Worried about final exams?

Take a deep breath and relax.  Come see us in the library and check out all the resources available to help you prepare for this stressful time.  Please feel free to use any of the resources in the book display by the elevators.

Studying at home?  Surf your way to Westlaw’s Law Exam Guide.

Try out CALI for lessons & tutorials & crossword puzzles.  Stop by or call Reference for a card with the CALI authorization code.  The subjects include Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Contracts, Criminal Law, Property, Torts, Administration Law, Arbitration, Business Association, Corporations, Criminal Procedure, Environmental Law, Evidence, Family Law, Professional Responsibility, Remedies, Sales, Tax and Wills & Trusts, among others.

Want additional online resources?  See these sources for law school exams and preparation and advice:

• Indiana University School of Law
• Jurist Legal Intelligence
• FindLaw Law School Exams

For a relaxing laugh, check out the advice of a OneL blogger at Top Ten Survival Rules for Law School.  Her advice about exams:

4. Avoid classmates during finals: this has been the secret to my success. During finals I think I saw a handful of people in my section who were either 1) stressing out every day, 2) crying every day, 3) throwing up every day, or 4) a combination of the first three. It starts to wear on you. Your meals start to come from vending machines and the librarian starts to know your name. When it’s dark outside, you’re not sure if it’s day or night because you’ve been in the library for nearly 24 hours anyway. Don’t do this. As I said in Point 10, law school is a marathon, not a sprint. The final you have at the end of exam period is probably worth just as much as the first final. Pace yourself.

So please stop by the Charlotte Law Library today either in person (or virtually!) and let us help you find the resources you need.

Good luck and best wishes with exams!

-Mary Susan Lucas-

The Golden Egg, What makes a good law school exam answer?

With finals almost halfway complete, some students may be looking eye-to-eye at the light at the end of the tunnel, while others may be looking for inspiration.  I know you don’t have time to sit and read Chicken Soul for the Soul, but here are a few, hopefully inspiring sentiments from law professors on what they are looking for in a good law school exam answer:

“A good law exam answer is _______.” From The Wall Street Journal Law Blog, “What Makes a Good Law School Exam Answer? Law Profs Weigh In“

• Heather Gerken, Yale: A good law exam answer is . . . evaluative. Too often, students walk through each answer as if all arguments are created equal. They don’t tell me which arguments are strong and which are weak, which facts matter and which don’t, which cases provide strong support for their claims and which ones are distinguishable. And they throw everything into the answer rather than think hard about what belongs and what doesn’t. Good lawyers don’t just know the substantive law; they also have good legal judgment. The mistake students make is not to exercise their own legal judgment in answering a question.

• Richard Friedman, Michigan: A good law exam answer . . . answers the question. Banal as that sounds, many students take the question as an excuse to write a canned answer on some area in which they’ve learned the black-letter law. I tell my students, “Imagine you’re riding down an elevator with a boss who knows the law and who has told you the facts but wants your help in advising the client. Don’t repeat the facts to him. Don’t tell him the law. Apply the law to the facts.”

• Eric Chiappinelli, Creighton: A good law exam answer . . . is one that does more than tells me what the law is (more or less well) and applies the law to the facts (more or less well) and then stops. The other 90 anonymous answers will do that. You should do two additional things: Tell me up front what the question really turns on – a choice between two applicable rules? Deciding what a particular word or phrase should mean? Then, at the end, give me your opinion of whether the result is good or fair or just. Cutting to the heart of a question immediately and expressing a value judgment about the result are what separate the A’s from the C’s.

• Paul Secunda: Marquette: A good law exam answer . . . gets to maybe. By that I mean that too many law students have an undergraduate mentality and seek to figure out the one “right” answer for the question. The point of the law school exam is not necessarily to test for right and wrong answers, but to see whether the student is utilizing critical reasoning skills to understand all the possible issues that the question presents. The more you arrive at a “maybe” in your law exam, the more likely you are seeing all the sides of the question in your answer and will then receive the most exam points.”

• Adam Winkler, UCLA: A good law exam answer . . . is rigorous and deep. By rigorous, I mean it references every applicable standard, test, and burden; analyzes every appropriate “branch” in the decision tree; and follows a sound logical structure. By deep, I mean it argues — not just concludes — how the legal rules apply to the facts; analogizes and distinguishes the most relevant cases; and addresses the best counterarguments. There is no “right” answer. It’s all about the argument.

• Tim Wu, Columbia: A good law exam answer . . . is honest and perceptive. Many law students, when answering exam questions, seem to lose their humanity. They become a sort of law robot, flooding you with pages of 4 factor tests, canned nonsense, and ridiculous results. (Unfortunately, some judicial opinions read that way too.) The good students are more honest in their responses: they hone in on what is actually hard about the problem, and let their instincts drive the answer, with doctrine as their instrument. The very best law students are able to turn the problem around in their mind, almost like a computer rotating a complex shape, and explain how slightly different angles of view create different doctrinal consequences.

• Pamela Karlan, Stanford: A good law exam answer . . . is like a poem. Every word is there for a reason. It makes creative arguments within a conventional form. It avoids needless sentimentality but it reflects an author who thinks and cares. I learn something from reading it. And it ends with something other than the word “Time . . . . ”

Any other professors want to weigh in on their opinion on what constitutes a good law exam answer?

-Liz McCurry-