Law Exam Mistakes and Interviewing Mistakes

Yesterday I gave a talk on interview techniques to the 1L class at my law school. Hopefully I soon will be able to post a podcast of the event on this blog. In any event, I've discussed the points I covered in that talk in a previous post on this blog. I've interviewed in some very tough job markets over the years, and my advice has served me well.

As I was giving the talk yesterday, it struck me that some of my interviewing advice is relevant to the subject of law school exams and grades. Specifically, law students often internalize their exam performance and equate exam performance with self-worth, at least to an extent. Or they equate exam performance with their potential as lawyers. Those are mistakes, of course, but I see them happen all the time. And having been through the law school experience myself, I understand that saying "don't do that" is much easier said than done.

The point I want to make here, though, is that grades are final (except for clerical errors, which are pretty uncommon). And that point gets me back to the subject of interviewing. Much of my advice about the interviewing process rests on the premise that you should focus on the elements of the interview process that you can control, not those you can't. That may seem obvious, but I see far too many people expend a lot of time and energy worrying about whether they are going to get a particular offer. Yet interviewees never have actual control over whether they get offers! Instead, what they do have control over is how they approach the process, and how they interview. Focusing on what you can control means you are more likely to improve your interviewing performance, and also are more likely to reduce stress and obsessive attention paid to aspects of the interview process that are outside your control.

In the exam context, then, let those grades you just received go--good, bad, or otherwise. You can't change them. Focus now on what you can control: what you can learn from what you did right and wrong on those exams, and how you can improve your performance in the future. And next semester, worry about what you can do to improve your exam performance--which you can control--and not about what grade the professors give you, which you cannot. In other words, worrying about the process, and not about the end result, is a way to improve both your law school grades and your interviewing skills.

Law School Exam Mistakes

Now that law students across the country have started classes again, it's worth revisiting the subject of law school exams. Specifically, I want to discuss common mistakes that students make on law school essay exams. I have posted on this subject before, and some of my previous posts on the subject are the folllowing:

Exam-Taking Advice
Reflections on Law School Exams
More Information on Law School Exams

Each of these posts contains additional links to other entries on this and other blog sites that you may find useful. And then there's this little classic from 2006 on the now-defunct Blawg Wisdom, which I think is very insightful.

Here are my thoughts after grading this fall's batch of exams.

1. Time management is key. It is better to competently answer all exam questions than to ace some questions and shortchange others. Your total score will be higher if you manage your time.

2. Taking a few minutes to think about how to tackle an essay question is time well spent. Take a few minutes to figure out both what you need to talk about and how best to organize your answer. And then write a quick little outline. Students who do this almost always do better on exams. They stay on point--which leads to better answers. And the outline is both (a) a way to make sure you don't forget to discuss a point you intended to discuss, and (b) a way to demonstrate to your prof that you are organized and have thought your answer through. Don't underestimate the latter point: an outline certainly cannot hurt in this regard, and it may help.

3. Law student DNA is encoded with an almost irresistible urge to not follow the advice in point #2. You know the feeling--you know your prof said to think first and write second, but you can't resist just plunging in. I know the feeling too--I have been there. But resist it with all your might.

4. The most common mistake of students who understand exam questions is to summarize the law, but not fully apply it to the fact pattern in question. The result? The answer is evidence that the student clearly understood the law, but it is not clear evidence that the student knew how to apply it. And the final score is lower as a result.

5. Another common mistake of students is to jump to the conclusion without explaining how they got there. This is, in essence, the converse of #4--applying the law, but not explaining it very clearly. This too lowers your score.

6. No essay exam answer is perfect. Exams are stressful situations, after all, and the fact patterns of essay questions are typically fairly complex. Your time is extremely limited too, except for take-home exams, and often those have page limits. So you simply can't say everything. So don't expect to. By identifying the primary issues, discussing the relevant law, and applying it, you stand a very good chance at getting a very good grade.

Making the Grade(s)

Time sure flies. It's hard to believe it has been over two weeks since my last post, which is unusual. The reason, as anyone who is in or has been to law school might suspect, is that I have been neck-deep in final exams to grade. 278 essay questions from two classes, to be exact. But who's counting? Not me, since I just finished them.

