Speaker 1 (00:00): So many law students don't go
to office hours and don't ask their professor. But if you don't know what a professor is looking for,
you're leaving points on the table. Hey guys. And welcome back to my channel, the place where I help
law students and get the grades and land the job so that you can build a lawyering life on your own
terms. If you're new to the channel, I'm Angela Vorpahl of angelavorpahl.com. And before we jump
into today's video, if you are interested in law school are already in the midst of law school,
be sure to join our free law school network, Facebook group. It is an amazing place to
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Speaker 1 (00:41): And in today's video,
we're talking about law school, final exams. And for those of you who are already in law school,
or who are thinking about law school, final exams are universally considered the most stressful
point in the entire semester. That's the time when the tension and the pressure really kick
into high gear. But as tough as that build up to final exams can be the absolute best antidote that
I've ever found going into exams is knowing how to write a high scoring exam answer, because that
gives you so much confidence and clarity when you walk into that room. And as much of a game changer
is that is knowing what not to do is equally as powerful so that you don't make the same mistakes
that so many law students make, especially that first year of law school. So that's exactly what
we're going to dive into in today's video, the most common mistakes I see law students making
on final exams so that you can avoid them and really perform at your highest possible level.
Speaker 1 (01:41): When you walk into that exam room,
the first big mistake I see law students making in their final exam answers is
skipping the analysis altogether. So a lot of you have probably heard of the IROC
framework. It stands for issue rule analysis, conclusion. I love Iraq. It is a great, great
way to think through your exam answer and make sure all of those necessary pieces are in there.
That being said, the I, the R and the C the issue rule and conclusion are very, very basic. You want
to get in and get out with those as quickly as possible because the real star of the show
is the analysis. And the trick with the analysis is that you really want to take your professor
by the hand and walk him or her through step by step by step, exactly how you are getting
from the issue that you spotted to the conclusion that you are giving them.
Speaker 1 (02:31): And what tends to happen is that
a lot of law students totally skip that part. And they'll do, what's called ice, seeing your answer,
which is where they just write the issue. And then the conclusion, and don't even touch on the rule
or the analysis of how they got to the conclusion. They got to an example of icing. Your answer would
be something like the issue is whether D is liable to pee for battery D is liable to pee for battery,
because he acted with intent to commit a harmful or offensive contact. That's it? No step-by-step
analysis, no application of the facts, no taking your professor's hand and showing them how you
arrived at the conclusion you arrived at. And this will absolutely obliterate your point total. And
there's a couple reasons why law students kind of fall into this trap of leaving out the analysis.
Speaker 1 (03:17): One of them is because when
you're in a high pressured situation, like a final exam, and you see an issue that you recognize
you are so excited to get it down on the page and just say, Hey, I found battery, Hey, I found an
issue for assault. I found an issue for false imprisonment, and I think there's a tendency to
just get down the conclusion to show the professor that you notice something in the fact pattern.
The other thing that tends to happen is this assumption that the professor already knows
the professor wrote the exam, right? So they already know why there's a battery. They already
know why so-and-so is liable for assault or liable for false imprisonment. I don't need to tell them
why the facts lead to this conclusion. But the truth of the matter is that in law school,
just like in high school, math, you can't get points if you don't show your work.
Speaker 1 (04:04): So showing that mental
process of step-by-step. In fact, by fact, how you got to your conclusion is where you get all
of your points and leaving that out is absolutely going to obliterate your point total. So I know
it's scary to dig into the facts. I know it's hard to go there, but that's absolutely how
you're going to get those juicy, juicy points and really raise those final exam scores.
The next big mistake I see law students making on final exams is not asking their professor
what the professor wants to see in their exam answer. And this is absolutely critical because
the person holding all of the cards to your grades in a particular class is the human being in front
of you at the front of the class. And so we want to know what do they consider a really good exam
answer? And it is true that most law school professors do really like the IROC framework.
