Professors Discuss Exam-Taking Strategies

I'm actually gonna start the way actually I start teaching contracts which is the end right I start with remedies and so I'm gonna start with a little bit about how we grade or how I grade and I'll be curious to hear actually because I think there are some similarities and some differences although I think we're all basically going for the same kind of thing right so the way that I grade I tried to be fairly systematic so I break it down into your favorite new four-letter word right Iraq so we're all when I go through and I just give up I give a point per spot in the issue and I'll give you a point for reciting the rule and then I give a point for each point of what I of analysis which I think of as the application of a rule at the application of a fact to the rule in a way that pushes the outcome one way or the other right and like I said I think you'll see that lots of that people do things differently although they're all looking for something at least fairly similar I said Iraq and I really should say i raha right so I actually I don't give points for conclusions so and I think that and again I'm not sure everyone will follow the same practice but I I like to say that I like to reiterate it because again when I one point I do think is common among among most faculty members is that we're not really looking for the answer in terms of outcome right we're not looking for outcomes we're looking for you to apply the rules that we've been talking about through the semester and so you know all of these are tests of application as opposed to recitation or regurgitation of rules and I will I'll tell you the same thing I tell my every class I teach you're all very smart right you're all here at the University of Virginia which is a wonderful law school it's very hard law school it again - you're all quite smart most of you will know the rules I don't have a lot of circumstances where I pick up a test and I go oh wow they just didn't know the rules it happens doesn't happen very often so the way that you're gonna distinguish yourself is in your ability to apply those rules and that works with regard both to spotting the issues and you spot the issue by really understanding and being able to use the rule which is why I'm not a big believer and study guides which will tell you what the rule is they'll tell you the rule over and over and over again and you can make flashcards and tell yourself the rule over and over and over again but by and large at least in terms of you know by my experience most of you will know the rules so the question then is how well do you really know the rule right can you sort of feel your way through the rule into applying it and really make it work and that kind of sort of deeper knowledge and understanding is what we're looking for and it comes out both in the ability to spot issues and the ability to find the facts in the question set and the question right that that apply to those rules so again I don't I don't give points for conclusions I tell everyone I think it's good to have one because it provides focus and direction for your answer again this might be a little bit of a difference almost all of my questions you know they tend to be pretty big issue spotters and I'm looking for both sides right I'm not usually asking people to write a brief as they're going write some differences I think these are definitely these are gonna be definitely these are definitely gonna be differences among faculty members and so you should ask your professors right you know how they're gonna grade and how they're gonna approach this problem it it shouldn't be a mystery and it's not a mystery to us it shouldn't be a mystery to you we want to be consistent and we want to be fair some people might care about the quality of your writing right they really want your answer to to flow and you know in and read well I think that's asking too much given the given the situation we put you in and so I'm just looking for your application right and often better answers are gonna flow bit more because the student will have figured out the issue and will really be following kind of a logical course through the answer but again I think that's something that you should ask about case citations are another thing that students asked me about all the time and again I think your mileage may vary on this I think they are great but not necessary right they're great they will ground the professor in exactly the rule that you're talking about because you've had hopefully a shared experience of that rule in that case and so I think it's a great way to really anchor someone as you're talking about the answer in your on the exam but I don't think they're necessary I've had fantastic exams that didn't cite case names for me and for me again you know you should ask I don't really care if you get it wrong I'm looking for you to demonstrate your understanding so if you say Falstaff right into the Palsgraf or that railroad case with the scales or whatever like that's all fine with me other than the fact that I teach contracts so but you know just you know try to you know try to meet that communication and I think we all we all want you to do well right we're not sitting in our offices going you know oh I can't wait for a student to make a particular mistake that's gonna be a lot of fun so we want you to do what we want you to be successful worried we're gonna be trying to find those points that you're making on the exams and it's a it's a matter of being clear you know the only thing so the only thing I was going to talk about I was talking about how I take them as well but I think I'll wait on that one other thing they asked me to talk about where common issues which I think are relevant to how I grade and and how we grade and a few of them are you know some basic ones it goes to this conclusion point people tend to be conclusively you want to give the answer right this is like I mean like I said you know I don't give points for the for the actual conclusion so this is like a math test where you don't get points for the final answer so in some math classes right you get points to the final answer but you have to show your work here as far as I'm concerned you have to show your work that's all I'm looking for and so sometimes you know someone you know like someone will write well you know under the expectation measure the plaintiff gets $5,000 right well that might be the right answer but I don't I don't want the answer right I want to know what you know what's