How important is typing speed in law school?

[xj1998]

0l here being neurotic about law school next year; I'm worried I don't type fast enough 

[Rashabon]

If you type at an average pace, you're fine. If you hunt and peck and type 5 words per minute, that's not great. But you don't need to be averaging 100 WPM to get by.

[CleanHands]

The suggestion that typing speed is important in law school is hands down the worst and most inaccurate piece of advice that has been regularly circulated both on this forum and its predecessor. People will inevitably chime in in this thread and say that WPM is important, because half the users here think that and those posts are always made. I don't care and won't respond to them when they quote me to argue; they're just wrong.

I was told directly from multiple professors who have access to this info at a statistical level that there is no significant difference in grades received by handwritten compared to typed exams. Anecdotally I know UofT hons grads who hand wrote exams and typewriters who were explicitly told by profs to slow down their typing to improve their answers. I was no medalist by any stretch but I was at the top of the class on a few exams and word count never had anything to do with that, I can assure you. Ultimately a semi-competent typist will be able to type far faster than they will be able to think and structure a law exam response decently. Law exams are not about transcribing CANs (the only exceptions being policy question prewrites if you have enough to go by in advance--there high WPM might get you an extra minute or two for the rest of the exam--but fact patterns are the bread and butter anyways).

Edited February 19, 2022 by CleanHands

[xj1998]

19 minutes ago, Rashabon said:

If you type at an average pace, you're fine. If you hunt and peck and type 5 words per minute, that's not great. But you don't need to be averaging 100 WPM to get by.

Thanks I type at roughly 40ish WPM, so this really helps. 

6 minutes ago, CleanHands said:

 

 

6 minutes ago, CleanHands said:

The suggestion that typing speed is important in law school is hands down the worst and most inaccurate piece of advice that has been regularly circulated both on this forum and its predecessor. People will inevitably chime in in this thread and say that WPM is important, because half the users here think that and those posts are always made. I don't care and won't respond to them when they quote me to argue; they're just wrong.

I was told directly from multiple professors who have access to this info at a statistical level that there is no significant difference in grades received by handwritten compared to typed exams. Anecdotally I know UofT hons grads who hand wrote exams and typewriters who were explicitly told by profs to slow down their typing to improve their answers. I was no medalist but I was at the top of the class on a few exams and word count had nothing to do with that. Ultimately a semi-competent typist will be able to type far faster than they will be able to think and structure a law exam response decently. Law exams are not about transcribing CANs (the only exceptions being policy question prewrites if you have enough to go by in advance--there high WPM might get you an extra minute or two for the rest of the exam--but fact patterns are the bread and butter anyways).

Great answer, thanks 

Edited February 19, 2022 by xj1998

[Lawstudents20202020]

9 minutes ago, CleanHands said:

The suggestion that typing speed is important in law school is hands down the worst and most inaccurate piece of advice that has been regularly circulated both on this forum and its predecessor. People will inevitably chime in in this thread and say that WPM is important, because half the users here think that and those posts are always made. I don't care and won't respond to them when they quote me to argue; they're just wrong.

I was told directly from multiple professors who have access to this info at a statistical level that there is no significant difference in grades received by handwritten compared to typed exams. Anecdotally I know UofT hons grads who hand wrote exams and typewriters who were explicitly told by profs to slow down their typing to improve their answers. Ultimately a semi-competent typist will be able to type far faster than they will be able to think and structure a law exam response decently. Law exams are not about transcribing CANs (the only exceptions being policy question prewrites if you have enough to go by in advance--there high WPM might get you an extra minute or two for the rest of the exam--but fact patterns are the bread and butter anyways).

After a certain point, faster typing just means more irrelevant bullshit

[TobyFlenderson]

Echoing the above. I’ve found that my best exams have been the ones that I provide the shortest answers. Being able to concisely hit on the issue, the law, and how the law applies to the facts will 1) score you more points than long winded and partially irrelevant answers and 2) save you more time for longer/harder questions than superhuman typing skills will.

[Whist]

30 minutes ago, Lawstudents20202020 said:

After a certain point, faster typing just means more irrelevant bullshit

Sometimes I really am throwing in everything and the kitchen sink...

[Snax]

Although all of the above is correct and I won’t argue it for the most part, what I will say is this: more can definitely be more when you don’t know what you’re talking about when it comes to law school exams. 
 

That is, I never knew nothing going into an exam, but there were classes that, shall we say, I paid less attention to throughout the course of law school. The way I got a B in these courses was by figuring out what was going to be asked or the type of question that may be asked (which is easier than it sounds) in the days leading up to the exam and pre-writing long-winded answers that covered all of the course material that could possibly apply to such a question. 
 

i re-typed this treatise on the exam, filled in blanks with analysis as necessary, and there was my B. I firmly believe that I would’ve gotten c-range grades if I had’ve every taken the above approach to these exams, as a large portion of getting to an average grade on a law school exam is simply getting the law right. 

[Kid Presentable]

OP, to answer your question, typing speed is not important. If you do not know the material, typing speed will not save you, and quantity of words written tends to have little correlation to final grades. The kitchen sink approach advocated by some is not particularly effective and seems to me more likely to annoy your prof than anything else. It is not worth worrying about—as others have said, you will be absolutely fine as long as you are not hunting and pecking (and if you are, I believe handwriting is still an option).

