How do I improve my chances of getting A’s in law school?
So you are starting law school in the fall and want to know how it is you can put yourself in the best position to earn the best grades. Having helped students for over five years now achieve their academic goals at law schools of every rank and size, herein is what my experience has taught me.
What I am going to do is explain to you, step by step, how to take everything you will do in law school (read cases, brief cases, attend lecture, outline and sit for exams) and do them in a way that (1) accelerates reading briefing cases (2) starts you outlining months before your peers (3) allows you to write practice exams the entire month of November and ultimately leads to earning higher grades.
The first step in doing this is arriving at the common understanding that the only factor in law school that determines your grade is the law school exam. Taking that as our working presumption let’s color in the details.
Why does the traditional law school approach lead to poor exam prep and performance?
Imagine you are a professional athlete preparing for the final game of the season and the two things you could do to prepare are to (1) read books and go to seminars about how to play the game or (2) practice playing the game. Well, in law school the traditional timeline is fixed so that there is not enough time to actually practice for the exam. As a result most students end up having very little experience in the single most determining factor in their final grade; the final exam.
What is the Traditional Law School Timeline?
Law schools and law students have a timeline they all follow. They are all much the same no matter if you attend a top, middle or lower tier institution.
You spend the first two months reading cases in your $200- $300 case books. You are told to brief those cases (organize them into notes with headings for such as legal history, facts, ruling and the judge’s rationale).
You show up to class having read and briefed the assigned cases for that day and the professor goes about explaining what those cases mean and why they matter. A professor that students like does this in a straightforward way that is clear and easy to understand. A professor that most students dislike does this by asking leading questions to random people in the class in an attempt to “help” students figure out the answer by challenging them with other examples and hypotheticals (the Socratic method).
Then sometime between the start and middle of October you will have a Mid-Term (either graded or ungraded). You will study for it and it will be your first indication of where you stand in terms of an exam. This is when it will dawn on you that exam writing is a bit more challenging then you thought or if you are lucky you may find that you are pretty good at it.
It is also around this time that the pace of classes will speed up. Initially, the pace will seem manageable and even patient. But the closer you approach November you will likely notice that the rate of speed has advanced and that more difficult material is pushed through fairly rapidly. Another things happening during this period is that many students begin to fall behind in their reading; in part because of the rapid pace but also because of the fact that meeting the memo writing deadlines in a class called “Legal Research and Writing” takes far more time than one expects and cuts into time for reading and briefing cases.
Once the third week of November swoops in classes have their final meetings and after the Thanksgiving holiday a span of time referred to a the “reading period” occurs. This is a 4 to 10 period where no classes are held and the idea is that students can spend the entire several days studying and preparing for their exams. In reality there still may be classes scheduled during this time but they are not “required” and are either make-up classes or review sessions. It is over the holiday and during the reading period that most students begin or complete their outlines for their classes. The outline is supposed to put the class in perspective and help students organize all the information they learned over the course of the semester.
It is also during this time that students first learn that there are huge gaps in their understanding of the legal concepts they have learned. These gaps were not apparent before now because in the rush to prepare for the next day’s assignment there was no time to reflect on that day’s lecture or previous days or weeks. Realizing these gaps, students swarm professors’ office hours and flood them with emails. If time permits students will also use this time take or at least review practice exams that the professor has released. However, because there is such little time left detailed feedback from the professor on a practice exam the student has taken is virtually impossible. Finally, during the first through the early part of the third week of December final exams are administered with usually 2 to 4 day gaps between them.
The end result of the time line is that so much time was spent preparing for the day to day and ungraded deadlines such as case reading, brief writing, and memo writing that the long term exam deadline was not prepared for by taking practice exams and getting specific feed back to build exam skills need for game day.
How do you avoid falling prey to the traditional law school approach?
The only way to avoid the traditional pit fall is to prepare differently than most of your peers. Instead of focusing on the day-to-day elements that are not graded you would focus on the exam contributing elements since it (the exam) is the only thing being graded. Essentially what that means is that you will read cases a lot faster, brief cases far more concisely, begin outlining from day one and start taking exams at least one month before reading period.
To understand how to do this there are two parts of law school we must completely understand. The first is the 1L law school exam and the second is the law school outline.
The 1L Exam
I am explaining what a 1L exam looks like so that you can clearly see how that failing to outline early in the semester means that you have been effectively barred from gaining any exam writing experience in time enough to improve your skills and compete for top grades.
How will I be tested in law school in my 1L year?