the rule that you used what part of the expectation measure did you use in that case and and one of the facts that that led you to get there you know the other are missed issues and missed issues I think come up because you will know the rules to the point of being able to recite them and describe them but you won't know them to the point of being able to use them and so again you know it's sort of the difference between looking at a road map and driving on a road right my recommendation for you is to practice applying the rules and to do that in conversation with your colleagues as I said you're all very smart you're surrounded by really smart people I would recommend that you talk to them you know you will learn more talking to your colleagues about what you're studying that up then then you might learn in any particular class but it will become it'll be much more real to you because you're applying with that and then organization can be an issue for people although again I think that really just depends right so sometimes people get get caught up and they get sideways sometimes there is a particular organization that makes sense mostly I would say don't worry about it too much you know use the organization that makes sense to you chances are pretty good it's the one that makes sense to us too but the worst thing that you can do is say okay I know what the issue is and I know what the facts are but I got to make sure I get everything in the right order and you'll trip yourself up trying to make that happen so you know try not organisation is one of those things where I say try not to to worry too much about it it will it will kind of flow and if you have to you know you can say oh yeah and I just thought of this thing you know that's probable that's not the best thing to have happen because maybe you should have thought of it earlier but it can be fine right fine so you know my biggest my biggest point about organization is not to worry about it too much so those are the those are just those are the few points that I had on that and again I'd be curious to hear if you if you all create super substantially differently than that or well I think I'll add my points of disagreement to the extent there any along the way in my remarks I think I largely almost completely agree with with what you said with a few minor so I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about getting prepared for exams strategies going in and then and then strategies for taking an exam as well as a little bit more the first thing that I want to remind you is you do know what exams are so sometimes when we get closed off school and I'm hoping that many or most of you have seen a midterm and you've had the chance to practice but in law school we have this idea that oh my goodness there's this thing called a law school exam or this thing called legal writing and it's completely and totally different from anything we've ever done before and oh my god the world is coming to an end and the thing that I want to say is you all have done lots of exams I'm assuming in in prior academic spaces you've taken exams before and so in some sense you do know what you're in for and you should just fall back on the same kinds of smarts that you have you're all really really smart and the study skills that got you here one thing that I think is really important is don't make any sudden changes you know if you're looking around you and you see that people are doing things differently from the way you have done them successfully before don't suddenly think I've got to start you know doing doing everything differently you know continue to follow the tried-and-true ways that got you here and then just to be clear we think that you do what you're going to be tested on Tom gave you a good nutshell description of that but just think about what you're learning in the classes or what we think you're learning in the classes you're learning a couple of different things one in each of your classes you're learning body of doctrine you're learning the basic outlines of contracts law of torts law of criminal law the rules of civil procedure so there is a descriptive content that you're learning right and one thing that you want to be clear on is most exams and you'll need to follow up with professors the professor expects you to know that doctrine yes there may be more than one approach to a question but you're expected to know what the doctrinal material is what the rules are so you need to learn that stuff right and no matter what your professor says coming into class some professors repute reportedly come in and criticize every case you're learning each and every case they say this is dumb this is stupid this is ridiculous and that can sometimes leave students bewildered like well what am I supposed to be learning what is the law that I'm supposed to be applying this is all stupid this is all done this is all ridiculous according to my professor yeah but it's still the law right and so when you come to your exam you need to know that doctrinal material even though according to the professor's Theory or approach it's not very sensible so make sure you keep your eyes on the doctrine and then what we're expecting you to do is what Tom said we're expecting you to be prepared to apply that doctrine to a new case you're going to be given a new case a case you haven't seen before and you're to evaluate that new case in light of the law that you've learned and so that's the analytical component that's the thinking like a lawyer component and again you've been doing that all semester in classes you know studying a case and then ask a lot of follow-up questions about how that doctor would apply to a new set of facts so that's what you're being expected to do you want to identify what the difficult issues are and then the range of plausible arguments that the lawyers would be making on both sides on my exams I don't you don't need to come down to a conclusion that's correct because typically we're giving you cases where there are very hard issues and there are good arguments on both sides and no one will know what the correct answer is until the judge rules but in my exams I frequently ask you to evaluate the likelihood of success of the arguments that you're making and I and I want you to do that if you're asked I'll get back to that in a minute so you know what you know what exams are and we are hoping that you know what you are being tested on doctrinal content and then how to apply it to a new set of facts I'm gonna give you some ideas