Would you like to earn better grades on your exams?
Today I provide you with ten questions to ask yourself after you take a practice
or actual law school exam.
This is essential for practice exams because it will help you learn the material at a deep level.
And after a graded exam, this debrief will help you understand your mistakes,
allowing you to minimize mistakes on future exams.
Finally, if you stay to the end you will learn the legal date when World War I ended, and
no, it wasn’t today, November 11th back in 1918.
Hello lawlings, this is Professor Beau Baez.
Let’s discuss what education scientists call the testing effect.
When you first learn something, you must reinforce that memory or it will fade away.
You could use flash cards or outlines to help, but those are not the most effective tools
for deep learning.
Instead, those approaches provide you with the illusion of learning.
The testing effect, also called retrieval practice, is a better approach for learning,
especially when coupled with feedback.
In law school setting, this means taking practice exams and learning from those practice exams.
Or after a final exam, to help you learn from your mistakes and not repeat them on future exams
For example, the reason for a lower than expected grade may have nothing to do with the content.
You may actually know the material
but rather organization or failure to employ analytical reasoning.
This is when the testing effect comes into play.
Let me tell you about Cole, a student of mine who followed the steps I'm about to share with you.
He received one of the lowest grades on my midterm exam.
He flunked.
I provided him with the tool I’m about to share with you, and he took it seriously, he spent
pages answering these questions, and guess what?
He ended up with one of the highest grades on the final exam. He moved from an F to an A.
From this point on, I will refer to practice exams, but the process should also be used after final exams.
Step one is to find a practice exam and take it.
Second, if you have a model answer, review it.
You now need to reflect on what you did, using your notes, books, and a model answer.
So here are the ten questions you need to ask and answer, preferably by writing down your responses.
In other words, this is not a short exercise, but one that will take you time to complete,
at least if you want to learn at a deep level.
Question 1.
Write down the legal issue you were supposed to spot on the practice exam.
If the practice exam had more than one legal issue, you will complete this exercise for
each legal issue.
For example, suppose that a practice exam dealt with Negligence, and there was one issue
on the reasonably prudent person standard, another on negligence per se, and a third
on the eggshell plaintiff rule.
You have three issues, so answer all ten questions separately for each of these three issues,
one at a time.
Question 2.
Compare the rules and definitions you wrote on the practice exam with the rules and definitions
in your books.
Write them all out.
Then explain what you could have done differently.
You may want to take a piece of paper, divide it.
On one side, what you did, the other side what you should have done.
Question 3.
Identify the facts that your answer failed to mention, and explain why they were not
included in your answer.
Again, if you merely think about this without writing things down, you won’t get very
much from this learning method.
Question 4.
Identify facts that you placed in your answer but which were not adequately connected to the rule.
Explain why they were not adequately connected and what you could have done differently to
connect them.
Question 5.
Identify inferences and conclusions that were not noted in your answer, and explain why
they were not mentioned.
Question 6.
What could you have done better regarding grammar, spelling, word choice?
Provide some examples.
Question 7.
How was your answer organized and what improvements can you make?
Question 8.
If non-issues were identified, discuss why you identified them and why they should not
have been discussed.
Question 9.
If issues were not spotted, discuss why you missed them.
And finally Question 10.
Were you able to finish the exam in the allotted amount of time?
If you were unable to do so, how are you going to improve for the final exam?
Generally, going through these ten questions might take you an hour, maybe a little bit more per each legal issue.
But each time you do so, you will learn the law, exam writing format, and analytical skills
needed for success.
This is a much better way to learn compared to reading a rule outline.
Today’s bonus law fact.
It was November 1918 and Imperial Germany was close to collapse, with the German people
starving, its army exhausted, and the real possibility of a Bolshevik revolution after
four years of grueling war.
Finally, under the combined attack of the allies,
the German army started to crumble, to fall back, to run from battle.
Germany was at the mercy of the allies.
To allow its men to return home, Germany signed an armistice which ended hostilities on November
11, 1918 at 11 am—the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month.
But the armistice was granted, we celebrated.
Not only because the war was over, but because it seemed that we had put an end to German militarism forever.
That stopped the fighting, but not the war.
The politicians then began working out the terms of surrender, which resulted in the
Treaty of Versailles, signed on June of 1919.
Under the terms of the Treaty, World War I would legally end when Germany met all
of the terms in the treaty.
By this treaty, the Germans agreed to disband the general staff,
to limit their army to 100,000 men, to hand over their fleet,
to demilitarize the Rhineland and coastal fortifications.
They bound themselves to never again build an air force or submarines.
And to enforce the treaty, allied troops were to occupy the west bank of the Rhine.
One term, which today is viewed as one of the main reasons for the rise of Adolf Hitler
and World War II, was a reparations provision.
Germany was required to pay 132 billion gold marks, which today is equivalent to $33 billion dollars.
This led to the collapse of the German economy and the rise of the Nazi party.
When Hitler took power, he immediately stopped making payments, and after World War II it
was decided that Germany would not have to complete the reparation payments until reunification.
In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin wall and German reunification, Germany began making
payments on its reparations.
Finally, on October 3, 2010 Germany made the final reparation payment, legally ending World War I.
This makes World War I the longest war in United States history, lasting 93 years.
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