At the end of every semester, I remember the adage that we professors teach for free, but get paid to grade. Grading is not fun. But it is, of course, very important. And it is, of course, my job. People's grades--and to some extent their professional futures--depend on my grading. So I take the task extremely seriously.

Yet I would be lying if I said that reading answers to the same essay questions over and over and over again is scintillating, because it's not. Still, the exercise holds its own sort of twisted appeal. For one thing, no two answers are exactly alike. The organization is different, the discussion is different, and the conclusions reached are different. That's no surprise, perhaps--and yet I am always struck by it. I tell my classes that often in the law the answer to a question is "It depends"--which gets a few chuckles and, I am afraid, a little eye-rolling too. People prefer clarity, and the study of law often does not provide that. There is rarely a clear-cut, unequivocal answer in the law, and there are always arguments to the contrary that can be made. Lawyers are advocates, after all.

What really strikes me during grading season, though, is that once in a while a student comes up with something unexpected in answering an essay question, and it works really well. The majority of the time, this sort of reaching is just that: reaching. It doesn't get a lot of points, since it typically veers the answer off target. (In economic terms, it's an opportunity cost.) Yet sometimes, an insight is made that is truly clever, and it demonstrates that the student understands the material at a deeper level. Reading answers like that are some of my favorite moments in teaching.

I should put a caveat here. I am NOT encouraging students to be wildly inventive in their exam answers. No, no, and no. The professor is not always trying to trick you. Identify the issues, summarize and apply the law, and reach your conclusion. You will always get more points for this than for answers that stray into wild flights of fancy. (Unless the class is a "Law and Creative Fiction" seminar, I suppose. It depends, right?) But if something strikes you as a point worth making that is not an obvious one, and you have time, then make it. It may be the nuanced observation that makes the difference between an A and a B. I had several such episodes during my exams in law school, and I got an A every time. If only it had happened on every exam . . . .

Exam-Taking Advice

Amazing though it may seem, at law schools around the country it is final exam time. With that in mind, I thought I would post some exam-taking advice. The exercise is largely the same each year, however, so rather than re-inventing the wheel, here are links to some previous advice on the subject.

Perhaps the place to start is with my post entitled Reflections on Law School Exams. It includes general advice and links to some of my prior exam-related posts. Another useful post on this blog is on The Pros and Cons of Exam Typing. Students--and professors--sometimes assume that typing an exam is always better than writing one. I don't agree--even though typed exams are by definition more legible (something I of course appreciate).

There is a lot of exam advice in the blogosphere, and it's easy to get overwhelmed by the sometimes conflicting advice given. But two additional sources (not from this blog) that I strongly recommend are the following:

Law School Exam-Taking Tips. This excellent post on Concurring Opinions by Professor Daniel Solove at George Washington University Law School covers a lot of useful ground. 1Ls (and 2Ls and 3Ls, for that matter) should take his advice to heart.

Bad Answers, Good Answers, and Terrific Answers. This very useful post on the Volokh Conspiracy is by Professor Orin Kerr, who is also at George Washington University Law School.

Law School Exam Advice from Pitt's Jurist website. The University of Pittsburgh's excellent Jurist website lists excellent links to information on taking law school exams. There's a lot of useful information here.

Good luck studying, and good luck on exams!

The Pros and Cons of Typing Exams

Over at CALI's Pre-Law Blog, Austin Groothius has a post you should read, if for no other reason than the title. His post discusses my recent comments on another student blog post at The Legal Scoop entitled "Typing Your Way to an 'A.' " I have a few more thoughts on both the Legal Scoop post and Pre-Law Blog post, which I set forth here.

First, here's what I said in my recent post:

[The Legal Scoop's recent post, "Typing Your Way to an 'A,' "] discusses the importance of typing to law school success. I'd add that a long exam answer is no guarantee of a good answer if you do not know what you are doing, but it may help avoid a complete meltdown if you can at least randomly hit important points. If you know what you are doing, however, being able to flesh out your answer in great detail certainly does help.

Comment #1:

What Pre-Law Blog Says: Groothius agrees with the Legal Scoop post, and says that "arguing that a law student should even consider hand-writing an exam over typing when typing is an option is a silly argument unless that individual student is a poor typer. . . . [S]ubconciously, professors prefer typed exams to handwritten."

