How NOT to use facts in your exam answer.

I know that we say "use the facts in your answer," but maybe we don't do a great job of explaining what we mean. 

When you put one of the exam question's facts in your answer, do so for a reason, and that reason should be to apply those facts to a legal concept.  (Remember IRAC?  The "A" in IRAC is all about using the facts in the exam question to apply to the issue that you've identified and the rule that you're using.)

What not to do?  Don't just restate the facts in your answer.  That's wasted space.  We remember (albeit vaguely) what facts we put in our questions.  Some of us put in only those facts that we think are relevant to triggering the discussion that we want to see in your answers (plus a few facts that help us transition from one issue to another); some of us put in extraneous facts ("red herrings") to see if we can sidetrack you.  So telling us the facts that we put in the question, by itself, won't get you any points.  You have to link those facts to an issue and a rule. 

From the National Jurist, 10 Ways to Be Happy in Law School.

Here.

Over at Female Science Professor's blog, some of the all-time "best" exam excuses.

The blog's here, and the post is here.

Between now and Thanksgiving--some advice for 1Ls.

OK, 1Ls:  you're probably exhausted right now.  You're working on your Legal Writing papers--which to many of you will feel as if you're writing in another language, on another planet--and you're starting to outline your first-semester courses.  You feel as if you've been drinking from a fire hose with all of the information you've been learning.  And you are starting to get heartburn / nightmares about finals.  What should you be doing right now?

1.  Legal writing matters.  Don't blow off your Legal Writing papers, even if your school makes the course a pass/fail course.  Legal writing = legal thinking, so for every minute that you spend drafting your papers, you're actually building your skills for exam-writing.  Think of your papers as two-fers:  fulfilling a course's requirements and learning step-by-step legal analysis, which is the skill that exams will be testing.  Moreover, most legal employers now are bemoaning the execreble (look it up!) writing skills of baby lawyers.  You'll be able to stand out later if you work hard on your legal writing skills now.

2.  Outlines are a tool for answering exams; they're not an end in themselves.  Our book gives you several different options for outlining your  courses.  There's not a single outline format that works best, and your professors aren't going to grade your outlines, so you need to figure out what type of outline will help you prepare for step #3.

3.  Start taking practice exams.  Yes, we know:  you don't know "the law" yet.  You haven't (a) started outlining or (b) finished outlining.  But here's the point:  MOST OF YOUR GRADES WILL BE BASED ON YOUR EXAM PERFORMANCE.  You've never taken law school exams before, so you need to learn the skill set that exams require:  issue identification, application of the facts in the hypo to the rules of law; ignoring red herrings; and prioritizing your discussion points to maximize your grade.  (Yes, we have two chapters devoted to exam-taking.) 

4.  Prepare to be unprepared.  Roughly two days after your courses end, you should STOP OUTLINING and start drilling for exams, even if you haven't finished your outlines.  It's more important to find out what you don't know (by taking practice exams) and to build your exam skills (yep, by taking practice exams) than it is to finish your outlines. 

5.  Prepare to work in groups.  Even if you prefer going solo during the semester, take practice exams with some of your law school colleagues.  You'll see where your blind spots are--and get a feel for the many ways to write exam answers--if you compare notes on your practice exams.

6.  EXERCISE.  Then exercise some more.  Exercise = reduced stress.  Reduced stress = better exam performance.

Aspen will give you a taste of our book by posting one free chapter.

And we think that the chapter's a doozy--it's on how to prepare for exams.  See here for the link to Aspen1L.

Podcast that gives advice to 1Ls.

Here's a link with some helpful advice (here).  Of course, it's also a great plug for our book!

More good advice about exam-taking.

It's too late for the spring semester, but some of you will be taking courses this summer, and the rest of you will have exam "joy" again this fall.  Here's another good piece of advice, forwarded again from Nancy's dad (here).

Why we are such sticklers for deadlines.

One of us has a hard-and-fast rule for her take-home exams:  turn the exam in within 72 hours of checking it out, or face severe consequences, such as flunking the course.  The emergency "out" to this rule is that, if the student sees that he or she isn't going to make the deadline--for a good (read: sudden-onset emergency) reason, that student is supposed to contact someone in the administration to explain the problem and get an extension.

The practice in such a case--when the emergency is real, as opposed to just a failure to follow the rules--is for the student to file a Motion to Accept Late Filing, just as the student would have to do in a real-life legal emergency.

Some students, over the years, have learned their lesson well:  some have done a full-blown Motion, and that motion worked.  At least one has simply filed a rambling apology that never answered the question of why the student didn't just pick up the phone and call the Registrar to explain the situation, as the exam rules provided.  We fear for the future clients of that student.

Why be such a stickler about the consequences for missing deadlines?  Because, in real life, lawyers who miss deadlines are committing malpractice, and their mistakes may well prejudice their clients' rights. 

Too many law students see law school as an extension of their undergraduate education.  But law school is professional school.  The habits learned in law school will carry over into the practice of law.

We wouldn't want engineering students to say, "OK, the calculations are off, but our design is close enough that we'll sign off on it, even though the design won't work."  We wouldn't want medical students to say, "Well, we know what most of the organs in the body are called and what they do; that's close enough."

Lawyers take people's lives in their hands:  sometimes literally (death penalty cases), sometimes figuratively.  That's important work.  Deadlines matter:  see here. 

Lesson:  If you're going to law school to learn how to be a lawyer, start behaving like one while you're in school.

Exam-writing mistakes of the semester (so far).

One of us is in the process of finishing her grading for the semester, and here's the top 5 list of exam-writing mistakes (so far):

(5)  Reiterating the facts without using them in the answer.  Especially for a page-limited exam, the only facts a student should mention are the ones that the student will use in his or her analysis.  Even for non-page-limited exams, wasting space = wasting time.

(4)  Incoherent answers.  If the professor can't follow the structure of the answer, then the professor can't assign points for the answer.

(3)  Making unsupported assumptions.  It's OK to make assumptions that help the student answer a question; it's not OK to make assumptions that bear no relationship to the facts in the question, just to be able to demonstrate knowledge of a topic that the question doesn't itself raise.

(2)  Failure to proofread.  If someone has a take-home exam, it's useful to proofread it before turning it in.  The worst mistake this semester has been someone who turned in an exam where the answer to question 2 was also the answer to question 3, resulting in zero points for question 3.

And the number 1 mistake?

(1)  Failure to follow instructions.  If a take-home exam has a 72-hour deadline, then 72 hours and 4 minutes (without a prior excuse) is equivalent to the failure to turn the exam in at all.  And if the professor wants the exam file named a certain way and the student doesn't use that naming convention, then the student has thrown away points.  Points are hard-earned enough; don't throw them away out of carelessness.

Why is #1 the most important?  At least for students who intend to be litigators, all courts have rules:  page limits, font sizes, deadlines, etc.  The failure to follow the rules might mean that a filing gets rejected.  And a rejection right before a deadline might time-bar a client's relief.

Oh, and one last thing:  students who have earned a Bachelor's degree in any subject need to know how to communicate, so law students need to know, at a bare minimum:

(1)  "Its" and "it's" are different words, and they mean different things; and
(2)  It's impossible to make a noun plural by adding an apostrophe and an "s."