts: 62
- Joined: Sun Sep 14, 2014 5:40 pm
Re: Exam Help/Advice
Google search exams for X class, take them
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Shema
- Posts: 96
- Joined: Sat Jun 01, 2013 3:14 am
Re: Exam Help/Advice
E&E's are a great resource but they are not a substitute for essay practice... especially race horse exams that are based on a fact pattern with multiple issues to spot. While your professor's past exams would be the most helpful, if they are for whatever reason unavailable, I'd recommend Siegel's. I recommend Siegel's because it comes the closest to essay exam questions that you are likely to face on exam day plus he also has pretty good model answers. Another cool resource are past bar exams. Some state provide them with the questions and several model answers. You will find that law professors use a similar exam style to bar exam questions. This is in part because under ABA accrediting guidelines their 1L courses are intended to prepare students to succeed on the bar exam. Since most 1L courses are also bar courses the bar exam website is a perfect website. California I know has a lot. (don't worry if your law school is not in CA because most essay exams such as contracts, torts and to some degree civ pro are based on black letter law and not state specific)
Over the years I have accumulated past exams and model answers from various law schools just because they come in handy to have in situations like this. What you will find is that across the nation law school professors that administer essay exams have an exam style that several other professors may share. For instance, some civ pro professors will prefer essay exams that consist of several short essay fact patterns and questions that test on specific topics, others write a fact pattern but have several calls of the question that focus on various area of law (perhaps one focuses on 12(b)(6) and another on Personal Jurisdiction). Lastly there are the more open ended exam questions where after a long fact pattern you are asked to spot all relevant issues. If you know what sort of exam question your professor is likely to administer I'd be happy to share exams that I have. Some of them have accompanying model answers.
When you take practice exams try to get feed back similar to this from your professor. The more detailed the better. Here's an example of the sort of exam feedback that is most helpful to developing exam writing skills:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0sz5 ... WZwT2piTDg
Over the years I have accumulated past exams and model answers from various law schools just because they come in handy to have in situations like this. What you will find is that across the nation law school professors that administer essay exams have an exam style that several other professors may share. For instance, some civ pro professors will prefer essay exams that consist of several short essay fact patterns and questions that test on specific topics, others write a fact pattern but have several calls of the question that focus on various area of law (perhaps one focuses on 12(b)(6) and another on Personal Jurisdiction). Lastly there are the more open ended exam questions where after a long fact pattern you are asked to spot all relevant issues. If you know what sort of exam question your professor is likely to administer I'd be happy to share exams that I have. Some of them have accompanying model answers.
When you take practice exams try to get feed back similar to this from your professor. The more detailed the better. Here's an example of the sort of exam feedback that is most helpful to developing exam writing skills:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0sz5 ... WZwT2piTDg