What I Think: When text is neat and easy to read (whether hand written or typed), that does ease the professor's burden. And it's also perhaps true that text in print looks "smarter" or more professional than handwritten text, which I suppose helps on some level. By way of analogy, I will say that I always think my law review articles look a lot smarter in their final, formatted form than they do in ordinary MS Word format or on Lexis or Westlaw. So in that sense, I agree with Groothius.

Yet in my experience, some people write better by hand than by typing. And by "write," I really mean "effectively present their thoughts." Are you the kind of person who processes what you think better on paper, or on a computer screen? That's an important question to ask yourself. Try taking some sample exams by computer and others by hand writing your answers. Does one feel more natural or comfortable to you? If one way seems clearly better to you, then use that approach.

I tell my students that they should take exams however they are most comfortable doing it--either writing or typing. As much as I like the legibility of typed exams, that should not trump the important considerations of comfort and effectiveness of presentation and organization of your answers.

It's also worth pointing out that in the last several semesters, grades for people who have typed their exams in my (anonymously graded) classes have been virtually identical to grades for people who have hand written their exams. The point, I suppose, is that typing is not a guaranteed way to a better grade.

Comment #2:

What Pre-Law Blog Says: Groothius suggests that if you are a bad typist, then you should consider taking a typing course of some sort.

What I Think: I absolutely agree. Even if you hand write your exams in law school, some day you hope to practice law or do something else in the professional world. Which will entail typing. And the faster you are, the better off you are.

Goodbye, Albatross

Well, my spring 2007 semester grades are done. Hurray! And the fact that I had 109 three-hour essay exams plus 14 research papers to grade explains a lot about why I have not posted much lately. Now that I am done, here are a few quick observations.

ONE: Never underestimate the importance of getting the facts right on a test. People who clearly know what they are doing with the law sometimes trip themselves up by getting the facts (which are given on the exam, mind you) totally wrong. I am perhaps softie in this regard--I remember what law school exams were like from the student perspective. And for that reason I tend to give tests with "evolving" fact patterns that center on the same set of characters. Less confusing, in my view. But getting the facts wrong can't help but affect your grade. And this is a big part of lawyering, after all. So to all you students out there: pay attention to the facts!

TWO: The difference in the quality of the 1L exams between the fall semester and spring semester is amazing. The class GPA in my Contracts II class went up substantially. And I curve my grades, mind you. The grades still went up. Not everyone will be happy, of course, but the average showed a good deal of improvement.

THREE: In my experience, the quality of a test, for grading purposes, has very little to do with whether it is straightforward (read: easy) or more subtle (read: hard). I gave a straightforward exam in the fall, and a more complex exam in the spring, since the 1Ls were by that time battle-hardened. And each time some people got it, and some did not. Some misunderstood the facts, and some did not. And some came up with some really creative answers--in a good way. I love to see that on an exam. In other words, you get a bell curve distribution of grades every time.

In closing, let me say that I think testing with essay exams is very, very important. Clients do not present you with multiple choice questions in practice. The bar exam does that, but at the end of the day we are teaching people how to be lawyers, not bar exam takers. (They of course have to pass the bar, so multiple choice exams have their place in law school.) But I would be interested to hear what readers think about this. What kind of exams do/did you prefer? Multiple choice? Short answer? Essay? Combinations thereof? Please comment and give me some input on this. Thanks!

Weekly Roundup--Feb. 19, 2007

This is my second installment of noteworthy posts or events of the week. Highly unscientific, but hopefully highly interesting.

More (and More) on Taking Law School Exams. There were some substantive posts in the past week on law school exams and how (and how not) to take them. I posted on this subject recently too (see Reflections on Law School Exams and More Information on Exams).

• In a recent post, Orin Kerr of the Volokh Conspiracy discusses in some detail what is (and is not) a good law school exam answer. He usefully illustrates his points with a little hypothetical--materials from a make-believe course, an exam question, and five sample exam answers. Make sure you check out the comments.

• Daniel Solove at Concurring Opinions also offers his take on law school exams.