about using your time well between now and the exam taking moment I'm the first thing that's really crucial is be sure that you know what your professors ground rules are is it an open book exam if so completely open book you know limited open book is a closed book exam you prepare for those exams potentially somewhat differently you need to know these things what kinds of questions are you going to be getting are they going to be essay questions are they going to be the big issues fodder question are they're going to be questions that have the focus on on policy issues what about multiple choice you know so all of these things are things that your professor knows and should be willing to share with you and they are willing to share but you need to know it would be a really a disaster if you walked in prepared for an open book essay exam and discovered that you were about to take a closed book multiple-choice exam right so make sure that you get all that stuff and and that you know what going in professors will tell you this unless they've gotten really super crosswise with a class and they're really pissed off at you and of course at that point you know all bets are off and you're all in the same coat just joking not ok so these things have been known to happen in some law schools so the other thing too is to make sure that you make good use of your professors now between now and exam time go to office hours if there are things that you are struggling to understand this is the time to go and get your questions answered make us earn our good salaries that's what we're here for and notice if you're struggling with something there's more than one possibility about what's going on maybe we haven't been clear in class and it's something that we could very easily clarify for you if you come in and talk to us we should do that the next thing is if you're struggling with it maybe it's genuinely difficult and it's hard for everyone to articulate what the approach is and for genuinely difficult questions they often are the ones that appear on exams and guess what if you come to our office and ask us one of those genuinely difficult questions that's going to be on the exam we're going to answer it we're gonna answer it in a straightforward way we're not gonna go that's on the exam I'm not telling you we you know so so my point is is make use of us make sure you come up to the extent you you you have questions and and and ask us for help with that in mind know your professors ground rules for office hours once the reading up period starts because some professors stopped holding office hours at some point you know maybe they'll have office hours up until the end of classes maybe they're gonna go away at some point and disappear and you need to know this will they take questions by email all of those kinds of things are important to the extent that you're hoping to talk to a professor make sure that you get from them the information so that you know if they're going to be around or not the next thing that I think is really important when you're studying during the reading period is have an action plan for your study time right I think you have four exams it's the extent you're all one else I'm sure you have four exams and you're gonna want to allocate your available time wisely I don't know what your first exam is I hope it scrim because then you'll spend all of your time studying creme and I will get the most magnificent set of answers ever on the other hand if Krim is the last exam I want you to make sure and so strike that stupid joke I just made um you have four exams you want to make sure that you're allocating sufficient time to each of them don't spend all of your time during the reading period studying for your first exam that's gonna leave you you're gonna come up short with respect to the others and this is you know this is a problem it's a time management issue but it's really really crucial and it's something that I struggled with when I was a student drove my husband absolutely insane because I wouldn't leave the house until my outline was done and I had to take a subway and he'd be like your exams in 15 minutes would you please leave and I'm like no I can't leave I haven't finished my outline so that was sort of my fault I hadn't allocated my time wisely so sit down and figure out where do I need to spend you know is which is my hardest class which is the one where you know I'm going to need a little bit of extra time which is the easiest one which one do I really adore reading for what's the one that's you know more difficult so just and have a game plan I actually recommend that you think about using half days maybe even quarter days you know in terms of what the time that you're gonna want to allocate to each of these exams you want to build in some down time some time for you to rest and certainly after you take an exam in the immediate you know hours after you finish an exam it's hard to spring right back into study mode but but be mindful that you have more than one and allocate the time among all of them so let's see what else so when you're taking the exam itself read the question answer the question make sure that you have looked at all pages of the question as Tom said we're really rooting for you to do well we hang in there until the last word you've written and do our absolute best to give you every possible on point that we can but sometimes what happens is people don't realize that the statutes on this page so they'll be reading you know in Krim law for example I'll frequently give a statute that you're supposed to apply and the students will you'll read the the case and then you'll just start falling back on sort of general principles well there's a statute on the next page make sure you turn all the pages is on saying so that you can avoid that problem and then also read the question and answer the question you may be told spot all the issues you may be told something quite different what is the best argument that you can make on behalf of your client and how likely is that argument to succeed I'll ask that sort of question just make sure you're reading the question take seriously the role that you've been given you know again I realize what tom is saying that you know it's if it's a big issue spot or some professors may not care what what the role assignment is so much but for me I do care if I tell you you're a prosecutor you know that's going to give you a certain way of approaching a question versus if I'm if you're told that you're a defender so read the