With slight deviations depending on the exam preferences of your professor 1L law school exams, in my experience, look much the same in terms of their larger structure. The variance is usually a product of whether the professor tests the black letter law (general rules of law) or legal theory (philosophical underpinnings of the law). Most professors test both but some lean one way more than another. However, the staples of methods use to examine students on law school exams are (1) multiple choice questions, (2) and essay fact pattern(s) and (3) a policy question.
Multiple Choice Questions
There are two forms of multiple choice questions that appear on 1L exams more frequently. The first are questions the test your knowledge of the rules of law. They are typically hypotheticals and variations on cases you read that test on your ability to identify the controlling rule of law. This type of question is easy to study for because there are several supplements and sources for this brand of multiple choice question and they come with detailed answer explanations. The best is “PMBR Multistate Workbook” and it is usually relatively inexpensive when purchased on Amazon. There is a Red Book with 200 questions and answers in each of your 1L classes and a Blue Book with 100 questions. The year of the edition does not matter at all and you can also check theses books out at the circulation desk of your law school library.
The second type of question is based on specific case law or theories from assigned reading or discussed in class. These multiple choice questions are more difficult to study for because heaven knows what aspect of a case the professor will focus on or what legal theory will be tested. The best students can do is to pay attention in class to what their professor tends to emphasize but even that strategy won’t always work.
The multiple choice section is usually weighted no more than 25% of the exam. While this does not seem like a lot, the difference between an A exam and a B+ is often a few multiple choice questions apart. The tough think about multiple choice questions is that law school professors keep them under lock and key and while they typically release previous exams later in the semester they rarely ever release past multiple choice questions.
Essay Fact Patterns
The essay response section is the most intimidating and heavily weighted section of the final exam. It consist of a fact pattern or a story about a series of events that take place between two or more parties. The facts are typically two to three pages in length and very descriptive. At the end of the long story is a question or a series of questions (law students call this the “call of the question”) that you are tasked to answer by writing an essay. Students typically have more or less than two hours to complete this part of the exam.
This is the written/typed part of the law school exam. In it students have to “spot” or identify legal problems (called issues in law school). After “spotting the issues”, each issue most be analyzed or argued as to what the correct legal outcome is or should be. It is not important what outcome you come to, however, the top grades go to the exam writers that thoroughly analyze and argue both sides of a legal issue. The more issues or problems you spot and the more arguments you make the more points you will be awarded on the exam.
Sometimes there are two essay questions and other times there is one really long essay question.
Policy question
The policy question is also written in the form of an essay. They are fairly common but not always found. If there is a policy question it is likely to be the final question on the exam. The difference between a policy question and an essay question is that it is asking you to write mainly about the theories of law and what the philosophical underpinnings of laws are or should be.
Most students find this aspect of the exam intimidating because there seems to be no right answer. However, this part of law school is the most like what students what have done in their undergraduate courses; especially those with liber arts course work.
The answer to the policy question is usually shorter than the answer to the essay question but it is no less difficult and a poor performance on the policy question can also make the difference between an A and a B+. Since the policy is usually that last question, due to exam fatigue and loss of time students end up rushing this part of the exam and leaving with few points. This aspect of exam performance on a policy question has more to do with the practical effects of not having had enough time take practice exams and work on one’s ability to finish under time conditions.
Under the traditional approach you would practice for these parts of the final exam in as much as a week or two but more often than not only days before you sat for the actually exam. In fact, it is not uncommon for a student never to have written an exam under time conditions until exam day.
Outlining
What is an outline?
For most law school students an outline is a chronological description of the course.
It is organized under headings and sub headings. The major headings are of the larger areas of law. For instance, in a Tort class the first major area of law is “intentional torts”. This larger area would be followed by subheadings of the different types of intentional Torts such “assault”, “battery” and “false imprisonment”.
An outline would then give a rule of law for each of the types of intentional Torts. For instance the rule of law for battery would be “the intentional harmful or offensive touching of another without consent.”
Each rule of law consists of elements that make up the rule. Elements of battery are that the Defendant must have intended to harm or offend. Another element is that Defendant must have touched the person or something connected to the person. The final element would be that the Defendant must not have had consent to touch the Plaintiff.
Beneath the rules of law and their elements are brief descriptions of the cases and their relevant facts and analysis that illustrate one of the elements of the rule. For instance, under the rule of law for battery may be a case that illustrates how that a battery is committed even if the person is not directly hit but the bike they are riding is hit.
Beneath the cases are the relevant policy, theories and philosophies that may explain why legal thinkers have crafted the legal rules in certain ways. Often what are considered are things such as the social impact of laws, how laws restrict or add to personal freedom and whether laws are fair or protect vulnerable people.
