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Are you having problems with issue spotting?
Want to do better on this important exam skill?
Stay to the end as I provide you with 8 strategies to help you get better grades.
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Hi, this is Beau Baez, and today I want to discuss issue spotting.
After grading thousands of law school essays and talking to students later, I’ve noticed
a few things.
Specifically, most students who didn’t do well on an exam thought they knew the law,
even though they really didn’t.
What I want to do is first provide you with a few pre-exam day strategies, and then I’ll
move to some strategies you can use during the exam.
One: outline.
You should create your own outline, otherwise you will inoculate yourself from true learning.
Think of it this way.
You plan to swim out to an island a mile out at sea.
You practice in your swimming pool, but that isn’t going to help you with the waves,
tides, and currents you will encounter in the ocean.
Making your outline is not about the outline itself. It's about the learning process you go through.
in creating the outline.
If it was about the outline itself, you could buy one commercially and be just fine.
Two: relationships.
You need to understand how legal concepts are
related to each other.
Yesterday, I received an email from a student asking me how she should write a negligence
essay that was also testing on vicarious liability.
Her question made it clear to me that she didn’t understand vicarious liability at
a deep level.
To develop mastery of the law, use the elaborative interrogation technique.
This technique allows you to make connections between related ideas, and help you find gaps in your
knowledge.
Three: checklist.
If you have an open book exam, create a checklist, which is also called a skeletal outline.
The outline should list each of the items in your rule outline, but with no definitions.
You will be able to see all of the possible issues on the open exam quickly.
Four: practice.
Do practice essays and multiple choice questions.
A few years ago I decided to add multiple choice questions--bar exam style--to my exams. I noticed
a strong correlation between the multiple choice component of the exam, and the essay component.
So if you are having problems with multiple choice questions, you may have problems with
issue spotting as well.
To master the law you not only need to take practice exams, but you need feedback from a professor,
academic support professional, a private tutor, or your study group.
Alright, its exam day, you’ve studied, and are ready to go.
Here are some strategies to use on exam day.
Five: prewrite.
When you get the exam, spend about 20% of the time thinking and prewriting your answer.
Scientific studies show that students who think and organize first, outperform those
that just start writing.
This is because students that start writing, they miss issues, or worse yet, they forget issues
that they initially spotted when they read the essay.
Six: examine each fact.
Each fact on an essay question is there for one of three reasons: it's necessary for
the issue, it provides background, or it is there to throw you off.
For each sentence, you need to make a quick determination on which category it falls into.
Background sentences are usually easy to spot.
The real challenge is distinguishing issues from non-issues.
My recommendation is that you place a mark by sentences you believe are not necessary
to answer the question, and then come back to them one more time before you start writing.
Ask yourself if there is any possible issue that could be implicated by these sentences.
Seven: ask questions.
After reading the facts, ask yourself a series of questions.
For example, on a torts exam: is this an intentional tort, is this negligence, or
does this sentence involve proximate cause. Basically you're going through the issues in the class very quickly.
Or on a criminal law exam with a homicide, are the elements for 1st degree murder present,
do I see 2nd degree murder, or involuntary manslaughter.
By asking questions, you will begin to see the issues, which will help you on the exam.
Eight: weak issues.
Often times, students believe that only issues that are clearly defined by the facts should
be discussed.
That's a mistake.
If some facts implicate an issue, then discuss it.
Now at some point you do have to exercise discretion as to what is important and not important.
If it doesn’t look very important, it’s probably not.
But during an exam, you get worried.
In those situations, discuss these unimportant issues, but just don’t spend a lot of time on
them—just a few sentences.
Also, some exams are designed for you to spot lots of issues, while other exams are designed
for only a few issues.
If you have an issue spotter exam, something with 15, 20, 30 issues,
then your goal is to spew out as many issues as you can.
This is why it is important to review an old exam from your professor, if you can get one.
As I wrap up this episode, let me leave you with my thoughts on the most important strategy,
and that is practice.
Practice exams, along with feedback, will help you to expose gaps in your knowledge.
So begin practicing your exam skills at the beginning of the semester—don’t wait till
the end.
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