Speaker 1 (04:54): They think it is a really nice way to
organize your answer, but not all professors love it. And some do like it, but with very nuanced
preferences. So for example, some professors don't want you to write issue statements or
rule statements. They just want you to start with the analysis. Other professors like the creative
framework, which is very similar to Iraq, but it has the conclusion stated at the beginning
as well. So it's conclusion, rule, explanation analysis, conclusion. Some professors put a
lot of emphasis on very beautifully written exam answers. So they give a lot of points for sentence
structure and grammar and things like that. Other professors, as long as the words are on the page,
even if it's in bullet point form, we'll still give you points. Other professors write their
final exams where there's a really big emphasis on issue spotting because the exams are very long.
Speaker 1 (05:41): Whereas other professors
write shorter exams, but really wants you to dig into the arguments. So the point is that we want
to know this before we walk into the final exam. And the way that you figure this out is you ask
your professor. And so many law students don't go to office hours and don't ask their professor and
I totally get it. It's incredibly intimidating. They seem very busy and also knowledgeable.
And also I don't want to waste their time. And so I didn't do it one L a year either,
but if you don't know what a professor is looking for, you're leaving points
on the table. So this is a very important strategic step that most law students skip.
And the other thing to keep in mind is that as much as we want to do this 100% of the time,
you have to be okay with the fact that not all professors are going to tell you.
Speaker 1 (06:27): So some professors are
very open and honest and clear about what they want to see in an exam. Answer. Other professors
play it very close to the chest, and won't tell you explicitly what they want to see,
but the worst they can say is no or not share with you the information. And it's your job to at least
ask the question, mistake, number three, running out of time on a final exam. And
this is a huge one. So the reality is that law school exams are intentionally written to be
too long. So the joke is kind of, for any given law school, final exam, you could write
an answer for days and days and days, and they give you about three to four hours to do it.
And the reason that law school final exams are written to be intentionally too long,
is to force the creation of a curve, which is the foundation of the law school grading system.
Speaker 1 (07:18): So if a professor made a final exam that everybody
could answer in the given amount of time without a problem, then it would be next to impossible
to create that distribution of grades on a curve. Now, I'm not saying I agree with the girl with the
graded system of a curve. I'm just saying, that's why they do it. So they need to pack as many
possible issues into a fact pattern as possible so that some students will find more than others.
So now that we know we're walking into a time impossible exam situation, we need to know how
to aggressively manage that time so that you're using it as efficiently as possible. And so three
of the most common mistakes that law students make with respect to time management on final exams
are number one. They spend a disproportionate amount of time on that first question.
Speaker 1 (08:03): So when you sit down,
you're in the exam room, you flip that exam over and you just want to go all in on that
first question. And a lot of students will just write and write and write and write
and burn time for the other. Let's say four questions that might be on that exam and not
leave themselves enough time. So what you need to do is be as strict as possible with yourself
in accordance with the time distribution that the professor has given to each question. So
usually the professor will say, for example, at the top of the page question, one, spend 45
minutes on this question. Two suggested time is 30 minutes. Question three suggested time is an hour,
and you want to be really strict with yourself on those time allocations because the professor
is telling you what that point distribution is. They're telling you how many points you
can give for each question divided by those time allocations. And so you have to be able to
really effectively write your answers, but also cut yourself off when you reach those time limits
so that you can also get amazing, amazing juicy points on the rest of the questions as well.
Speaker 2 (09:05): The second mistake that students make with respect
to time management on final exams is not outlining your answer before you start typing. So in a final
exam situation, you want to create at least a rough outline, a bullet point list of the issues
that you spotted, that, you know, you want to talk about so that you give yourself that sense of how
much time you can spend writing out each issue and all the analysis that goes with it. So for
example, if you have a question with a 45 minute time allotment that your professor has told you,
and you spend about 10 minutes reading it and creating that rough outline, you have 35 minutes
left, let's say you spotted five issues. Now, you know, you only have seven minutes to write
on each of those issues. If you didn't create an outline and you were just going one by one by one,
not only would you waste time trying to figure out where you're headed next,
but you also have no sense of how long you have to spend on each of those issues. So really,
really do yourself this favor of this really quick, short, rough outline, so that you can break
down those time allotments that your professor is giving you into more bite sized pieces that make
sense and give you that sense of urgency so that you can move on when that time allotment is up.