question answer the question when you're answering the question be balanced always make sure you take account of the very best arguments that could be made by the other side great lawyers win cases because they figure out all the ways they could lose the case so what you want always want to do is if you're given one role is ask yourself what if I was assigned the office roll what would I say if I was sitting in the other lawyers shoes so be sure to read your questions and and answer them in a balanced way the next thing is read them really carefully we get our fact patterns from all kinds of places I do my best to take mine from real cases and I'll mention in a minute why I do that but a lot of professors get exams from pop culture you know think TV movies when you teach criminal investigation from jay-z songs there's lots of great stuff out there high culture I don't listen to opera but if I did I probably could get some some Krim cases from that so my point being is we get we get these cases that we give you from a lot of different sources and you may recognize some of them but even if you do read the question really carefully maybe especially if you do read the question really carefully because of course we're gonna make changes right you know the jay-z song is great but you know I need to to tinker with it a little bit before I can use it as a successful question so you want to make sure you read the the question it's given even if you think that you recognize the facts maybe especially if you think you recognize the facts um the other thing that I was thinking about recently about lawyering generally at about exams to having a client is a really important discipline on you and on the way in which you approach a case so what I recommend that you do when you are taking exams is say to yourself this is real the exercise that I'm being asked to participate in is real and in Krim I try to base my questions on real cases and I find that that's very motivating for all of my students because when they read it they go oh this really happened or is happening in the world there is a judge sitting somewhere in the country who is confronted with these issues and I am a lawyer who has to help that judge decide what she should do and so that's a really you know important thing that it gives your answer some discipline some focus and it's not this is not just an academic hypothetical these are designed to help you get ready to be lawyers in the real world now of course you can write this off as professor trying to suggest that this academic exercise is actually important right and and you may you may decide that that's not true but but you will be required to write memos in difficult cases and you should treat this exercise as being one of those let's see what else what else what else I'm gonna go back to what Tom said about how we're looking for analysis not description so you don't want to just regurgitate the doctrine you don't need to describe for example that criminal law requires proof of mens rea and Octus reyes and then give this abstract description of what those basic elements are i know that okay remember who is your audience for the question it's one of your professors or if you're placed in a role it's a colleague who has knowledge of this area of the law so you're talking to someone who knows the law and you want to help them evaluate and analyze a difficult question so analyze don't regurgitate do not cut and paste from your outlines just don't do it we spot it immediately we know when you're doing it especially when you do it in three or four questions in a row for me it's a mild annoyance I just flip the pages I know I can tell I'm reading someone's outline they're just giving me their outline as opposed to answering this question but other professors get more than mildly annoyed and and you know in fact might take points off for doing that so that's that don't do that um the next thing that I want to mention really quickly is because this was something that took me a long time to learn when I was sitting where you're sitting whoo exams don't contain any surprises right and by that I mean you're going to be given a new case you're gonna be given a case that you've never heard of before in my I've told some of you my contracts exam in law school had to do with a contract to cater a wedding and the catering truck got stuck in the Hudson tunnel or the Lincoln Tunnel or whatever the tunnel is that goes under between New Jersey and New York so I'm simply going I don't know the law of wedding wedding catering and it took me like about five minutes to come back to earth and go wait a minute but we did learn something about the law of contracts so in print in Krim for example if you're given a statute about the fact that it's a crime to tattoo a minor right it is a did you know that it is a crime to tattoo a minor don't go I don't know of a criminal law of tattooing of minors you don't but the point is you do know the basic ingredients of criminal law and you just want to ask those same basic questions that you've been asking all semester and apply them to this new case in other words when I say there's no surprises the law that you are expected to apply is the law that's in the case book that the view and the professor have discussed for the whole semester that's the law that's available to you you don't have time to go in research if there's some special rule for tattoos or wedding caterers so don't worry about it just go ahead and dive into the the question that you've been given the last quick thing I was going to mention is if you're having trouble of any kind please ask for help and I don't just mean in the moment of the exam obviously at the moment of the exam if your computer blows up go straight to the IT people they will save you and everything is going to be fine but if you're having trouble during this during the run-up to exams if you're sick or family members are struggling or there's just something really difficult going on you know make sure you reach out to Dean Davies office or the professors or something because we're here to help we want to make sure that you have a really successful experience great well I see some of my students here and they've heard some of this before so I apologize to them in advance for repeating my usual spiel about exams but that's what I know so I will talk about that and of course Tom and Anne have have said a lot of the the main things that I would like to say that I'll probably say them in a different way so I'll start with my