EXAM TIPS FOR 1L's?

[undertheletter]

With exams quickly approaching for us nervous 1L's, I thought it would be interesting to hear from upper year students about best practices for exam prep. What would you recommend? What wouldn't you recommend? What did you wish you knew?  Discuss!

[MapleLeafs]

Here's a few things that helped me perform well: 

Pre-write for courses that you can. For example, in con law, I knew that I would have to do an Oakes test, so I basically pre-wrote that part. I attribute my A in con law solely to my pre-write. 

Also, make your own short summaries. I found using upper year summaries to be fine for studying generally, but there's no way you're going to be able to go through an over 100 page long summary during the exam. I cut down my long summaries into short summaries of approximately 10 pages and found them helpful during the exam 

Compare facts of the cases to the fact pattern. Most people in 1L tend to apply the legal tests in a vacuum, but that just doesn't make sense. To do this though, it was much easier having the general facts of cases memorized. Again, it'll be difficult having to look back at your summary to look at the facts for a particular case or holding 

Edited November 11, 2021 by MapleLeafs

[TobyFlenderson]

Write a practice exam. Some profs will go over previous exams. Some will just direct you to the school bank of exams, if you have one. I found that most profs review past exams too late. If you go over the practice exam on the last day of class, and your exam is in a week, with other exams beforehand, it's hard to dedicate time to addressing areas you aren't confident about. This will stress you out if you go over an exam in class and feel completely lost. 

When you have free time, take a look at a previous exam. I'd aim for sometime this weekend or next. You don't really have to write out a full answer, but go through your summary/outline if you have one and make a bullet point list of the issues you can spot. Then what the rules are about each issue. Apply the law. 

I found this helpful, as it

1) made it clear how much I knew (or, more importantly, didn't know). In some cases, I could see the issue (like a second degree murder in crim), but stumbled when trying to apply the law. 

2) it helped me familiarize myself with my notes. It's good to get a sense for how you'll navigate them on the exam, particularly if your exams are in person with printed notes, so you can't search.

3) helped me break down issues, rules, and application into clear and quick frameworks. Personally, I find it tedious and a little muddy trying to go through a summary in the abstract and build out frameworks and processes without facts to ground my organization. Working through a fact scenario makes it much easier for me to say "okay, here's the issue. What next? Okay, here's the law. Here's a case about this. Here's the rule from this case", and then once you've done that for a fact scenario, it's easier to replicate similarly structed frameworks for other issues.

As a general tip, in part to drive the third point home, try to avoid going into an exam with a 100-150 page summary and nothing else. It's not too bad if it's organized really, really well, but you often don't know how well it's organized until you try to use it. Having your big summary on hand is good in case you see a scenario that sounds like something you covered and you can't quite place it, like a particular case with a similar fact pattern, but being able to move through a clear and condensed framework so you know to do A -> B -> C is incredibly helpful. I did not do this in 1L December. I did do this in 1L April. We went pass/fail in April so I can't say how much my grades improved, but I felt so much more confident with the material.

And, of course, try not to stress too much. You become a pro quicker than you think!

[ccq35]

I agree completely with the advice above, and would add that it is of paramount importance to read the instructions carefully and make sure that you understand what the professor wants. Put yourself in their shoes: given the fact pattern/essay prompt/other exam format, what would you, as the professor, hope to see? What legal tests/rules/etc. have been emphasized throughout the semester that would likely be relevant? Are you invited to demonstrate clear comprehension of the rules, explore areas of tension, or provide a critique? What aligns with the professor’s pedagogical style?

(I will acknowledge that McGill’s exams are possibly very different from other, less “theoretical” law schools. Adjust accordingly!)

[daughterinlaw]

This is late but from what I learned this semester:

- Go over course content make sure you understand the basic concepts/ cases/ theories for each section/ unit

- Fill in your notes, make sure you're not missing anything, if you are try filling them in by doing the readings you missed/ class slides or ask classmates for notes. 

- If your notes aren't formatted try making a long summary with the case charts/ ratios/ tests and also do a one line sentences of each case with key words so you can easily identify the issue and search it up during your exam (for example, XX v YY / estoppel or XX v YY / test for damages for mental distress). Add a table of contents and subdivide issues, make it linkable/ clickable. 

- Alternatively, you could do short summaries, with just the bare facts of the cases, the ratios and relevant tests. 

- Some people do a short summary and ratio sheet or another doc just with the tests and when they apply, this is up to you to decide what works best for you, whether it is the long summary, short summary or other.

- Get a hold of upper-year summaries if you can, you can use these exclusively if you don't have time to make your own and don't have good notes. They're also helpful for getting an idea of how to organize your own summaries/ what to include and also as a way to supplement your notes if you misunderstood a concept or were missing a section etc. 

** For summaries from upper-years make sure they match the content you learned, these are often from students who had different profs or were taught in a different style etc or simply may or may not have some content that you were taught. Make sure to match up content from your own course syllabus so that you have the right info. 

Going forward I would recommend doing the summary as the semester progresses. This is a mistake I made, I had notes but they were not organized, I only started more organized notes towards the end of the semester so by the time exams came around I basically had to do the entire summary v soon before. Take some time out each week to format your notes properly, add key terms so you can control + f easily etc. and make sure you're getting a big picture understanding of how the content fits together. 

Edit- Also do all the practice quizzes and go over the practice fact patterns assigned / discussed in class. Go to office hours/ exam review sessions if you're struggling with something (this requires you to know what you're struggling with early enough so do at least a quick review early enough). You can always email profs with questions as well. 

Edited December 20, 2021 by daughterinlaw