Thus, the outline is complete when all of the legal areas have been broken down into their categories, separated into the relevant rules of law, accompanied by illustrative case law and supported by larger theories of law.
Why is an Outline Important?
On the surface an outline is important because it is the final step a student takes before taking the exam. However, it’s more practical importance is that it is not until a student begin outlining that they really do the work of making sense of the course and put the pieces of the puzzle together. Before outlining, law school students can hardly see the forest for the trees. It is not until you begin to outline that you begin to figure out who the laws really work together globally as opposed to looking at the course in terms of the details of the case reading or class discussion on any particular date.
This is a fundamental point to understand because now that you know that without outlining you will not understand the course comprehensively you will begin outlining as you cover legal areas (i.e. after the first two-weeks of class spent covering intentional torts such as assault, battery and false imprisonment). Should you do this you will be able to take practice exams as you move along, get feedback from your professor during the early parts of the semester when office hours are relatively open and empty, and learn where your strengths and weakness are in time enough to develop them both.
What is the most common mistake people make with outlines?
1L’s make the mistake of waiting to long to outline. This is largely because they are relying on their professors and the law school administration to guide them on when to begin. Largely, the advise is to hold off on outlining until November. But you must understand that anyone telling you to hold off on outlining is ultimately telling you to hold off on building exam skills.
How can you identify the areas of law before class even starts?
I wrote early that outlines are structured, in their broadest sense, into larger areas of law. A legitimate question is how to identify the areas of law that will be covered before class starts or before they are explained in class. The answer is that once you know who your professors are the areas of law they will cover even before you get your syllabus can be discovered by either seeking out a 2L or 3L that recently took your professor and asking them for their outline. Ask several of them so that you can cross-reference the information incase any of the outlines have gaps. You will find that the larger areas of law are the headings of the outlines. Armed with this information you can begin he process of learning the areas of law before classes start. Because I have experience at specific law schools I start my students learning these areas often over the summer weeks and months before the semester begins. But the truth is that working alone you can string things together if you are resourceful and effectively tap into the tools and people around you.
Once classes start, just because you have a syllabus doesn’t mean that all of the larger areas of law are known. Many professors may not organize their syllabus with a great amount of detail. Sometimes they just list page numbers for casebook readings next to class dates. Other professors send out reading assignments every week so that it is difficult to get ahead because you don’t know what is coming. This is why it is imperative to be social with your 2L and 3L peers and get several outlines for each course.
From what credible sources can you learn the Rules of Law before they are lectured?
The best place to get the Black Letter rules of law such as the battery rule of law I illustrated above is surprisingly not the Examples & Explanation series (E&Es). They are best used to explain and illustrate the larger areas of law and how the rules of law work when answering legal problems. The best resource for rules of law is Bar Bri. Specifically, the “1L Book” or the Bar Bri “Conviser”. It does not matter how old the edition is. You can often find them on the book shelves of the offices of law school clubs and associations run by students. The book shelves are usually free to borrow books from since everyone in the club will dump books off at the end of the semester or year in a show of goodwill to fellow members who may find a better use for the book they are now happy to be done with. You can also find them pretty reasonably priced on the internet or at the circulation desk of your law school library on reserve.
A quick look in the glossary or index of the Bar Bri supplement and you will find the rule of law for each legal concept you need. Of course the outlines you are using will have rules that you can reference as well. As you use the Bar Bri material and read the 2L and 3L outlines you will start seeing that the rules will more or less match up with only slight deviations. Sometimes those deviations are a result human error and sometimes they may be because your professor has crafted, in some cases, his or her own rules for areas of law they are particularly interested.
Will my professor give me rules of law?
The more Socratic and theoretical your professor the less likely it is that they will clearly set out the rules of law. However, much of what they are saying would be far easier to follow if you had a form grasp on the rules of law. Straightforward professors will have power point slides with the rules of law. Often times 2Ls and 3Ls will have digital copies of those power point slides that they assembled when they were studying for the final. Ask for them so that you can begin outlining early and in a way that is tailored to the course and the professor.
Some students don’t want to “learn ahead” because they fear that their professor will teach different rules then the ones they learn and they will end up being confused. That is kind of like not reading the cliff notes because your English professor will come to different literary analysis in class. The point of learning ahead is not to contradict or replace your professor with a commercial supplement but to use the commercial supplement so that you understand the general structure of the legal areas and the rules of law before they are discussed. This way once your professors add their touch to the general framework you will have the upper hand of understanding the distinction they are making and even why they are making them. I have found that my students who follow this method are not hurt by having learned a few rules which the professor ends up explaining with a bit of variance. Instead, my students end up understanding the rule more and also are better able to point out the legal theory behind why the professor has worded the rule of law differently. Ultimately, this helps on an exam. As a practical matter, the 2L and 3L outlines will help a lot to figure out where the professor’s rules are different than the Black Letter law found in commercial supplements.