own acronym instead of Iraq the acronym that I like to use for thinking about what I look for in exams I call koji co ji so the c is for competence and that basically means the doctrine as tom and ian talked about do you do you know the rules do you understand the facts of the question are you are you exhibiting competence which is the key first rule of law uring ii o is organization that's also been mentioned a couple of times so I agree with Tom that I don't think you have to have a polished piece of writing but I do think it is helpful to have an organizational structure in the sense that we can follow what it is that you're saying in a certain order that makes sense for the further question there is not one right order necessarily sometimes it may make sense to go chronologically sometimes it might make sense to go issue-by-issue or or person-by-person if there are different people who are involved in the fact pattern so again what what makes sense for you is fine as long as we can follow what you're what you're trying to do using headings is fine with me anyway to sort of give us some kind of guideline of where you're headed in the question so that's the organization part the J is judgment which in some sense for me is one of the most important skills and it's something really hasn't been focused on so much so I want to say a little bit about that so I tell my students is but there's a real temptation with anything that you do an exam taking and one way in which logins may be little bit different than other exams contrary to Ann's suggestion is that not not completely I mean I guess I get the basic idea but but your ordinary psychology is to do what you know to do what you're comfortable with because you know it the best and when you see something that you're not familiar whether you're not comfortable whether you don't feel confident about the answer you want to avoid that like the plague and on law exams you want to reverse your psychology you want to sort of say okay if this is something where it's pretty I'm pretty confident I know what this is I know what the answer is you want to say as little about that as possible and when you see something where you say oh my gosh I have no idea what to say about this you should say aha I found it I found the thing that I need to talk about so you need to fight your psychology and and find the things where you're not comfortable because this is really where the skill of luring becomes most valuable lawyers have to learn to deal with ambiguity not not everything there there are questions that have you know pretty straightforward answers but this is where the difference between good lawyers outstanding lawyers and just okay lawyers really shows up in and how do you deal with these things where there's some uncertainty so that's the judgment part and then imagination that's the eye the fourth and that I think goes to what Professor Coughlin was saying a little bit about applying things to new circumstances that you're not going to see something that's exactly like what you've seen in the cases or in class and even if you think it's exactly like it there's going to be some difference that the professor is trying to emphasize and wants you to recognize that that difference so I think those those are the things generally that I that I look for I want to also go back to and re emphasize something that professor Coughlin said about this being real and I think I completely agree with that the way I tend to phrase the idea is when I read an exam the question I'm really asking is what I hire you as my lawyer that's what I'm thinking about we're asking you to actually start doing law actually doing the activity of law instead of telling us about it we want you to start doing it and that's what we're thinking about you know is this person doing thing the way a lawyer would do it are they making the kinds of arguments that lawyers would make are they using the kinds of language that lawyers would use and this is obviously you can't do it in the same way you would do it in a brief because you don't have the time but it is that kind of skill that we are that we are looking for so along with that one of the other things that I like to tell students because after seeing exams for a number of years and trying to figure out you know what is it the distinguishes the good ones from the not-so-good ones and I came up with this and that is that one way to think about writing in a law exam is that everything that you say in an exam should be in the service of an argument everything that you do should be okay my next argument is this my next argument is this and so whether it's stating what the rule is that's relevant to that argument are stating what the issue is or stating what the analysis is it's all in the form of arguments you know the first thing that my client would want to argue is this or the best thing that my client could say in defense of their position is is this and so the more you think about that the less you you will be likely to do a professor Coughlin said in terms of just reciting a list of cases or a list of rules or even a list of facts I mean one of the things that I find somewhat annoying and disappointing is when students just start repeating the facts of the question without making an argument with it you know again so like the fester coffin said about the law we know the facts we wrote the facts so we've worked we know what the facts are what we want you to do is analyze those those facts so I understand sometimes people want to start out by kind of getting getting the the hands going getting the fingers going and so you start typing you know the repeating the facts but you're not getting anywhere with that no one's giving you points for correctly restating what the facts are the question so just get to the analysis part as Professor Nakamura said get to the get to the heart of it think in terms of arguments and I would say that that also applies to outlining in the and we haven't talked about outlines before exams we can talk about that but when you make an outline which I would recommend during an exam before you start writing or at least some kind of bullet point list or something that gives you some sense of where you're going with with an exam I would even try to do that to the extent possible in arguments you know the first argument is there is there is no consideration in this case because of the following reason even if you in the most simplified rudimentary way if you can think along those lines as opposed to just mens