Wednesday, October 9, 2024
1L of a Blog Series: Preparing for Midterms
Welcome to law school! This is a biweekly series with tips and tricks for success in law school. We’ll cover things like time management, outlining, preparing for exams, and more! Although this series covers skills and tricks that might be new to 1Ls, I hope that every member of the law school community can find something helpful here.
You’ve made it about halfway through the semester, and it’s time to start taking midterm exams! Your first (and second, and third…) law school midterm can be intimidating since it’s new territory. This is likely your first opportunity to put it all together and demonstrate your knowledge. But, to demonstrate that knowledge, you need to put in the legwork to master the material. This blog provides some tips on how to structure your studying to help you be more confident taking your exam.
- Understand Your Professor’s Expectations
The oft-forgotten step of studying is figuring out what your professor expects. As an initial matter, what format is your midterm? Will it be multiple choice, essay, short answer, a combination? Understanding the format of the exam will help you tailor your studying.
Further, do you get to bring anything into the exam? For instance, perhaps your professor allows a one-page outline, or maybe it’s entirely open book and note. On the other hand, perhaps it’s entirely closed book. While you should study for every exam as if it’s closed book, if you’re allowed to bring something in, you’ll have to allot time to prepare and organize that material.
The key takeaway here, though, is that there is a lot of non-law-related information you need to know before going into the exam. Search the professor’s syllabus, course policies, or ask if you’re unsure on these points.
- Memorize and Understand the Material
This seems like an obvious tip, but it’s crucial to your success. Whether or not you’re allowed to bring material into the exam, you’ll need to have your rules of law committed to memory. Don’t rely on whatever you can bring into the exam to replace memorization because you’ll spend more time flipping through your notes than answering the questions. Plus, you also need to understand the law to be successful during your exam.
There’s a key difference between memorizing and understanding. [WARNING! Math example ahead!] Memorizing material is just being able to recite it. For example, you might have memorized a2 + b2 = c2 in high school. But would you be able to readily apply it if you were given a math problem? That’s the distinction! You might dig that Pythagorean Theorem out of the recesses of your memory, but you may not understand how to apply it anymore. This same distinction applies to your midterm. For your exam, you need to have the rule statements committed to memory AND understand how they apply to different factual scenarios. So, while you study, make sure you’re devoting time to both.
This is where outlining comes into play. Your outline will help you understand the relationship between the different topics and see the “big picture” of the course. You can revisit hypotheticals in your notes as you outline, jot down key points on how each rule works, and note how the rules work together. You should also use your outline structure to identify an analytical structure you can use during the exam. Then, you can use memorization techniques (think flashcards, mnemonic devices, etc.) to commit the rules and structure to memory. Lean into your learning style to find the techniques that are most efficient and effective for you!
- Practice!
As noted above, your professor likely won’t ask you to recite rules of law on your exam. Instead, you’ll be presented with a fact pattern and asked to draw a conclusion based on the rules of law you’ve learned so far this semester. You won’t know the exact fact pattern until you open your exam, but that doesn’t mean you should be resigned to winging it! You need to practice the types of questions you’ll see in advance of the exam.
There are many benefits to practicing before the exam. First, practice questions can help you fine tune your analytical approach. Using existing questions with sample answers can help you evaluate and streamline how you’re analyzing problems so you can be efficient during the exam. Next, practice helps you verify your understanding. If you’re consistently getting questions about a particular topic wrong, you need to go back to make sure you understand how that law works. Finally, there are only so many ways to test legal topics. By working on a variety of practice problems, you’re building a bank of factual triggers and their outcomes that’ll help you during the exam.
There are multiple ways to find practice material. The first is by using what your professor has already given you. If your professor poses hypotheticals, goes over multiple-choice questions, or provides a practice exam, use those questions while you study. They’re likely the closest analog to what you’ll see on the exam. Next, you should look to supplemental materials, such as books and online resources, for additional practice problems. There’s a lot of material out there, so ask your TAs and academic support professionals for advice. They may be able to recommend supplemental materials that correspond to your professor’s exam style so you don’t have to do a lot of trial and error.
With midterms around the corner, I hope these tips will help you build an effective study routine that will help you feel confident in your exam. Beyond these academic tips, don’t forget to eat well, get plenty of sleep, and take care of your physical, mental, and emotional health during this stressful time. You can do this!
(Dayna Smith)
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/academic_support/2024/10/my-entry.html