Note the commonalities in the advice posted by Kerr, Solove, me, and other law profs out there. If a lot of people (grading the exams) tell you the same thing, there's probably something to it . . . .

Blogs in the Classroom. On his blog, Stephen Bainbridge has posted about the use of blogs in teaching. He's using a course-focused blog to great effect--making his slides, handouts, audio of his actual class lectures, and related materials available online for anyone who wants to access them. That is an excellent idea, and Bainbridge can hold his head high if anyone ever accuses him of being an academic because he does not want to work hard. (Which someone does in a comment on another recent post of his, in which Bainbridge compares law practitioner salaries to law prof salaries.) He really could get away with not posting these materials, and yet he does it anyway. Kudos.

So why don't all professors do this? There are probably as many reasons as there are law profs, but I do note that Bainbridge has been teaching for a while, which has given him time to hone his materials.

Most interesting to me is the excerpt Bainbridge quotes from an interview of Professor Jack Balkin (of the blog Balkinization) about blogs opening up possibilities for law students to hear the views of law profs at other schools far more easily than, say, just a few years ago. I see this as very beneficial for students (check out the comments to Bainbridge's post), and also perhaps as raising the bar of accountability for law profs. Both of which are good things.

Big Firm Salaries. At Concurring Opinions, Scott Moss points out in a recent post that despite the media frenzy over recent (and previous) big law firm pay hikes for associates, the average increase over the past decade has been only 6.5% annually. That's better than the national average, but not huge. But the headline "Associates get Modest Pay Raises" won't sell many papers.

As a former soldier in the big firm trenches, I can say that the associates generally earn these raises, too.

Blog of the Week. This honor goes to the HRHero blog That's What She Said, on which blogger and HR attorney Julie Elgar discusses legal issues raised by the US version of the TV show "The Office." Neat concept for a blog.

More Information on Exams

In a recent post I set out some thoughts about final exams and what students do well (and not so well) when preparing for and taking them. (See Reflections on Law School Exams, 2/8/2007.) In addition to my two cents, Pitt's Jurist site has an excellent compendium of advice regarding law school final exams. It includes advice from a variety of law profs and other commentators. It's a list worth checking out.

Reflections on Law School Exams

I have had several readers ask for my post-exam thoughts about what students should and should not do on final exams. I have posted on this subject before, but since grades come out every semester it's worth writing about again. Hopefully I can shed some new light on the subject, at least from my perspective as a law exam grader. My previous posts on law school exams, by the way, are as follows.

• How Law School Professors Write Exams


• Last Minute Final Exam Advice


• How to Improve Your Law School Exam Grades


• More about Law School Grades


• Exam Grades and Curves

So what else can I say? The views I expressed in my previous posts really have not changed, but here are some supplemental thoughts.

1. Know Your Audience, and Remember the Purpose of an Exam. For law school exams, your audience is your professor--someone who knows the subject better than you, but who nonetheless wants you to demonstrate your knowledge of the subject. You are not talking down to your audience if you demonstrate on the exam that you know, say, the basics of manifestation of mutual assent. If you don't explain in summary fashion what the law is, you risk a lower score.

2. Corollary to #1: Law School Exams Grade Performance, not Just Knowledge. On a law school exam--at least an essay exam--you are presented with a fact pattern. Your task is to identify what doctrinal rules are relevant and then apply them. Knowing the law is necessary for a good grade (you can't apply the law if you don't understand it), but it is not sufficient.

3. Another Corollary to #1: To Perform Better on Exams, Take Some Practice Exams. Let's say you got a lower grade than you wanted. Does that mean you didn't know the law? No, it means you did not perform on that particular exam, most likely by not applying the law as well as you might have. For future exams, practice applying the law. Get together with class mates you trust, draft sample exam questions for each other, and practice answering them. It is my opinion that the process of creating your own sample exams can be a highly educational process, because it forces you to really think about how the various legal rules and principles interact. Also try looking on the web for sample exams--although the casebooks used and the topics covered by those other professors will affect the usefulness of those exams.

Note: For anyone in my current Contracts class, I will be handing out some sample exams later in the semester. But I encourage you to craft your own sample questions too.