rea a' or consideration or negligence or something and that's my first topic well what are you saying about that right so the more you can actually force yourself to that you know here is what my arguments me there's no negligence in this case because the person did this you know so that's that's the way you want to think about it if you could think about that everything will kind of flow nicely and you will get a kind of organization along those along those lines so one of the things that goes along with this idea of how you start out you know so another thing that I tell my students and I think it's an important part of legal writing is you want to start strong you want to start with your strongest argument you want to that's that's a real important boring skill but also with an exam you want to start out strong because the way I think of that it is I have a kind of internal benefit of the doubt meter and if I start reading an exam and it looks like someone is just repeating the facts or they're kind of flailing around then I start thinking okay you're losing the benefit of the doubt which means that later on when you write something that could be interpreted one way or another way I may be less likely to give you the benefit that out because I'm not confident whereas someone who starts out pretty strong and you know they're giving me some confidence that they know the basics there they have some kind of organization and then they say something that's a little bit unclear later on I'm more inclined say oh I think they know what they were talking about now I can't quantify that I can't say that it definitely happens in all cases but I think we're human and so that is sort of the way we think about these things if we see something where someone seems to be demonstrating what they're doing and they seem to be competent we're more naturally likely to to give people the the favorable benefit of the doubt in part because we do want you to succeed as Professor Nakamura said and we want to try to do that but if you're not giving us the chance to do that then we we won't be able to to do that so in terms of other kinds of things again these things have been mentioned but things that you should do and things that you you shouldn't do one thing also that I think it's it's helpful to do is when you read a question and I I'm one of these people who likes long complicated fact pattern your questions they're not we don't all do that but that's that's one that's what I like to do and so it takes some time to digest those things so you want to read it carefully and you want to try to get some sense at least even the first time you read it even if you don't know exactly what you're gonna say or how you're gonna organize that get some sense of the common sense of the problem that is if I were going to sort of summarize the problem here to someone who is let's say not a lawyer what would I say if I could just sort of say it in one sentence you know sort of like a closing argument or something like that just to give you a sense okay here I understand the gist of what's happening here I understand the basic problem here and then I can go back if you go back and read it another time and start taking notes or whatever you can sort of fit see or how do these things sort of fit into that general problem my general sort of thought about the problem so I think that will be helpful in terms of both getting over the initial panic when you read a question like oh gosh what do I do with this catering problem I and the idea that yes I can start thinking about how the different things that we've read might be relevant to raise these different kinds of arguments in this in this question one thing that hasn't been said in terms of the analysis part and applying the doctrine when you apply these doctrines we've all talked a lot well your professors talk a lot about you know why do we have these doctrines what are they trying to accomplish what's the purpose of them that is very useful in thinking about how those doctrines ought to work in a situation you haven't seen before you know it's very a very common legal argument is to say all right well the purpose of this doctrine is this and that purpose would be served or would not be served by applying it in this situation or applying these facts to that doctrine so don't forget that that's just not some kind of fancy you know extra kind of stuff that is an important part of how law actually works in the world thinking about why do we do these things why do we have these crazy rules why do they look the way they and whether one agrees with them or not can you nevertheless make use of them and make arguments given the facts that you that you have the point about counter arguments I think is crucial that you need to be able to recognize I don't want to kind of rehash that but I want to re-emphasize that you do need to recognize be able to recognize what the best arguments are on the other side but with one caveat I would say you don't want to sort of make what we might call straw man arguments that is there are legitimate counter arguments on questions that are that are really debatable and then there are some things that just aren't debatable and so you you know you have sometimes people just sort of make up things that someone might say the other something they're kind of ridiculous and that's not what we're looking for we're not looking for you to think of some possible cockamamie thing that could be said against that we're looking for you to and this is the judgement point we're looking for you to sort of identify you know where where are the real scenes or the or the the tensions in these in these doctrines where you can really raise legitimate counter arguments where are the we are the ambiguities making use of the information you're given so professor Coughlin talked about statutes that she gives on on exam so for for professor knock warned me where contracts teachers we very often will give contract provisions in in exams if you get something like that again make use of it it's there for a reason that that we're looking for you can can you read these provisions can you see where the difficulties are where the ambiguities are how how those things might be relevant to to the to the particular problem all right so those are at least some things that you should do let me just say a couple of things that you should not do so professor Navarro already mentioned conclusory arguments that's that's certainly a big no-no and again something that I tell my students and