How To Effectively Study For Law School Midterms

How To Effectively Study For Law School Midterms

Law school midterms may seem like an unnecessary challenge standing between you and your final grade. However, midterms can actually provide a great benchmark for how you are doing in a certain class. While final exams usually get all of the attention, midterms can provide great academic insight if you take them seriously. We say “take them seriously” because midterms generally don’t make up a huge portion of your final grade. Since midterms don’t really account for a huge percentage of final grades – how should you study for them? Here are our best tips for how to effectively study for your upcoming law school midterms.

How To Effectively Study For Law School Midterms

Don’t Overdo It

Midterms are designed to give students a sneak peek into their academic performance within a certain class. The key words being “sneak peek.” Midterms are not the end all be all when it comes to how you’ll actually do come final examination time. That’s why midterms generally don’t make up a large portion of final law school grades. With that being said, don’t go crazy studying for midterms. Save that for finals! All-nighters, reserving library rooms for 12 hours, and memorizing every rule statement – those can all take a step aside for now.

Use Your Outline

We often talk about the importance of outlining early on in the semester and updating your outlines as courses progress. Although we didn’t need another reason to stress the importance of outlining, midterms us with a great opportunity to do so. Midterms provide an excuse to update your outlines, which in and of itself is a great study tool. After the midterm, you can again update your outline to reflect heavily tested information. Chances are, you’ll likely see those concepts again on the final exam. If you haven’t started outlining for a course, midterms provide a great time to start!

Utilize Supplements

When preparing for law school midterms, you’ll generally get a sense of what concepts come easy and which concepts are much more challenging. When it comes to what you don’t know, using supplemental resources can be a great tool when familiarizing yourself with challenging concepts. Supplements often do a great job of breaking down complicated subjects into easy-to-understand pieces of information. Likewise, supplements can be especially helpful in conjunction with the process of creating or updating your outlines.

Ask For Help

Similar to using supplements to help you better understand subject material, don’t be afraid to ask for help! Talk to other students, ask questions in your study group, and don’t forget to take advantage of office hours. You would be shocked at the number of students that fail to take advantage of such a powerful resource. Who better to ask questions to than the professor teaching you the material? Taking midterms as an opportunity to attend office hours can help clear up any specific ambiguities you might have related to the material.

Check Out Previous Final Exams/Midterms

The best place to get a sense of how your professors test certain subjects is to review old finals and midterms. Most professors generally release older exams to help students study and review. Sometimes you might have to track down prior final exams/midterms on your own. If you’re unsure whether your professor releases older exams, simply ask.

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