Speaker 1 (10:17): The third time management mistake, I see
law students making on final exams is spending way too much time on the rule statement. So
it totally makes sense because you have learned all of this law throughout the
semester. That's been the entire focus this entire time in all of your classes
and law students want to show their professor how much they know how much they've learned, how much
they've studied, how much law they've memorized. And so it basically turns into this brain dump
of just rules and rules and rules and rules and explanations of rules as to show their professor
how much they know when, as we talked about before the place where you actually get all
your points is the analysis section. And so if you're busy brain dumping rule statements, you
are eating up precious, precious time. That will be better spent working through the step-by-step
analysis of your answer and applying those facts to the legal rules that you've learned.
Speaker 1 (11:10): And so it's a very common mistake
among new law students, but just be aware of that, that the rule statements really
are there to get in and get out so that you can open up as much time and space and energy
to walk through that analysis section of your answer. The next big mistake I see,
lot of students making on final exams is not formatting their exam answer. And I know this
sounds very basic and simple and unimportant, but I promise you it is a game changer. And the
reason it's a game changer is because professors hate grading final exams. And you would too.
If you had to grade a hundred exams for every course that you were teaching, because they're
long, they're repetitive, there's so many of them, it takes forever. And so what you want to
do, and the key here is to make your exam answer as easy as possible for your professor
to read what you don't want is your professor to print out your exam answer, have it be 12 pages,
single-spaced just a wall of text and have them hating their life and hating you.
Speaker 1 (12:11): You want to make it very visually appealing, very
easy to walk through. And so when we talk about formatting, we're talking about paragraph breaks,
headings, subheadings, numbered lists a really easy visual flow to what it is you're talking
about so that your professor has their grading rubric over here. And they can just check, check,
check, check, give you all of these really great points because they can find them really easily.
If it's just a wall of text, your professor is not going to be inclined to go
digging through your answer, to try and find points to allocate to you. So
help them help you by making your exam answer incredibly easy to read and incredibly easy to
allocate points to the final mistake. I see law students make with respect to final exams
is looking for the right answer. And this is absolutely the crux of writing
a really good law school exam and the one that most new law students miss.
Speaker 1 (13:04): Because the truth of the matter is that
in law school, there is no right answer. And this is really, really tough for us to wrap our brains
around because our entire academic lives, we were taught the answers. And then we were taught to
give them back to professors on final exams and law school is the first time where we're rewarded
for recognizing there's no right answer. And then being able to explain why. And I remember being in
final exams, especially when all year and just telling myself a mantra over and over as I was
going through my exam, there is no right answer arguments and counter arguments. There is no right
answer arguments and counter arguments, because if you don't remind your brain, it will go into right
answer mode immediately. And it will look for what issues are there, how should they come out?
Speaker 1 (13:53): And when you do that,
and you don't dig into the arguments and counter arguments, that's where you leave
so many juicy points on the table. That's where your point total really, really takes you from
the middle of the class, to the top of the class. And so this is a tough one, but getting this right
is really, really what increases those point totals. And even one point can be
the difference between a B and a B plus or an a and an a minus or an a and the highest grade in
the class. And so we're always looking to improve our point totals and get those as high as possible
on a final exam, and really, really digging into this concept of no right answer exists.
Let me see how I can argue this from both sides is where those juicy, juicy points really lie.
Speaker 1 (14:39): That's it for this video guys?
I hope this was really helpful. I hope it gave you some insight into what to expect from final exams,
how to avoid some of those most common mistakes so that you can walk in clear and confident and
ready to kick on your final exams. So for all of you who are preparing or heading in
right now, I wish you the absolute best of luck. If you have any questions about final exams,
be sure to drop them in the comment section below. And of course, if you haven't subscribed yet,
you can subscribe here. So you get notified every time a new video comes out and check out these two
videos over here. I have no doubt they're filled with just as valuable information for you guys.
I wish you guys, the best of luck have a great week, and I will see you in the next video.