I point out every time I see it in opinions because it drives me crazy clearly is not an argument right so or if you know if something is really clear then you don't need to say clearly because it's it's pretty obvious if it's something is not clear saying that it's clear is not going to make you look like you know that there's a problem there so so try to avoid those the kinds of those kinds of things you don't need to write running out of time on the exam we know that you're running out of time we know these things you know as if you've taken midterms now you sort of know that how the time sort of creeps up on you and so that's that's a problem pretty much across the board no matter what kind of exam it is sometimes people will finish early that it's it's relatively rare so so you don't need to tell us that but what you can do we have I mean again this is something you should ask your professors about I'm very comfortable with someone who is running out of time to sort of write bullet points or a couple of sort of short things that you know if I had time I would address the following things and then you know if it looks like there's again something where I can sort of Intuit that yes you seem to have the right idea there I might give some credit for that so that's much more valuable than writing running out of running out of time but yeah so I already talked about restating the fats you know things so things like errors you know so we talked about the fact that there's many right answers to the problems but that doesn't mean there aren't wrong answers there are wrong answers right so you can state the law incorrectly you can get the facts wrong and so that's something you really try to want to try to avoid doing you want to make sure that you're getting the facts accurately and again you know if it turns out that you're in the middle of the question you realize you misread something as professor Nakamura says you should say that you should say oh you know I was reading this this way now I see it's this way it would be better if you don't do it but you know that that saying that you did it is better than sort of going to the end of exam not having acknowledged that so that's that's something you want to try to avoid doing you want to try to avoid being repetitive because again there's not a lot of time you want to get to as many of the different points as as you can and let me say one more thing about about that because we haven't really talked about the curve here and you know it's a very common thing when you have a curved system which is unfortunate and we all hate it but we live with it so you know but at least you need to know what what that means to have a current system so of course what it means is that we're in some sense grading you against each other for better or for or and so you know it's it's very possible to come out of an exam in a curved system and think you really did well on that exam and it turns out you don't do as well as you thought because why well everyone else had the same feeling because it was let's say relatively easier exam or something or you have the opposite feeling I think I did terribly on that and then it turns out you did really well why well because you did a little bit better than everyone else who also thought it was a hard exam so so the analogy I like to use there's a game called boggle that's one of these word games with cubes in a little box right and you shake it up and then everyone tries to make as many words as they can out of the words of the in the cubes right and how do you get points in boggle well you don't get many points if everyone has the same word because if everyone has that word you all cross it out where you get points or if you have words that no one else had that's where you get the one so that's sort of what a current system is like so when you come up with things that that the average person in the class doesn't come up then you're gonna do a little bit better than that person that's that's how the current system or so it doesn't mean that you're not really learning the subject if you don't do quite as well as everyone else and you know as has already been said you're all really smart you're all going to be great lawyers one of the wonderful things about being at this school is that you can all get great jobs so that so the goal here is to be the best lawyer you can be that's the goal of professional school and you will all be terrific lawyers and this is just helping you do that and if you can think about it that way even if you're disappointed in the final outcome see it as an opportunity for okay what do I need to work on how can I become a better lawyer because that's the goal the goal isn't racking up little gold stars or something anymore the goal is this is my career I need to be good at it and I'm gonna work on being getting good again we're here to help you do that so I'm gonna follow up with a couple of quick things one is on your exams you frequently will be given time allocations for the questions you know you want to take those seriously you particularly don't want to stick with a one question and fail to get to the other two in a timely way you know law of diminishing returns and it can be tough you might be in the middle of a question time is running out you really want to spend more time nailing it down I think it's important to move on and and make sure you get to all of the questions the other thing I wanted to follow up that George said is that if you're running out of time it can be useful for you to just give us a little quick outline of what the rest of your answer might look like on that front though I would be cautious sometimes students will give outline in outline form their answer to every question in other words rather than writing out in prose and a memorandum sort of prose style they'll serve just outline and give you bullet points that's typically not a successful approach because reading the outline doesn't provide the analysis it just sort of spots the issues and gives us some inkling of what you might have said had you said it so I think that you want to be really careful about that approach only do it when you're at the last minute and you think oh I have three more things to say let me just give the bullet points on that front thank you rather than then approaching the whole question that way it just doesn't it just doesn't work so just very quickly a couple of things to build upon things that and in George said so outline absolutely you know I used to force myself to take a