How much do you actually end up typing on exams? Forum

[wittywitless]

Hey! -

1L here, and I am fairly curious to know how many words/pages you all tend to end up with after a three hour exam.

Before anybody jumps in with it, yes, I know that quantity does not equal quality. I'm not trying to compare myself to anybody at this point, either. I just do not want to ask anybody in my section how long their answers were, but on some level I am dying to know as it seems to be the only valid reaction to have after being locked in a room for three hours with 60 other people typing away at their keyboards frantically like possessed monkeys. (note to self: bring ear plugs to future exams)

[lymenheimer]

I think the first reponse would be: depends on the exam, professor, and question.

[Clearly]

Actually, this is the one area where quality and quantity are actually pretty comparable.

[zot1]

After you finish an exam, please don't talk about it. Just move on.

[Lettow]

Three hour exam. IIRC, somewhere between 30,000-50,000 characters. In my anecdotal experience, those who typed as much or around what I typed performed well. Those who typed around 15,000 or less characters did not perform as well. As mentioned, however, this is very anecdotal. I am sure there are people who typed 15,000~ characters and received an A. Overall, I'd say quantity does really help, but it must be relevant information and analysis you're throwing in, while hitting all (or at least most) of the issues. During my exams, I pretty much just winged it and typed every possible argument and counterargument I could think of on the fly. You also have to know when to move on to the next major issue and not get too bogged down with any single issue.

[andythefir]

If I were a prof, I would word limit every exam question in order to focus the analysis. Without any limit, I probably put down an average of 5,000 words in a 3 hour exam and ended up doing very well.

Completely depends on the kind of exam, though. Property is always going to be a horse race because of the amount of content you have to shoehorn into the subject. If you're 3,000 words deep into an intentional tort essay you're doing it wrong.

[ArtistOfManliness]

Six pages per hour is what I averaged.

[dabigchina]

I've personally found that the optimal amount of writing is around 1500 words per hour. Any more and you are probably rambling. Any less and you are not covering all the issues.

[star fox]

10 single spaced pages was typical for me on a three hour exam 1L.

[jingosaur]

I was around 4000 to 4500 words on most exams. Most I ever wrote was Civil Procedure with like 5800 words and a lot of people wrote much more than that.

At my school they don't allow copy paste on exams. People who can copy paste on 3 hour exams write a lot more. I've heard of 10000 words on 3 hour exams before.

[RareExports]

I don't know how this translates to characters or pages, but anywhere between 4000 and 8000 words for a three-hour exam without copy and paste, depending on the professor's preferences and nature of the subject matter. Issue-heavy common law courses require more words than statutory application courses. There's always going to be more useful and relevant information you can throw into an exam, so you should continue to add more words (assuming you're not rambling or repeating yourself) until doing so loses more from quality than you pick up from quantity (this determination will vary by professor).

[thesealocust]

Words per hour is the only fair way to think about this - "pages" or total word counts depend on too many other variables.

Around 1,500 words per hour should be your minimum goal. I've seen enough people writing exams in that range land at the top of the class to know it works.

I've also seen people write 2,500 words per hour or more and land at the top of the class. Writing that quickly tends to mean less dense writing, but there's nothing inherently wrong with that. The average professor grades with something like a checkmark method giving points for each argument, so more words = more arguments = more points.

Also, professors routinely heap scorn on long exams because the most common long exam wastes time repeating facts and/or dumping law from the outline in a panic, neither of which earn points on their own since they aren't analysis. In my experience, those professors will still give great grades to long exams that are actually written well. They're also lazy and don't like reading bad exams.

Source: I've been obsessed with law school exams for 7 years for some reason.

[lawhopeful100]

I think my 1L year when I was really locked in, I was putting out around 8k words in 3 hours. This was enough to get me near the top of the class. I would cosign that as long as you are continuing to make arguments and score points, more is generally better.

[wittywitless]

Thanks, folks! My curiosity has been satisfied.