How To Make A Law School Finals Study Schedule

How To Make A Law School Finals Study Schedule

Since final exams in law school make up the vast majority of your final grade, it is very important that you learn how to study for finals correctly.  A significant part of that is developing a personalized law school finals study schedule!  Since most of your friends are probably taking different classes, their finals schedule will be completely different than yours – thus the need to make your own!  Your study schedule needs to emphasize the most important elements of studying for law school finals: finishing your outlines, reviewing/memorizing your outlines, and taking practice exams.

How To Make A Law School Finals Study Schedule

Hopefully your finals are spread evenly across the exam period,  allowing you to focus on one class at a time.  Here is a hypothetical example of what a law school finals study schedule with four exams relatively spread out could look like:

Make sure to dedicate adequate time to getting everything out of your practice exams that you can! In this example, you will see it is much easier to avoid having to immerse yourself in more than one subject a day (and at most two!).  Although, if you feel like you can’t spend an entire day focusing on just one subject, feel free to shake it up!  It is probably best though to focus only on one subject the day before the final–that is, the subject you will be tested on.  You will likely have information from many different topics piling up in your mind by this point. So, you need a day to completely refresh yourself on what is important for that class right before the exam.

Here is an excellent post explaining how best to use practice exams!  While having the law memorized is important, it is also just as important to practice how to apply it.  Many law school exam questions involve long fact patterns weaving together multiple issues.  They can seem unfamiliar at first, so practice is crucial.  The time spent reviewing your answers is just as valuable as the time spent taking them. It helps you identify your weaknesses so that you know what to review.  Don’t gloss over this part of exam preparation!

Unfortunately, you might be a bit unlucky and get an exam schedule that is not as generous as the one above.  During one semester of my 2L year, I ended up with four exams on four consecutive days.  Needless, to say, the above law school finals study schedule would not have worked for me.  If something like this happens to you, you will likely be forced to tackle multiple subjects per day in order to still fit everything in.  Fortunately, many schools release exam schedules at the beginning of the semester so you will have advance warning.  Something that can make or break you in this situation is getting your outlines done as far ahead of time as possible.  This will give you more time to get through all of the other necessary steps.

Don’t wait until the last minute to create your law school finals study schedule – start early!!

It is also important to build breaks into your schedule.  If you try to do too much too early in the study period, you will wear yourself out. Don’t assign yourself too much each day.  If you’re looking for more to do right now, check out last week’s post: one month until law school final exams! And stay tuned over the next few weeks for more law school exams advice!  This is a critical time, but with the right attitude and preparation, you will succeed!

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