quarter between a quarter and a third of the time to read the question in outline my answer because I felt like if I didn't have that pre-commitment strategy I would jump into it so you need to control your time look at the time hacks on the the time limits on the exam the I will say I don't see students getting the rule wrong too often students get the facts wrong all the time so pay attention to the facts and the question building us something that that Ann said take care of yourself the the exams are they're hard you have to you have to think hard for a long time and you know if I could give students any tip for preparing for exams it would be to exercise right it has such a huge effect on your the the social science that social science the science on this is really strong it has a huge effect on your ability to warm and students tend to not take care of themselves during finals and you know take care of yourself during finals because locking yourself up in the library is not gonna doing it you still not going to be any good if you can't think your way through in this the second or third or fourth hour of the exam and that's when those differences are going to start that's when the the the take meter taking care of yourself sleeping things like that it's it's gonna make a difference so I want to take issue with something that Tom just said I agree on the exercise runner self-care but I don't agree on the outlining part and I want to go back to where I started where you want to know your own strengths and the way you think if I were to spend a quarter of my time on an exam outlining I would flunked all of my exams it's just not the way my mind works and so I needed to begin writing much more quickly than then Tom did and so for me the the you know the writing and the analysis went hand in hand and it's so it's very impossible I think for us to tell you exactly how you should work this I mean there's no doubt at all that an outline is hugely important for me when I'm writing my own papers my scholarship I have to do the outline after the fact and typically my research assistants help me by saying here's your outline you know and and then we reorganize things a little bit but for me I needed to jump into writing pretty quickly I also I wouldn't have gotten it done and then the one thing that often is is I think implicit but which should be made explicit is that the more successful exams often are a bit longer you know they're there they're you know as we said you don't get you don't get points for just stating here's the bottom line conclusion you get points for unfolding the analysis along the way and in a this way the arguments on both sides so again for me if I were to have spent a quarter of the time allocated I would never have gotten my answers written in a successful way I wish I was an outline kind of person it would help with other things but so so know you know thyself and know how it is that you think and write best and if outlining is the thing that's good for you then do it if you need to start writing more quickly to get the thinking going I would I would do that yeah we all want to so we all want approaching these things differently the one you know the one concern that I have with writing is that just like George said you have to fight your psychology a little bit you're gonna read the question you're gonna want to start writing right away and and you know what that'll sometimes do is push students to not pay enough attention to the question so when I would force myself to slow down mostly I spent most of that time reading the question right I'd read the question and outline it but you know whatever it I agree with him whatever you know know yourself so whatever it takes for you to get yourself to slow down and really understand what's happening in the question then then do that question yeah anyone is consumer it's such a small and informal setting why I apologize I was actually on my list and I didn't talk about that I'm sorry so again I think there's gonna be a lot of variation here and something that George said about having an outline so I don't I don't allow my first years to use outlines because in their exams they're all they're closed book and the reason why is because I think that outlines are for suckers so you know you need you I would write an outline for every class and the benefit that I think that that I think you're gonna get from the outline is in creating the outline actually taking the outline into the into the exam you know great if you can great I would not count on using it right so I think did you prepare for the question you repair for the exam kind of the same way and then the outline is there but you you know I do think that it's it's a invitation to not prepare enough for the exam yeah I give open book exams and I sort of have a slightly different view from Tom but could it be different not that different but but basically I agree that the value of an outline is writing it and that you won't have a lot of time to use it in exam so I view it as kind of a security blanket I view it as if you have that moment of panic where you just can't remember something and you're just completely lost you can flip through your outline and sort of see a couple of things and say okay I got it and and it'll come back to you but you're not gonna have a lot of time to do much more than that on an exam so so I I view it as basically serving that purpose and that's that's how I view open book exams generally so I don't think we're actually that that different it's just that we have we just have a different we come out of them a different angle yeah so I think outlines are for winners now suckers and but I agree you're not likely to have a lot of time to consult your outline but for me no lawyer in her right mind would do anything closed book you've never ever ever in a million years rely on your own recollection or memory right you're always gonna have the chance to go ahead and double-check things so I try to allow my my approach is to have it be open book because the questions are so difficult is so hard that anything that you can consult that will help your memory is what I is what I allow [Applause]

Channel: University of Virginia School of Law

Views: 2,951

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: law school, law school exams, Thomas Nachbar, George Cohen, Anne Coughlin, exam strategies, UVA Law, exam, advice, University of virginia

Id: BhMPkId3Y5A

Length: 53min 0sec (3180 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 08 2018