Getting Ready for Final Examinations: The First and Second Year.

I will spend the remainder of March discussing the bar exam. However, I have no intention of leaving the first- and second-year students alone during this month (or April, either). So, let me discuss some final examination concerns with you.

Many of the first-year students are enrolled in the second half of Civil Procedure, the second half of Contracts (Sales), Torts II (strict liability), Property II, and Legal Research and Writing. Some of the first year students are enrolled at a school where Constitutional Law is taught during the second semester of the first-year. Criminal procedure is not a required course in the second semester of the first year (at most schools), but it is taught in the second semester of the first year.

Second-year students (rising to 3L status) will be enrolled in Constitutional Law II, or Evidence, as both are, generally, "required to graduate," courses. Some of you may have elected to enroll in Taxation, Wills, Estates & Trusts, or Commercial Paper, or Secured Transactions as electives. I'm certain that the bulk of you are enrolled in at least one seminar course, where a paper, covering a particular topic is a requirement.

1. Prepare For Finals (Again): If you want the best chance of doing well on Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law I, or Evidence, then please copy (or, print out) all of your professors' old exams. If your professor does not have old examinations, print out another professor's exam. Keep printing out examinations until you have at least ten (10). Ten is not a magic number, but it is a good start, as you don't need all of the exams in the state, but you do want to have a good, representation of the document - - the samples that could make up your final examination.

2. Print out All of the Exams. All of them. Place each examination in a three-ring binder and if you have access to, or can afford tabs, separate each test by subject (and number). Now, suppose your professor is new to teaching and does not have any 'old' exams. Just use another professor's examinations to create an outline. Now, your professor may scoff at you and say, "do not use another professor's exams; only mine." That is a reasonable warning because no two exams are alike. The professor's warning does not provide you for an alternative to issue spotting, but your method assists you!! It is very important that you "house" enough exams, because you want to be able to spot certain issues, and the only way you can accurately spot those issues is to have a set of different facts identifying that issue over and over again.

3 Take one of your photocopied examinations (subject) to the corresponding course for the remainder of the semester. Each time the professor for that course discusses a specific issue (sub-issue) in class, look for that issue on the exam, after each class. If you find that issue on the exam, draw a line out to the margin and write out the full name/description of the issue. At the end of two weeks, pull out a second examination, and look on that examination for the same issues/sub-issues that you found on the first examination. Every two weeks, add another exam and compare facts, etc., for issue spotting. Hopefully, many of the issues will be exactly the same; the difference will be the set of facts that are used to make up the fact pattern.

4. Use this method to help you issue spot on your first five or six exams. Keep in mind that you are not answering the exam question. You are looking for keys to the structure of the exam and you are issue-spotting.

Okay, Next Stop: The Party for the Bar Exam.

Prof. Smith