Case Law
What is the most common myth about case law?
Most students believe that if you know your cases you will do well on the exam. This is not true. Knowing case law and the ability to regurgitate case law is in some cases one of the least important aspects of a law school exam. This is chiefly because a law professor wants you to use a case and not repeat a case. This is to say that a law professor wants you to pin point particular facts from various cases to illustrate or color your analysis. The idea is that on the exam you will explain how a case you read had a fact similar or dissimilar to a fact found in the exam fact pattern. Your job is to use a fact or reasoning from the case you read to support your arguments and counterargument on the exam.
Why do 1L students put such a heavy emphasis on case law?
Cases are really all law students do most of the semester. They read and brief cases for hours on their own and then they discuss cases in class. Considering this experience, it is pretty logical for a student to think that emphasizing case law is what is also expected on the exam. In fact, it is common that, aside from Civil Procedure, your professor will tell you that you will not be awarded points for citing cases nor will you loose points for not citing cases.
A reasonable question would be why then was such an emphasis put on case law the entire semester. The answer is that the case law is just a point of reference to begin a discussion about the larger area of law, a rule of law or an element of a rule. Since the entire class has read a particular case, its facts and reasoning, now the professor has a starting point and a working example or context from which to begin looking into (analyzing) what would happen to the case decision if this or that fact about the weather, the color of the bottle or the size of the car were different. Facts change analysis. So in law school the case law is merely stimuli for developing a skill beyond knowing the facts of a case but to manipulate those facts to test and challenge how the rules of law should be applied or change given a change in factual circumstances.
How can you read cases faster and comprehend them better?
In the fest few weeks of school my students get one month ahead in their reading. This way they are done reading all their cases and writing their briefs by the end of October. Of course we have outlined as we read cases so the outline is done by November as well. Effectively this leaves the whole month of November for practice exam writing.
However, anyone who has been to law school knows that the cases take too much time to read to finish them so early. This approach is not for everyone and particular not for those students who would view this process as taking a “short cut”. This is what I have students do:
First, before reading the case in the casebook read the case inside of what is called a commercial brief. These are books that are keyed to particular casebooks and contain a brief for every case in the casebook. Some popular sources are “High Court” and “Legal Lines” but there are others. There are also online sources. Some students are skeptical of reading case briefs online but I recently tutored a student that only read case briefs online to save money and she landed in the top 10% of her class. These briefs are only a page or two so they take only a few minutes to read. They are written far more straight forward than a case so they are not only easy to read but they are also easy to comprehend.
Second, after reading the case in the commercial brief write a brief in your own words based on the commercial brief. The reason for this is because by synthesizing the information yourself it further cements the comprehension because you are actively learning. Additionally your brief will be better organized because you are working from a template that is already well structured.
Finally, read the case in the casebook. You will find that the case is a breeze to read through since much of the same information is being presented. You will also find that you will see more information that had you started with the case book you may have missed or glanced over. It is sort of like having been given some inside information before meeting someone. Once you meet the person and talk with them many of the things they say a far more intelligible because you came into the conversation already knowing something about them so you are able to absorb more than a person who was meeting them for the first time and knew very little beforehand.
Why are policies, theories and philosophies important to a law school class?
This area of the law school class is the most tailored to your professor. This means that if you learn this well you can communicate these thoughts on the exam and your professor will like your exam more than the students that did not include them. Professors, look for exams that incorporate the policies and theories even in the larger essay fact pattern because these students are writing better analysis and not merely recounting the black letter law and cases that anyone could have gotten from a supplement or read in a commercial brief. Too many students make the mistake of only talking policy in the policy part of the exam. My students include policy considerations in all essay questions because the average 1L law school student is clueless about why this is so beneficial and is not limited to the “policy question”. For a law professor all law is a question of legal theory, philosophy and policy.
What are the best resources for Policies, Theories and Philosophies?
Don’t wait for your law school professors to teach their policies. Ask 2L’s and 3L’s for their outlines at the start of the semester and highlight the policies in their outlines. Many times they would have highlighted these items for themselves as they were writing their outline days before the exam. Start learning and outlining these theories early along with your early case reading, briefing and outlining.
Of course as class progresses listen for these things with great attention. In fact, if you make good use of your 2L and 3L outlines you will already have an ear open so that when any of the policy terms are used you will be actively listening and documenting the information into your class notes and later into your outline.
