Continuing Orientation Workshop - Writing a Law School Final

For students wishing to review Professor Darrow-Kleinhaus' lecture on Writing Law School Finals, the video is available on TLCWEB (password protected). Below is the handout from the lecture.

Study Tips to Reduce Anxiety

The reality of being half way through the semester is beginning to set in; and for some, that comes with a great deal of anxiety - maybe the anxiety set in is because a midterm didn't go as well as anticipated, or maybe it is time to get serious with studies after weeks of coasting. Regardless of the reason, there are ways to reduce anxiety. Below is an excerpt from a blog post written by Dean Amy Jarmon with tips for minimizing stress and anxiety:

Plan your study schedule carefully. Decide what hours you can free to focus on review each week. Designate review time by course so that you can determine whether you have prioritized time properly for each course. Not all courses are equal - think about your level of preparedness and understanding for each separate course.

Study for understanding rather than mere memorization. If you truly understand a concept, you will retain the information better and recall the information more quickly. Also, understanding a concept will allow you to reason through a difficult question on an exam. Instead of guessing, you will be able to consider the question logically and thoroughly.

Go to your professor early and often to get questions answered. The sooner you "plug up" holes in your understanding, the more quickly you will lower your anxiety. The same is true if you are a first-year student who has access to help from upper-division tutors or teaching assistants.

Think about the information at all four levels of processing when you study: global, intuitive, sequential, and sensing. Two of these styles will be your preferences. The other two styles are your "shadows" - you can process at those levels, but it takes a bit more effort. You will understand the material with both breadth and depth if you consider all four levels.

• Global: What is the big picture of the material? What are the essentials that you need to understand? How do the topics in the course fit together to make the whole?
• Intuitive: What are the relationships among the topics, sub-topics, concepts, and cases? What policies or theories have been discussed in class? Do you know how to argue those policies or theories appropriately for the parties?
• Sequential: What are the individual units that you need to understand in the course? What steps of analysis or methodologies do you need to use for each topic or sub-topic? How can you think through the information methodically when you answer a question?
• Sensing: What facts, details, and practicalities do you need to know to flesh out the material? Are there nuances that you need to note in how the law is applied? Can you state the rules and definitions precisely? Do you need to know case names or code sections for your professor?

Apply the concepts and rules to as many practice questions as possible. Practice questions help you to understand the nuances in the law through different scenarios. The more variations you see on the facts ahead of time, the less likely that an exam question will seem "alien" to you. You will have thought about something similar previously during your practice sessions. By doing some practice questions "under test conditions" prior to the exam, you will be less anxious about formatting essay answers, choosing the "best" multiple-choice answer, or managing your time during the exam.

See Amy Jarmon, Study techniques that reduce anxiety, Law School Academic Support Blog, March 19, 2010, available at http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/academic_support/.

Building the Rule and Analysis Sections of an IRAC

Professors have started to give midterms, and it is time to really focus on the details of what should be included when writing a law school exam -- by this point in your law school career, you have heard one way to approach writing an exam is by using the IRAC format, and you probably know what that means. But, within the IRAC format, being able to properly articulate the rule of law and sufficiently analyze the facts from the hypothetical takes a lot of work and practice. You have probably practiced a few hypotheticals and know exactly what what should go into your IRAC, or do you? Below are some tips for making sure that you are including the relevant law and properly analyzing the facts your answers.

Your rule paragraph should include enough of a statement of law to resolve the general issue. Start with a general rule, and make sure to include a sufficient discussion of the law to provide an adequate context for your analysis of the question or controversy (i.e. have you provided the relevant exception or exclusion, are there any legal terms that need to be defined, etc.). You must identify enough of the relevant rule to provide an adequate context for your analysis of the facts in controversy -- your analysis will not make sense unless you have identified the rule which determines the legal meaning of those facts.

Once you have identified and explained the applicable rule, then you must examine the inferences and implications of the relevant facts in relation to the rule. Your analysis is a vital part of the discussion -- as you write your analysis, let the articulation of the rule guide your application of the facts.

Within your analysis, the best approach is to match up each element (or sub-element) in the rule to the relevant fact; and use the word "because" to make the connection between the rule and fact. Make use of every fact of consequence and make sure that each conclusion you make is supported by an explanation (ask yourself "why").

Use this approach to demonstrate your ability to engage in a thoughtful analysis -- this does not mean simply repeat the relevant facts from the fact pattern, but instead, you should explain to the reader the legal significance and consequence of each fact.

As the semester continues, build on these skills by continuing to practice hypothetical questions, and continue to reference Mastering the Law School Exam for tips on improving your writing skills. This extra effort will help you build upon the requisite skills, so that when it is time for finals, you will know exactly what should be included in your final exam.

Intro to Multiple Choice Questions

Multiple choice questions are great tools to study the law, and will inevitably show up on your final exams and on the Bar Exam - the difference between the "legal version" of a multiple choice question and what you have experienced in the past is that the multiple choice questions you face in law school will test your knowledge of the substantive law, your reading comprehension, and your legal reasoning skills.


