Professor
of
Law Emeritus Leora Harpaz Western New England University
School of Law
Improving Your Exam Performance
This memo is designed to help law students improve their performance
on law school exams. It assumes you have taken a number of exams
already and would like to improve your performance in your next set
of exams. However, it may also be useful in advance of taking your
first set of exams so that you can avoid some of the typical
mistakes I describe below. It is not designed to give advice for any
specific subject, but to give advice that is generally helpful.
The starting point in improving exam performance is to diagnose the
deficiencies in past exam performance. Most law students have a
common pattern in their exam performance so you are looking to find
your pattern. This can be accomplished by reviewing past exams in
whatever ways are made available by your professors. Typical methods
include meeting with faculty members to review your exams and
reading your exams and comparing them to model answers or grading
sheets if they are available. It is critically important that you
review your past performance in as many courses as possible because
you are looking for a pattern rather than an explanation for poor
performance on an individual exam.
In grading exams, I typically see five common exam mistakes:
(1) Failure to spot issues
(2) Failure to explore the issues in sufficient depth
(3) Failure to allocate time properly
(4) Failure to correctly describe legal rules
(5) Failure to answer the question you are asked
In conducting your effort at self-diagnosis it may be helpful to
consider whether your common pattern involves one or more of these
deficiencies.
After figuring out what you do wrong in taking exams, the next step
is to try and fix the problem. Each deficiency requires a different
remedy. The next part of this memo will suggest ways to improve your
exam performance in each of the five areas of weakness.
Failure to Spot Issues
If your self-diagnosis shows that you do well when you spot an
issue, but you often fail to spot all the major issues, there are
several things you can do to try and improve your issue spotting
ability:
(1) First, examine as many past exams in a subject you are studying
as you can and look for common patterns in the raising of issues. In
most law school courses, there are four or five combinations of
issues that can be raised in a question. While the facts for each
question are new, those facts are being used to raise the same
combination of issues. Faculty members often say, “I always ask the
same questions, just the facts are different.” Your examination of
past questions is designed to learn what kind of facts are necessary
to raise what kind of issues and what kinds of issues tend to be
raised in combination in a single question. If there are model
answers or answer sheets available, they will help with this
process.
(2) A second method of developing skill in spotting issues is to
work in a study group to go over old exams. Having others explain to
you what issues they see and why may help you to look for patterns
that you now are ignoring.
(3) Read the whole exam quickly before you answer the first
question. Most professors won’t include two questions on the same
exam that principally raise the same issues. You may be able to
focus on the right issues for each question by looking at the exam
in its entirety.
(4) If it is a closed-book exam, memorize a list of all the major
subjects covered in the course, and for every question review your
mental check list to think about whether you’ve overlooked any
issues. You may want to write this list on scrap paper when you
start the exam, rather than relying on your memory. If it is an
open-book exam, you can bring such a list with you to review each
time you read a question.
Failure to explore the issues in
sufficient depth
The failure to explore the issues in sufficient depth can occur in a
number of different ways and the suggestions below are designed to
deal with the various causes of this problem.
(1) One form of failing to explore the issues in sufficient depth is
to describe applicable legal rules, but fail to apply the facts of
the question to those rules. You should never just state rules of
law abstractly; you always need to show how the facts of a question
apply to that rule of law. Providing legal rules without showing how
the facts apply to those rules will not demonstrate to the faculty
member grading the exam that you understand the legal principle at
issue. One way to practice this technique is to use old exams you
took where you failed to apply the facts. Write out additions
to each of the issues where you did not apply the facts. In these
additions you should supply the missing factual analysis to
reinforce this crucial aspect of taking an exam.
(2) A second form of failing to explore the issues in sufficient
depth is caused by quickly assuming a conclusion to a legal issue
without providing a supporting argument for that conclusion. A
conclusion without an explanation for why you have reached that
conclusion is not going to gain you many points on an exam, if any.
Some students fall into this trap because the conclusion is so
obvious to them that they can't imagine any other conclusion. This
viewpoint is damaging to exam performance. You are only graded based
on what you have written. Faculty members don't assume you know the
reason for a particular conclusion unless you state the reason. You
may be able to state the reason in a single sentence, but that
sentence can make the difference between getting full credit for
analyzing an issue and getting no credit at all. Once again
reviewing your past exams for this deficiency is key to correcting
it. Find every place where you stated a conclusion without providing
a reason for that conclusion. Write out your reasons for the
conclusion as a means of training yourself to provide such
explanations in your exams. Sometimes faculty members who write
marginal comments on exams will note such places by writing "why?"
or "support your conclusion" or some similar comment on the exam.
Such comments are a sign that you are failing to adequately support
your legal conclusions.
(3) Related to number two above, is assuming one particular answer
to an issue you have spotted and providing only one way to analyze
that issue. On an exam, you should almost never (unless the question
is framed to require it) assume there is only one answer. Instead,
argue both ways on everything you can. The exam is an opportunity
for you to show you know how to make legal arguments and this
typically includes making alternative arguments. By assuming an
answer early on in your analysis, you are not performing a central
task that the exam is providing you with an opportunity to
demonstrate. Even if you see only one way to look at a problem, you
have to put yourself in the shoes of the opposing side and identify
what argument they would make to attempt to refute your argument,
even if it is not as strong an argument as the one you present. You
can do this by looking for alternative characterizations of
everything you can on an exam. If its got feathers and a beak,
and says “Polly want a cracker,” don’t just assume it’s a parrot.