4. Organize Your Exam Answers. I saw a lot of exam answers this year that were not well-organized. I sympathize entirely with the urge to simply start writing--after all, there's not much time in a three-hour exam. But if you don't (a) think through how you want to organize your answer (which means you need to outline your answer before you start writing), and then (b) follow that template, you are bound to miss issues or at least give short shrift to some issues.

Here's the point: on average, you will score higher on an exam if you hit all (or at least most) of the issues adequately--as opposed to really nailing some and missing or underexploring others. If you outline that does leave you less time to write, but that is MORE than offset by the fact that you will spend less time spinning your wheels or restating something you have already covered.

5. Corollary to #4: Exam Length is not Always Related to Exam Score. There are 3 general lengths of exam answers: short, medium, and long. That sounds all too obvious, but it's worth pointing out, in order to highlight the relationship between exam answer length and exam answer score.

In my experience, writing less than around 1700 words on a 3 hour essay exam means that you run significant risk of not having enough words to discuss and analyze difficult legal rules and principles. So there is a strong corellation between short answers and lower exam scores.

Medium answers are, in my experience, anything between 2000 and 2700 words. (I guess that means 1700-2000 is a gray zone.) A 2000 word answer can be competent, but in the "medium" category longer answers generally translate into better scores.

Interestingly, however, for long answers--generally those above 3000 words--there is a very weak correlation between word count and score. And this gets me back to my point about organization. A well organized answer can cover more ground in fewer words than a long (but poorly organized) answer.

This means that sacrificing some length at the alter of organization is a wise trade-off.

6. Another Corollary to #4: Organizing Your Answer Helps Demonstrate to the Professor That You Know What You are Doing. The ability to identify relevant issues and then discuss them in organized fashion is a necessary skill for the practice of law. That's what you do in memos to clients, and that's what you do in briefs or other submissions to a court. Whenever I read a well organized answer, the message I get is "this person knows what s/he is doing." In contrast, a disorganized answer that flails about makes it difficult or impossible for me to tell whether the person knew the law, or simply got portions of the exam right by accident--and the result is a lower grade.

7. Yet Another Corollary to #4: Write an introduction for your answer. I may differ from other law profs on this point, but I see very little downside to writing a very brief introductory paragraph for your essay exam answer. It takes about 5 minutes--and all you do is concisely state what the issues raised in the question are and what you will be discussing in your answer. And then you follow that format throughout your answer.

This is another way to demonstrate to the prof that you know what you are doing. It also makes the exam easier to read, because the prof knows what's coming later in the answer. It is always easier to read something--an essay, magazine article, memo, anything--if the author first gives a roadmap. So even if an introduction does not garner you any direct points, it helps the grader follow what you are doing, and that should at least indirectly improve your score. (It's also a way to force yourself to be organized in your answer.) And as I said, even if it does not help, it really does not hurt much, since it only takes a few minutes to write an introduction.

8. Do not Try to be Clever or Original. Points for style and eloquence are nice, but generally you are better off focusing on getting the substance of your answer down, instead of being overly concerned with phraseology. So eschew grandioloquent prose for simple, straightforward language.

Of course you will use use legal terminology (e.g., tortfeasor, party-in-breach, etc.) to demonstrate your knowledge (and ability to apply) the law. Just don't get flowery.

* * * *

Those are just some of my thoughts. Any comments?

Adventures in Exam-Taking

For those readers not at my law school, a fire alarm went off at the school yesterday--during my 1L Contracts final exam, no less. As if law school is not stressful enough. Fortunately it was a false alarm, and was not a prank, either. Once the alarm passed, everybody got extra time to get back in the groove of answering the exam.

Law school can be so all-consuming that your priorities get a bit skewed. When an alarm goes off, you are concerned about losing your work, not losing your skin. Or perhaps you begin to wonder whether a felony or a tort has been committed. How's that for "thinking like a lawyer"?

From my days in the practice of law, I can say that such skewing occurs there too, especially when you are billing by the hour. "That fire alarm took 0.4 hours of my day," people would say. And I have known attorneys to not evacuate a building because they were too busy. In fact, I believe I did that once or twice myself. Skewing indeed.

Even on 9/11 in DC, some people stayed in the office well after it became clear what was going on. That time, though, I did not.

