Law School Final Exam Tips for Procrastinators

Law School Final Exam Tips for Procrastinators

This post assumes that you taking law school final exams soon — and that you have not started outlining, memorizing the law, or taking practice exams. You either spent most of the semester reading cases, briefing cases, or trying to avoid thinking about final exams. And now that final exams are coming up, you need some quick tips to boost your score! Here are a few law school final exam tips for procrastinators. 

Law School Final Exam Tips for Procrastinators

1. Focus on your class notes.

Don’t open your casebooks. Don’t look at case briefs. Don’t look at treatises or anything else. Just focus on your class notes. Your professor writes the exam. Your professor grades the exam. Your professor will be focusing on what was said in class — and knowing that will help you maximize your score. You are down to the wire and your goal is to study efficiently. This is the best way to do that.

2. Make attack outlines from your class notes.

Make “attack outlines” of the rules from your class notes. Only include the rules. Do not include case summaries or case briefs or anthing else. If you have been procrastinating, it is the black letter law you need to focus on.

If your notes are sub-par or if you cannot discern the rules from your notes, see if you can get an outline from someone who has taken the same class with the same professor. Maybe they have better notes. This is not ideal, but it is a good Plan B if your notes are not stellar.  The best way to internalize the material is still to make your own attack outline, even if you use someone else’s outline as the basis for yours. (But again, we know that time is of the essence and you may not have time to do this for every class. If that is the case, then try to make your own attack outlines for your most difficult classes.)

3. Take some time to memorize the rules.

Learning the rules is very important. Take some time to go through your attack outlines and memorize the rules. If you are not sure how to begin this, check out this post on how to learn your law school outlines. Learning the rules will help you issue-spot in final exams. They will clearly help with rule statements. And this will affect your analysis and conclusion.

4. Print practice exams.

Print some practice exams — ideally print exams that your professor has given in the past. If you do not have access to any of your professor’s old exams, then print some online. (Just google, say, “Contracts exam model answer.”) After you complete an exam, then check your answer against the model answer. See if you identified the issues, were able to state the rules, and analyze them properly. You can bullet point your exam answers in the beginning to make this process go faster.

Most students are scared to take practice exams. But it makes a huge difference in your overall score! So please make this a priority.

Note: if you have no idea how to approach a law school practice exam, we tell you how here!

5. Get organized for test day.

If you have “open book” exams, then it is a good idea to make sure your attack outline or anything else you may want to consult during the exam is properly organized, tabbed, and easy to flip through. Ideally, you don’t want to depend on outlines or materials during the exam but a nicely-tabbed easy-to-flip-through outline will make a big difference in terms of your confidence and perhaps your score!

6. Don’t join a study group.

Most study groups are not efficient. If you have not been meeting with an effective one so far, then it is probably not a good idea to join one now. Perhaps there are exceptions to the rule. But now is the time you need to be working speedily on your own!

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