So, starting with the basics: how should you attack a multiple choice question?

• Start by reading the call of the question (what is the question asking); then read the fact pattern and find the issue;
• once you identify the issue, articulate your own answer; and
• find your "answer" in the available answer choices.

There are a few more things to remember when faced with a multiple choice question:

• You must read the question and the fact pattern actively. Make sure to pay attention to the legal relations of the parties; pay attention to significant words [i.e. "reasonably", "intended", "mistakenly thought", "deliberately", etc.]; and identify amounts, dates, quantities, ages.
• Never assume facts. You may need to draw a reasonable inference from the facts, but do not create your own facts and do not go off on a tangent based on what you think might be asked. Remember, your professor has crafted the question to contain all of the facts you need to answer the question.
• You should frame the issue to answer the questions. If you fail to identify the issue, then it makes it difficult to identify the relevant facts, and accordingly, you have no means by which to identify the correct answer choice.

Remember, after you have articulated the issue, apply the rule of law to the facts and reach your conclusion. Generally, by determining the appropriate outcome, you remain in control of the question and are not as likely to be distracted by the distractors in the question designed to throw you off course.

Continuing Orientation Workshop - Outlining

For students wishing to review Professor Darrow-Kleinhaus' lecture on Outlining for Law School Finals, the video is available on TLCWEB (password protected). Below is the handout from the lecture.

Active Reading

When working thought hypothetical problems, multiple choice questions and during exams, you should read the questions "actively" -- but, what does it mean to read actively? “Active reading” means that you search for and identify the following:

• The sub-area of law: when you study for a specific class or walk into your exam, you know the subject matter, but there are still wide open categories and you must narrow it down specific sub-topics. A critical component of reading actively is reading in context -- on exams, it’s your job to provide the context.
• The legal relationship between the parties: it is important to pay attention to the legal significance of parties’ relationships. The nature of the relationship is often of major significance to a resolution of the problem. Often, professors will use such relationships to test your ability to note distinctions in how the law treats such relationships (you may be dealing with fiduciary duties, different standards of care, and additional obligations imposed by law).
• Amounts of money, dates, locations, quantities, and ages: be sure to pay attention to dollar amounts, dates and times, quantities of items, jurisdictional information, and any ages if they appear in the fact pattern. These details can be important for so many reasons: imagine skipping over a time sequence of events in a contractual relationship, then your analysis of the offer, acceptance, and requirements for performance may be way off. Dates also signal statute of limitations problems. Ages are generally tied to a statutory issue (consider statutory rape) or a standard of care (fiduciary duty) while money and location information tend to indicate jurisdictional thresholds. Reading carefully assures that you won’t miss critical signals.
• The words “oral” and “written”: these words figure prominently in contract, property, and evidence questions. They signal potential issues with the Statute of Frauds, enforceability of promises, transactions with respect to land, and even admissibility of certain kinds of evidence. Also, note language that signals a writing or oral conversation i.e, a letter, a fax, or a telephone call.

“Active reading” does not include:

• Adding facts to the problem: unless you are told to do so specifically by the call of the question, you are never to add your own facts. In most cases, you are given all the facts you need and should use only those facts.
• Making assumptions: never make assumptions -- this will lead you astray and into dangerous exam territory. Remember, an assumption is not the same as a logical inference, which often must be made from the facts you’re given. (When working with a set of facts, you may need to draw factual inferences and connect these inferences to the dictates of the rule.)
• Never confuse your parties: as you read and before you write, make absolutely certain that you are clear about who is doing what to whom. You don’t want to confuse the actors.

As always, you can refer to Mastering the Law School Exam for further tips on practicing your active reading skills.

Studying with Hypotheticals and Multiple Choice Questions

We have said that is it important to do practice problems -- regardless of whether you are doing hypothetical questions or multiple choice questions, do you know what it means to study from the questions? Are you actually learning from the process?

Merely going through the process isn't enough and "doing questions" may be a waste of your time. Instead, you need to learn how to analyze the question and be able to reason through the problem to arrive at the correct answer.

What does this mean? If you can only partially answer the question, or if you are only getting multiple choice questions incorrect, ask yourself:

• What does it mean to only know a portion of the material?
• Are the correct answers "right" for the right reason or did you answer for the wrong reason or just get lucky, and do you know why the incorrect answers are wrong?
• Did you know the law; were you able to identify the controlling law?
• Did you correctly read the facts; did you add facts that threw you off course; did you correctly read the question; and did you apply the correct rule to the facts?

Make sure that you are not just going through the motions, but instead really learning the law as you go along by actively learning from the question. It is not cheating to look up a rule, consult your outline, or read a sample answer to help you build an analysis -- you will learn through the repetition and reinforcement of actively doing the work.