'Tis the Season to be Graded

Exam season is upon us yet again, which means that it is time to post advice on how to perform well on final exams, beyond just understanding the subject. I did a post a last semester that is worth reading; it is located here. It links to some other posts as well, on subjects like how law profs write exams and how to improve your grades in law school. Please check it out.

And for those who are obsessed with grades (which you shouldn't be--but more on that some other time), check out a post earlier this year about Justice Harry Blackmun's bad grades in law school.

The Travails of Exam Grading

For the past week or so I have lived, eaten and breathed law school exams and research papers. The old adage is that professors teach for free but get paid to grade. At the end of every semester, I reaffirm my belief in that wise cliche. Grading seems to take forever, and it can be absolutely mind-numbing (no offense, students--just imagine reading the same answer over and over and over and over). But you can't mess it up or take shortcuts because it's very, very important.

But now I'm kinda, sorta done. I've got to go back and check things on my exams and papers again, and I have to make sure my calculations are right. But the hard slogging is done. Hurray! On to summer research projects.

There's a post on The Little Professor blog that captures the grading experience quite well. The blogger in question is an English professor grading undergraduate papers, but she captures the spirit of the higher education grading process quite well. Also check out the comments. They are delightfully vicious.

Last-Minute Final Exam Advice

Law school exams are upon us yet again, and no one currently in law school is really a newbie anymore. Even the 1Ls are battle-scarred veterans. But some basic advice bears repeating, since sometimes the biggest mistakes are the easiest ones to avoid. So for what it's worth, here are my tips for surviving and even possibly thriving this exam season.

First, think about what your professor wants. In each class you are taking the professor as well as an exam. Does your professor play hide the ball or not? Give hopelessly long fact patterns? Find this out if you haven't already done so. Take some practice exams if the professor has any on file. Attend any review session the professor might offer. Ask questions about your professor's approach to exams.

Second, get plenty of sleep the night before the exam. I didn't always do this, and I could tell a difference in my exam performance. If you haven't mastered the material by the night before the exam, you aren't going to. So get some rest and at least be mentally sharp for the exam.

Third, carefully read the questions. Make sure you identify the issues presented by (or imbedded in) the question. Sort the relevant facts from the irrelevant ones.

Fourth, outline your answer. Take the time to do this. Invariably students do not follow this advice, since outlining reduces the time they have to write their answers. But outlining makes you think about the entire question and how to answer it. You'll be less likely to miss issues, and more likely to organize your answer well--both of which mean a higher score.

Fifth, cite to relevant sources of law on the exam--cases, statutes, regulations, doctrines. You may have the general concepts down, but if you can cite to the relevant cases or statutes, that shows me both that you were paying attention and that you have the gist of how to take law from a particular source and apply it to a new fact pattern. Which is largely what law school exams (and the practice of law) are about.

Sixth, in citing to relevant sources of law, paraphrase. Don't rewrite enormously long quotes on the exam. Use of key legal terminology and a brief paraphrase of a rule or principle will serve just as well, and in fact is better. I personally do not care if you can accurately produce a key paragraph from Judge Learned Hand's opinion in such-and-such a case. I do care whether you understand the principles involved. Use of key terms and a paraphrased summary actually demonstrates your level of understanding better than a long quote.

Seventh, in answering the question, be a lawyer, not a politician. A lawyer asked a question by a client should do her best to answer it. In contrast, all too often a politican asked a question during a debate gives the answer to the question he wishes had been asked. That gets you zero points on a law school exam.

Eighth, when the exam is over, walk away! Don't dwell on what you think you missed. Unless you have a time machine, you cannot do anything about it. Law school exams are complex, and you almost never get to identify or address everything on them. An "A" grade on my exams is often about a 70% score--which means 30% of the points were left on the table. So let it go.

And whatever you do, DO NOT call your professor to discuss how you think you screwed up on the exam. Not only is that enormously unprofessional, the fact is that we grade exams anonymously. Telling me how you answered a question undermines that system, and does far more to harm you than help you.

You might agree or disagree with some of my advice--but if you are in my classes, you'll do far better by heeding these suggestions. So good luck.

