Exam Tips

The first thing to do is to get your hands on some good outlines. Many are available on this site; you can also construct your own from whatever study materials you may have from BARBRI or some other preparation course.

The good thing about outlines is that they lay out the main issues for each of the main topics within each subject. In a good outline, these issues will be listed out, with simple definitions. That's exactly what you want, because that's exactly what you will want to memorize for the exam. Not every exception or every detail, but the main points.

So let's say you have a solid outline. How do you study? I would find a quiet place that isn't distracting. Lying on your bed is not a good idea. Sitting at a desk that shares a computer chock full of distracting computer games is not a good idea. Hungry people studying next to full refrigerators is not a good idea. I would recommend your law school library, or a public library where you can concentrate and isolate yourself for a decent period of time.

Then, read through the outline once and make sure you understand generally what they are talking about. If you don't understand a section at first glance, read it again carefully and, if necessary, seek outside source materials to figure the lessons of that section out.

Now, go through the outline slowly, section at a time, and test yourself. How do you do this? First read through a section, which will probably test some concepts. Then, push the outline out of eyesight and either by scrawling on a sheet of paper, or just by talking to yourself, list out what you just learned. Give it your very best shot, and write out everything you can remember. Pretend as if you are taking an exam or something. If you given it your best go but some elements are still missing, then go back to the outline and correct yourself. Then, act as if you're taking a mini-exam again, and try again. Try and try again until you can explain the concept to an imaginary and ignorant person, or when you can write it out completely in a tiny but intelligible outline.

So, for example, let's say you're running through your Torts outline, and you come up against a section that says the following:

ASSAULT: The requirements of Assault are:

  • cause apprehension of harmful or offensive contact
  • action; not mere words
  • appearance, not reality of ability to harm/offend
  • immediacy -- cannot be a threat from the future

After looking, at the section, you might say the following to yourself, as if explaining it to a friend: "OK, so to be held guilty of assault, you need to pass four tests. First of all, the guy's action has to cause apprehension, a fear of harmful or offensive contact. Secondly, there has to be an action -- you can't just yell bad language. Third, there only has to be the appearance of harm -- it doesn't matter if the guy wasn't able to really harm you or not. And lastly, the threatened harm has to be immeidate -- you can't threaten to harm someone tomorrow or some day in the future, and be guilty of assault." Then you can move on to the next section.

This seems like a funny way to study. So why is it effective? The main idea is to optimize your mind for taking the bar exam. On the bar exam, you might face a question -- either essay or multiple choice -- that you can identify as having something to do with assault. So what will you need to do in the few seconds you have to analyze and answer the question? Your mind will have to do just what the above paragraph was describing -- it will have to quickly and sharply pull out the important elements. In other words, by training in this way, you are sharpening your mind by duplicating a mental process that you will undergo when you are actually taking the examination.

Don't worry about being able to regurgitate the entire outline when you've finished moving through it, section by section. That will come naturally in time. Going through it, section by section, with each section becoming a mini-pop quiz, just once should be sufficient, twice if you want to be really sure. Again, this memorization part is essential in that it provides you with an essential base of knowledge -- but the meat of the training comes in actually answering questions.

Next: Preparing for the Multiple Choice