Maybe it’s a puppet, or a child in a Halloween costume. As with
other forms of failing to explore issues in sufficient depth,
working with your own prior exams can help with this task. First,
mark each place where you made only one side of an argument. Next,
try to make the opposing argument that you failed to make on the
exam. This will make you more conscious of your tendency to quickly
assume a particular outcome and give you practice in arguing both
ways.
(4) One additional source of failing to discuss issues in sufficient
depth is the reverse of failing to apply the facts to the law. It
occurs when you discuss the facts in the abstract without tying the
discussion to relevant legal principles. If you discuss the facts in
the abstract you are treating them as though you are discussing the
plot of a soap opera and considering whether the characters are
behaving appropriately based on moral and not legal principles. You
must link your discussion of the facts to a legal principle to which
particular facts are relevant.
(5) There is often a relationship between the failure to state the
relevant law accurately and completely and the failure to discuss
the issue in sufficient depth. If a particular legal issue is
analyzed by examining three factors, but you only describe two
factors, you already have a problem. What you’ve said is true, but
it is incomplete since you are ignoring the third factor. You’ll
lose points on the law for failing to completely describe the three
relevant factors, and, even more importantly, you'll lose points on
the application of the law to the facts because you have not
discussed the third factor at all.
Failure to allocate time properly
Poor time allocation can occur in two different ways: (1) poor
allocation among the questions so that you use too much time on one
question and you don’t have enough time for the remaining questions
or (2) poor time allocation within a question so that you use too
much of the time allotted for a question on one or two issues and
you don’t have time for other issues.
(1) Stick strictly to the recommended times. If the exam lists the
percentage of the grade allocated to a question and not the time you
should spend on the question, you should calculate the time
allotted. If the question is worth 1/3 of the exam grade and it is a
three hour exam, allot yourself one hour to answer the question.
Professors grade by question and not an overall sense of how you did
(unlike some exams in college). The last point earned is worth the
same amount as the first point earned. Given this grading pattern,
you must provide answers to all of the questions. Excellent
performance on one question is not worth the price of earning too
few points on other questions.
(2) Some questions are time eaters and others are not. To identify
whether one of the questions falls into the time eater category,
read the entire exam at the outset. If you think one of the
questions will take whatever amount of time you have, do it last,
even it is the first question. You're allowed to answer the
questions out of order. Moreover, if you’re typing your exam, the
professor will never even know you took this approach.
(3) Once again use your old exams to help improve your skills at
time allocation. This is particularly helpful if you have an
opportunity to look at a grading sheet or model answer for the exam,
as some faculty members provide. Use the answer sheet or model
answer to figure out how to edit down your answer to get the same
number of points with many fewer words -- training yourself to
answer efficiently.
(4) Don’t waste time summarizing the facts before you start
answering an exam question. Only discuss the facts when applying
them to applicable legal principles.
(5) Make an outline of the issues you plan to discuss in answering a
question and check off the issues as you complete them. This will
help you to avoid discussing the same issue twice because you didn’t
keep track of what you had already discussed.
(6) Try and start your answer to an exam question by writing about
what you believe are major issues in the question. There is a
tendency to write the most about the issues you discuss first. This
is because you are not as worried about time early on in answering
an exam question. To get the most out of this more extended
discussion, it should be a discussion of a complex issue with many
subissues or it should be an issue with many relevant facts. The
more aspects of the issue there are, the more points on the exam are
likely to be awarded for a thorough discussion of the issue.
Therefore, try and start your answer where you have the most to gain
rather than with an easy issue that does not merit extended
discussion.
Failure to correctly describe legal
rules
The failure to accurately and completely describe the relevant legal
principles is a very serious problem that will have a cascading
impact on your exam performance. You will lose points allocated to a
description of the legal rules and you will also lose points for
applying those principles to the relevant facts.
(1) One way to deal with this problem is to work in a study group.
When you prepare outlines as part of a study group, you will have
the opportunity to share those outlines with others in the group and
make sure that any discrepancies between your understanding of the
applicable legal principles (black letter rules) and the
understanding of others in the group are discussed to figure out who
is right and who is wrong.
(2) Prepare an outline based on your understanding of the subject
from assigned reading and class discussions and compare it to
hornbooks or treatises in the subject or even some of the
commercially prepared outlines to try and identify mistakes you are
making in your understanding of the law. You can also try to make an
appointment with a faculty member to review sections of your outline
you are not sure are accurate.
Failure to answer the question you
are asked
(1) Read the questions carefully and pay particular attention to
what you are asked to do to answer the question. Some exam questions
may give general instructions such as “Discuss or What result and
why?” However, other questions may be quite specific in assigning
you a specific task. The question may place you in a particular role
or tell you what issues it wants you to discuss. Make sure to do
exactly what the question asks you to do. Those last few
instructions in the question about how to answer it are as important
as the facts that precede the instructions. Ignore them at your
peril.
(2) Read each question carefully so you don’t distort the facts when
you answer it. Don’t make up new facts to fill in some blank in the
facts provided. If there is a missing fact that would be helpful to
you, mention this gap in the facts as part of your analysis and say
that resolving it might help in the analysis, but do not continue on
and answer the question assuming the existence of particular
additional facts. You will only be awarded credit for analyzing the
facts you are given and not for analyzing facts you make up.
As a general summary of the advice I have provided throughout this
memo, here is a top 6 list of what you need to do to succeed on law
school exams:
1. Apply the law to the relevant facts and don’t abstractly discuss
the law without the facts or the facts without the law.
2. Provide reasoning to support each of the legal conclusions that
you reach.
3. Argue in the alternative and don’t assume there is only one legal
conclusion that can be reached.