* * * *

Some of my previous posts regarding how to take law school exams can be linked to here (How Law Professors Write Exams), here (How to Improve Your Law School Exam Grades), and here (More About Law School Grades).

Exam Grades and Curves

I received a very good anonymous question in response to my post yesterday ("Of Politics and Law Schools"). The question was as follows:

Finally a blog by a law school professor. Do you grade according to a curve? Are you forced to because of your school? And if yes, do you find a forced curve is the best way to judge student performance?

In addition to brilliantly stroking my ego ("Finally a blog by a law school professor"!), this comment raises excellent questions about the use of grading curves in law schools, which I will try to answer below. Final exam season is upon us, after all, so this is a timely topic.

But first, in the interest of full disclosure I should say that there are a fair number of other law profs out there who blog. Some of these blogs are linked to on my blog. However, my focus is a bit different than most other law prof blogs: I focus on student and junior practitioner issues.

Anyway, back to the questions at hand.

Do I grade according to a curve? Does my school require me to use a curve? My school does not require the use of a curve, so this is left to my discretion. In small classes I do not grade according to a curve. In large classes I do. But here's the interesting thing about curves: in my classes at least, curves typically have no effect on the distribution of grades, or they work in students' favor.

Let me explain that a bit. In my experience, a properly constructed law school exam leads to a bell curve distribution of grades. A good exam will have easy issues on it, hard issues, and some issues in between. The easy parts show me who understands the most basic aspects of the course. The middling-hard aspects are mastered by fewer students, and this represents the middle of the class. And the hard stuff allows the top students in the class to shine.

So yes, I sometimes grade using a curve of my own devising. But it is usually grade-neutral or actually helps students (i.e., not everyone gets a C).

Am I in favor of a forced curve as the "best" way to judge student performance? The "best" way? Let's limit the question to whether I am in favor of its use in large classes, since there are lot of other ways students should be evaluated (e.g., writing papers, trial and appellate advocacy programs, clinics, etc.). I'm actually still undecided about the mandatory use of curves in large classes. One argument in favor of forced curves is that they help to harmonize grades across different sections of the same class. If you have a tough-grading professor for Contracts and the other section has a softie, why is that fair? Wouldn't it be better to have some forced consistency, so that the tough professor has to give a minimum number of As, and the easy grader can't give give everyone As?

On the other hand, it is a bit of a shame for a good exam paper to get bumped down by a curve. But again, in my experience a well-constructed exam largely avoids that problem. So perhaps I lean slightly in favor of mandatory curves for large classes. But I could be persuaded otherwise.

Any comments or thoughts?

More About Law School Grades

In a number of recent posts I have focused on issues concerning law school grades. Specifically, I have discussed how law professors write exams, how to improve your law school grades, and how Justice Harry Blackmun's law school transcript was littered with Cs and Ds (shocking but reassuring).

Also on the topic of law school grades (especially IL grades)--what they mean, and more importantly what they don't mean--there's a good post on the Volokh Conspiracy by Professor Orin Kerr at George Washington Unversity Law School. I recommend it strongly. Among other things, Kerr urges distraught students to keep things in perspective and not to assume that "bad grade" = "I am dumb." That's critically important advice.

Harry Blackmun and the Transcript of Doom

Following up on my post yesterday about law school grades, there's a book out on the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun called Becoming Justice Blackmun. I haven't read the book myself, but after reading a post about it on another blog (with the wonderful name Frightened Monkey), I plan to.

As the book and other site point out, Blackmun bombed some law school classes. Take a look at the list. It's got Ds and Cs all over it! Wow. Bear in mind, of course, that he went to law school back in the days before grade inflation, when far more people flunked out of law school than they do today. But the fact of the matter is that he sometimes did not do very well in terms of grades. In contrast, his contemporary on the Court, Justice John Paul Stevens, graduated from Northwestern University School of Law with the school's highest GPA ever. And that was back in the day too.

So for those of you who did not do as well as you wanted this past semester, take heart. It is not the end of the world. Learn from your mistakes, and hang in there. And remember that for most people, grades matter for one thing only: helping you get your first job after law school. After that, no one really cares.