That's not to say that typing speed is not helpful (albeit in a very limited way): if you know the material well, getting your thoughts on the page faster could buy you time on the exam that you might use to spot an issue you would otherwise have missed. So at best, it might earn you a point or two on an exam here and there. If you're desperate for things you can do as a 0L to quiet your anxiety about feeling unprepared for law school, learning to type a little faster can't hurt, and it will probably do more for you than trying to teach yourself Carbolic Smoke Ball will. But it is certainly not "important"—law school is about knowing the material, it's not a typing contest.

[GGrievous]

I’m actually surprised by some of these responses, based on my limited experience of one semester of exams. Those that type more tend to do better. I’ve had profs say this, and I’ve seen at least some evidence of it by word count data. That being said I defer to those with more exam experience, as they all seem to agree with the opposite. I just thought there was at least some correlation. I’m not saying I’m right, I’m just surprised. 

Edited February 20, 2022 by Barry

[99problems]

19 minutes ago, Barry said:

Those that type more tend to do better

Considering that both are typing literally the same thing, then yes, the one that types faster gets to convey more information and secure more points. I asked some of my profs about it, and the common theme in their answers was that they immediately recognized bullshit when they see it.

23 hours ago, xj1998 said:

0l here being neurotic about law school next year; I'm worried I don't type fast enough 

In the end, it is about the quality of your writing and analysis not the quantity. In one of my six-hour exams, I wrote 500 words for an question for which 750 was the word limit. I got 28 out of 32. I don't think I would have gotten any more points if I had bs'ed 250 more words.

There is one thing, other than practicing your typing, that can assist you if you think you are not a fast typist. You can thing about the "rule" section of your analysis in advance (whether you write in IRAC or CREAC or any other similar format). Other than contracts course where there are tons of cases on each topic, other courses tend to have several course on each topic. So you should be able to combine them together and form a "rule" for each topic. I'm not suggesting that you should copy and paste this rule section verbatim (some students have the same thing but in bullet points). In fact, the process of coming up with the rule section is an efficient learning tool: by knowing all the cases, you begin to see their differences and similarities, which in turn enables you to analyze better. One important caveat though: like any other canned answers, you should not try to "fit" the fact pattern to what you have. It is the other way around: your template must adapt to the fact pattern.

Finally, if you are really concerned about your typing speed, you can increase it by practice (it's all muscle memory). Maybe go here and dedicate 15 minutes a day to practice. It helps.

[Toad]

I consider typing speed to be a minor advantage. It might have gotten me an extra .1 on my cumulative GPA at law school versus if I was average at typing. 

Spamming crap like "white:wave:selling rune ess 20gp ea" back in 2004-2006 had its advantages

 

Edit: You have 6 months until 1L starts. You could easily find some of those online typing games and play them a few hours a week and get your typing speed into the 60 WPM range if you have some free time each week. 

Edited February 20, 2022 by Toad

[cherrytree]

Speaking from personal experience, there were students in my year who hand-wrote every exam (usually mature/older students). I was never under the impression that they were at an actual disadvantage because they couldn't get as many words into their answers. Many of them were bright students who had the necessary analytical and writing skills to produce high-quality answers using their pens just as well as they could using keyboards. To use the UofT grading scale, I think typing faster might help to boost a P-level answer from the upper limit of a P into an H, but an H-level exam answer isn't going to be boosted into an HH-level answer just because the student typed faster and could cram more words in.

[Bachtowork]

I am probably one of the slowest typers in law school, I never learned touch typing and just type with 3 fingers, I think I average at about 50 wpm. I don't think my typing speed hindered me too much on exams - when I spoke to some of my professors in 1L, they said my word count wasn't an issue. Many professors emphasized that they mainly care about the quality of the analysis, and some recommended brainstorming/planning your answer before writing, instead of rushing to start typing. 

[Lilbb19]

you could legit not even take a single note in class all of law school and just use cans lol. Doesnt really matter, all good. 

[epeeist]

Caveat: Long time since I was in law school, some of this is based on conversations with more recent graduates.

There are 3 factors governing your ability to efficiently answer exam questions, assuming sufficient basic familiarity with the material: reading speed and accuracy (reading accurately at whatever speed the questions and whatever you look up in open-book exam); typing or writing speed (and assuming reasonably accurate); and thinking speed.

You want to be a fast enough typer or writer and reader (and accurate enough) that it's only your thinking speed that limits your ability to analyze, plan and answer the question to the best of your ability without being unduly rushed, not your typing/writing/reading ability. If you're a fast enough typer or writer (protestations aside, will handwritten especially if messy affect perception of marker?) and reader, you have more time to analyze and plan your answer.

EDIT: re @xj1998 specifically, if you're not going into law school until later this year or next year, why not work on your typing speed? Use one of the many programs, especially a gamified one. It won't hurt to be a faster more accurate typer, it's not particularly costly or time consuming to work on it, why not do so?

Edited February 22, 2022 by epeeist