How to Write a Law School Exam

After putting in all the hard work, you have reached the final exam stage. You have done everything from preparing case briefs to perfecting your outline and answering cold calls. You have studied all the essential material to the point where you know everything. The last step is to write the law school exam. Law school exams are different from other exams you have taken in undergraduate school. Preparing for them requires a unique strategy to answer the exam questions effectively and achieve high scores. 

Many law students don’t know how to write a law school exam or how to prepare for it because law schools generally do not teach this information. The logic behind the law school exams is that you will have to act as an attorney and face a similar situation where a client tells you their story. Your work is to listen to their story, identify potential legal issues, find relevant laws, and apply them to your client’s case. 

In this blog, we will help you write and prepare for law school exams and provide you with essential tips for answering the questions. Let’s get started.

Significance of Creating a Course Outline

Law students must learn outlines and familiarize themselves with all of its information before going to answer the law school exam questions. Many students have outlines but struggle to learn or memorize them. The most important tool you need to understand before answering exam questions is law knowledge. 

It’s a critical tool that will help you in writing law school exam answers. The exam questions will ask you how to apply the law to a fact pattern. You will not be able to apply the law if you don’t know the law. There is no strategy or tool that will help you get a high score on the law school final exam if you don’t possess the knowledge of law. 

IRAC Method

The IRAC method, which stands for Issue, Rule, Analysis, and Conclusion, is a well-known method for writing answers to law school exams. This is the most basic form of answering exam questions, but there are other ways too. The IRAC method is simple and formulaic and it’s a perfect way to begin learning to answer the law school exam questions. As you practice it more, you will find different ways to improve your analysis part significantly in order to write more refined exam answers. 

Issue

In this section, you have to identify all the issues in your exam fact pattern. Identifying the issue is essential because if you don’t find it, you will not be able to apply the most relevant law and analyze it. If you want to become an excellent issue finder, practice answering the exam questions and comparing them to the model answers. This will help you know and understand the most generally tested issues and will also help you identify the issues in your final exam. 

Rule

When you have spotted the issues, state the rule of law for each issue. Always make sure that you properly state the relevant rules of law. Some students write all the rules of law that they know to impress the professor. However, they waste time writing all of the rules of law, and more importantly, they will not get points for these. 

Analysis

Analysis is essential for your exam answer, and in this section, you have to apply the necessary law to the facts. The difference between writing an average answer and an outstanding answer depends on developing the analysis by making lawyerly arguments for each issue you identify on behalf of both parties, plaintiff and defendant. Always make sure to write creative and reasonable arguments. 

Conclusion

The last part of IRAC is the conclusion, in which you state which party has the best chance of winning and justify your reasoning. Your conclusion section should answer the question, “Which party has the better legal argument and why?” This part is not as important as the analysis of the case you have provided. Don’t make your conclusion either too inconclusive or too decisive. It is not recommended to use extremely strong words or phrases except they are really appropriate to the argument.

What is Exam Format?

It’s essential for students to know the exam format and structure. Many law schools conduct exams that are based solely on essays. However, these essay exam questions are different from the essay questions that you have seen in your college exams. You will be given a difficult fact pattern, an imaginary scenario involving one or more parties with legal problems. 

It’s important to know that a fact pattern can either be a single or two paragraphs or multiple pages. Your goal is to find the issues and rule of law and then apply them to the facts of the case. This is the reason many law school essays are often known as issue spotters. After the fact pattern, you will be given a question prompt. 

This will tell you how to prepare your essay. The main purpose of the question prompt is to show you how to find and analyze legal issues. Furthermore, you will have to act as a judicial clerk and objectively analyze the issues in the case. It’s important to note that formatting the essay accurately will give you a few points, and every point matters in the exam. 

How to Start a Law School Exam?

After knowing what the exam is looking for and what subjects you’ll be tested on, let’s find out how to start a law school exam. 

Time Management

Time management is an important skill that will help you maximize your points. It will help you make strategic decisions and allot time properly for every question on the exam. If your law exam has two questions and you spend all your time writing an accurate answer to the first question, then you will absolutely do worse on the second question. 

If each question on the exam has 10 points, then that is the maximum points you can get on that question, and it doesn’t matter how perfect your answer is. If you give all of your time to write a perfect answer to get 10 points on the first question and 0 on the second, then you will be doing much worse than the person who wrote a 6 or 8-point essay for both questions. Here is the solution:

1. First, give yourself a good amount of time to read the question. Give at least 15-20 minutes just for reading. 
2. Now, divide the remaining time between each question. Many law school professors tell the students the number of questions on the exam beforehand so they can prepare ahead of time. 
3. Lastly, you have to save time at the end of your exam. During this remaining time, you can re-read your exam and correct any grammar or spelling mistakes.

Reading the Exam Questions 

As we have mentioned before, it is important to read the exam questions carefully. Fully utilize your reading time, and don’t wait to finish the reading completely to begin understanding the issues. You must start the essay questions as you read, then make notes and underline the important issues in the cases. 

It’s important to know that there will be many issues and don’t highlight all the text in the fact pattern because this will not help you. Reading the exam questions will help you make the basis of your outline and spot the important key points in the fact pattern as you write. 

Making an Answer

Once you have read the exam questions and identified the issues, the next step is to create an answer. You can create a rough outline before you start. Don’t waste all of your time creating the perfect outline and risk not being able to complete writing the answers. You can write the outline on scratch paper or exam paper, and you can also include a frame outline directly into your exam paper. 

Always make sure that your outline involves every issue that you identified, and you don’t need to discuss the issues in the same order in which you have identified. First, talk about the main issues and save the small issues for the end of the essay. Pay attention to time make sure to count the number of issues you have found and then divide your time between them. 

Final Thoughts

In exam writing, it’s essential to know the significance of creating outlines and the role of the IRAC method. Furthermore, students should use time properly so that they can answer all the questions on the exam. Don’t spend all the time on one question or issue. Divide the time between each question and cover all the issues that you have found in the fact pattern.

Key Takeaways:

1. How to Write a Law School Exam?: Understand that law exams require acting like an attorney, identifying legal issues from a client’s story, and applying relevant laws effectively.
2. IRAC Method Essential for Structure: Use the IRAC (Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion) method to systematically address exam questions, starting with issue identification followed by legal rule application.
3. Significance of Outlines in Preparation: Before tackling law school exams, mastering outlines is crucial as they organize the legal knowledge necessary for applying law to fact patterns.
4. Exam Format Understanding: Recognize that law school exams typically involve complex essay questions known as “issue spotters,” requiring detailed legal analysis over multiple pages.
5. Strategic Time Management: Allocate time wisely during exams by balancing between questions, ensuring not to spend excessive time on one at the cost of others, and reserving time for review.