How to Improve Your Law School Exam Grades

I just finished grading my fall semester exams. I am sure some of my students are not happy with their grades, while others are. The old adage is that students make A's, but they are given Cs. Or Ds.

That's not the case, of course. But it does raise this question: what are some of the critical factors in successful exam taking? What did you do well that you can replicate in future semesters? What did you do not so well that you can improve upon?

Here are some common exam taking mistakes that I see.

1. Not answering the question. Law school exams rarely test the entire semester. Rather, they focus on a subset of what was covered and test it in detail. So if the exam question is on, say, rulemaking (Administrative Law), don't talk about other topics unless they have bearing on the question. If you do, that's wasted time and zero points.

Corrollary to #1: If the question gives you clear facts, don't discuss what might happen if those weren't the facts. They're the facts, and you are supposed to apply them. Not pretend they are not there. If there is an ambguity in the question, fine--address it. But if a law is declared to be constitutional, don't waste time discussing how it might not be.

2. Not organizing your answer. Many law school exams are 3 hours only. You have a limited time to shine. And the way to shine is not to freewrite. Take time to figure out how to organize your answer, instead of just plunging in. 5 or 10 minutes up front may save you half an hour in answering the question. In fact, my rule of thumb is that perhaps 25% of your time during an exam should be spent reading the question carefully and outlining your answer.

3. When you outline your answer, include the outline at the top of your answer. That way if you run out of time, the professor can see where you were going to go and give you a few points. It makes a difference if the professor can see, in at least skeletal fashion, that you understood the basic parameters of the question.

4. Not citing to cases or materials covered during the semester and not using proper terminology. For better or worse, law is a verbal field. So proper terminology matters. You might have a solid grasp of what was discussed during the semester, but do you know the jargon? Think of law as a foreign language. When you speak in German, what words do you use? German ones. As for cases and materials, the exam is asking you to apply them to the fact pattern. So do that expressly.

So much for exam taking. What about exam preparation? The following points are critical in my view to exam success.

1. Adequately preparing during the semester. Daily preparation matters, folks, especially in the really hard courses. Did you read the materials and work to digest them? Did you keep up with the reading? Did you prepare your own outline? Waiting until the last minute to study is the kiss of death.

2. Going to class during the semester. It's important to remember that you are taking both a class and a professor. What does the professor like/dislike? Emphasize/not emphasize? In figuring this out, there is no substitute for going to class. That is not to suggest that you should only take notes and not do the reading, since often there are materials in the reading that are not discussed in class but can appear on the final exam. But if you can figure out what the professor expects, how she approaches the course, and so on, you have a better chance of writing an exam the professor will like. This, by the way, is good training for law practice: if you give the client something in the form he prefers (e-mail versus hardcopy mail, meeting versus memo), you are more likely to have a faithful (and paying) client.

3. Not asking the professor about the format of the exam. The professor should discuss this in class, but just in case, ask. Essay? Open book? Take-home? How many questions? When you show up for an oral argument you may not know what questions the judge will ask, but you do know the format. And there is some comfort and strategic advantage in that. The same is true for law school exams.

4. Not having a study partner. Two (or 3 or 4) heads are better than one when it comes to dissecting and analyzing a course. Others will think of problems and answers you haven't, and vice versa. That will make you better prepared come exam time.

5. Not asking a professor where you went wrong on a test. Did you do poorly? Go ask why. Not to challenge or argue, but to figure out what happened. It's too late in that class, but in a few short months you will be neck deep in exams all over again. So don't repeat the same mistakes twice. And frankly, it shows maturity and professionalism. Professors like that.

If anyone has any other thoughts on how to prepare for and take law school exams, please post a comment.

How Law Professors Write Exams

I am admittedly a bit behind the curve here, but now that most law students have finished exams, perhaps they can joyfully relive a bit of exam week by reading about how law professors write their essay exams. In my experience, it takes a bit of time to write a fair exam.

So check out the conversation that took place recently on the law professor blog Prawfsblawg. It is worth reading in no small part because the professors involved inevitably got sidetracked and discussed what they think is wrong with the current law school exam system. Comments from any students still reeling from exams are welcome!

After I finish grading my exams I may post some thoughts on how to avoid common study-related and exam-taking mistakes next semester.