As law students settle into their exam studying, here are some tips to help them be more productive:
- Remember that exams are testing whether you can apply the law to facts in new legal scenarios to solve legal problems. You need to know the law well, but you need to go beyond mere rote memorization of the law. You need to understand the law and how to apply it.
- Focus on your professor’s course. What topics/subtopics did your professor cover? What rule statements, steps of analysis, preferred formats, etc. did your professor provide? What study tips did your professor give?
- Update your outlines with the last class material as soon as possible after your last classes because they are your master documents. Outlines, if done correctly, are the most efficient and effective way to learn 15 weeks of material.
- Re-reading cases is inefficient because you focus on unconnected case fragments. Class notes may also keep the course unconnected and include unnecessary details.
- If you do not have an outline, prioritize: condense your notes to the tools that you need to solve legal problems; organize by topics and subtopics to synthesize the material into 10 -20 pages if possible.
- Make a list of all the topics and subtopics in your outlines that you need to learn for an exam. Include subtopics, because you often can make progress on several subtopics when an entire topic looks overwhelming. As you have completed your learning for a subtopic, highlight it off the list. Highlighting will give you more psychological buzz than just checking it off.
- Practice questions are very important to exam success. The more questions you complete, the more prepared you are to tackle new scenarios on the exam. Practice questions help you monitor your understanding and get your exam-taking strategies on auto-pilot.
- Complete exam-quality practice questions after you learn material. If you do them before you have a good grasp on the topic, you will waste time and excuse your low performance with “I would have gotten it right if I had studied.”
- After you have learned a topic, wait at least a day or two before tackling practice questions on that topic if possible; otherwise you will get answers right because you just finished studying the topic and not because you have retained and understood it.
- Use commentary study aids effectively. Focus only on topics or subtopics that you still do not understand. Reading an entire 300-page study aid is usually not efficient. If you understand the topic/subtopic after reading about it in one commentary, avoid reading additional commentaries on the same information.
- Use study groups effectively. Keep the number in the group small to avoid logistic and group dynamic problems. Have an agenda for each meeting so everyone knows what topics will be covered and what practice questions to complete beforehand.
- Balance study group time with your individual study – your group members cannot help you in the exam; you need to know the material and be able to apply it. Complete practice questions individually as well as any group questions discussed.
- Open-book exams can be a trap for many students. You still need to know the material well. Normally you will not have enough time to look everything up. Beware of slacking off in your preparation. Plan your organization strategies for the materials allowed under your professor’s definition of open book.
- Each day has three main blocks of study time: morning (8 a.m. – noon), afternoon (1 – 5 p.m.), and evening (6 – 10 p.m.). The number of hours you need to study each day will depend on several factors: how much material you learned to exam-ready standard by the end of classes, your specific exam schedule, the number of practice questions you have already completed, and your individual productivity as a student.
- This is a marathon and not a sprint. Get sleep; eat nutritious meals; exercise to relieve stress. Going into an exam sleep-deprived is a disaster waiting to happen. Wearing yourself out before your last exam is counter-productive.
- The night before a morning exam or the morning before an afternoon exam should ideally be “fluff study”: a cover-to-cover read of your outline, very easy practice questions, or going through your flashcard deck again. If you have not learned it already, cramming will just make you more anxious and befuddled in those last few hours.
Finally, treat your brain with respect. When you lose your focus and cannot get it back by more active learning methods, your brain is telling you to take a break. Forcing yourself to continue when you have hit the proverbial wall is not productive. Walk away and come back later – just make sure you do come back instead of playing video games for 10 hours. Good luck on exams! (Amy Jarmon)
