• General Comments on Writing Exam Answers
• The Importance of Outlining Your Answer Before You Begin to Write
• What Do I Look for in Reading an Exam Answer?

General Comments on Writing Exam Answers

It’s very important to read the question carefully, even read it twice if necessary. You should also outline your answers before you begin to write. It is easy, under the pressure of an exam, to think that you should get started writing immediately because there is so much ground to cover. In reality, that approach generally leads to less organized answers and increases the likelihood that you’ll overlook something important.

Where the question is a fact hypothetical, it will almost never be to your advantage to re-state all the facts at the beginning of your answer. This is a common mistake, and you should take care to avoid it. (Similarly, you should not state all in one place, whether at the beginning or end, any additional facts you feel you would need to know in order to give a complete answer.) When you’re working with fact hypotheticals, a major aspect is your ability to apply the law to the specific facts, integrating the facts into your analysis. Thus you should mention specific facts that relate to a particular legal point you’re making, as you make that point.

Nor do you want to start out by giving some kind of general summary of the law or cases in the area. This is true both of fact hypotheticals and more general questions. I’m not looking to see how well the test-taker can write summaries like that. The point of a fact-hypothetical question like this is to see how well the person writing the answer can analyze the legal issues in light of the specific facts. A general summary or history of the issue of an area like standing, for example, is going to take time for you to write, and it’s very unlikely you’ll get much credit for it.

Also, make sure you refer appropriately to any constitutional provisions or statutes or other legal materials given to you in the question. On the one hand, there is certainly no need to quote a statute or constitutional section in full if only parts of it are relevant (which is usually going to be the case). On the other hand, though, neither do you want to just make summary assertions about its effect.

I would strongly recommend against organizing your answer by first stating all the arguments on all the issues that one side could make, then stating all the arguments on all the issues that the other side could make, and then stating your recommendations as to how to resolve all the issues. This approach in effect amounts to writing a brief for one side, a reply brief, and a judicial opinion. If a question asks you to do that, you should do it, of course, but otherwise I would avoid it. The problem with that kind of approach is that it makes your answer very disjointed. You end up addressing each issue in three different places, which leads to repetition, or else in your “reply brief” you forget to respond to one of the issues in your main “brief,” which makes it incomplete.

Finally, exams put a lot of time pressure on your writing skills, and I don’t expect perfection. But there are at least two basic points you should keep in mind while you are writing your exam.

• First, write in paragraphs. It is very hard to read an entire answer going on for pages without any break.
• Second, pay attention to sentence length, and when in doubt, keep the sentences short. Sentences that go on for half a page or more are likely to be confusing. I include in this category long sentences with lists of the various elements of a rule separated by semi-colons.

The Importance of Outlining Your Answer Before You Begin to Write

I strongly suggest (but do not require) that after you have read an exam question, you outline your answer before you begin to write. On the final exam, you will not be handing in your outline. But writing an outline before you begin to answer a question will help you immensely in writing an organized and knowledgeable answer.

It will help in at least four ways:

• First, it will help you jot down the major issues, sub-issues, and relevant facts in an organized way, without the burden of writing complete sentences and paragaphs. You are much more likely to identify all the issues if you do this rather than just start writing after you read the answer.
• Second, it will help you allocate your time within the allotted time frame for the answer. A good outline will help you see which are the more complicated issues and so require more time to cover, and which are the less complicated issues and so require less time to cover.
• Third, having the outline in written form will keep you from inadvertently forgetting to address an issue that you thought of when you were reading the question.
• Fourth, it will help you write your answer more quickly. The time you spend outlining before you answer is an investment of time in a more concise, organized, comprehensive, and insightful essay.

What Do I Look for in Reading an Exam Answer?

There are certain things you should keep in mind, which I list below, followed by a description of what I am looking for and what can go wrong.

1. Follow the instructions. Pay attention to all the instructions. I put them on a cover sheet. Make sure you read them before you start reading the exam questions.

2. Make sure you respond to the question.
   • What I’m looking for:
     • Does the answer address the issue or issues that the question raised? Where the question involves a fact hypothetical -- as noted, not all of them do -- did the writer get basic facts wrong? Ignore important facts? Are there significant legal questions raised by the facts that the answer simply doesn’t address?
   • What can go wrong:
     • Sometimes people are in such a hurry to start writing that they rush through reading the question, noticing only a few key words and then figuring they must know what’s being asked. Make sure you read the question carefully -- read it over once, and then go back over it.
     • Sometimes people think it’s important to write down everything they know about the subject. It’s not. You need to thinking about and discussing how the rules (constitutional or statutory) could apply to these particular facts.
     • Sometimes people fail to respond to everything that’s being asked. If the question asks what the arguments would be in favor of a particular individual, and also asks you how you think the court should rule, remember to address both.
     • Sometimes people assume there must be an issue -- one issue only -- in a question. This can especially happen with people who adhere too rigidly to some method like “IRAC” (“Issue, Rule, Analysis, and Conclusion”). People may feel the need to state “the issue” right at the outset. The problem is that there will almost always be a variety of issues.
       • It’s best to avoid formulaic methods touted as good for law school exams, such as IRAC, CREAC, etc. In general, you should aim to write answers that are clearly written and logically organized, and which address the question or questions asked.
     • Where the question involves a fact hypothetical, sometimes people simply miss issues because they didn’t notice all the facts. How much missing an issue will count against you depends on how important the issue is; obviously, the more important the issue the more detrimental it will be to omit any mention of it. This can also be a problem in non-fact hypothetical questions. For example, people may miss an issue that has clearly been flagged; or they may overlook an instruction that there is no need to address a particular issue.
       • Avoiding this problem is mainly a matter of reading the question carefully and thinking about it. One thing you might do, after you’ve written your outline, is take another quick look at the question.
       • With fact hypotheticals, are there facts mentioned in the question that play no role in your analysis? Sometimes facts may be included in a fact hypothetical just for background, but typically fact hypotheticals are written to raise issues on a particular set of facts. If the answer you are planning on writing will pay no heed to a particular fact (particularly something prominent), you should just spend a moment to make sure that you really think there are no associated legal issues. It may be that there aren’t; I’m just saying it doesn’t hurt to double-check. Sometimes people change the facts in the question and then analyze what the result would be under the new circumstances. Answering a question you’ve rewritten is almost always going to be a problem, especially if it detracts from a thorough analysis of the question that has in fact been asked.
       • With questions that don’t involve facts, it doesn’t hurt to go back and think about exactly what issues are being flagged -- and which are not. If the question involves some major overarching issue, you need to address it, but there is no guarantee that there’s only one issue in a question.

3. Determine what the issues are and analyze them in an appropriate degree of thoroughness.
   • What I’m looking for:
     • Does the writer identify the major and important minor issues? Does the writer seem to allocate his or her time properly? Is a disproportionate amount of time spent on less important issues, and not enough time on more important issues? As to any given issue, does the writer argue for his or her position, or simply assert it? How insightful is the analysis? Does the writer integrate the facts and the law in an analysis that takes policy considerations into account -- or does the writer just restate the facts from the exam, summarily state the “black letter” law, and then assert that one side or the other would prevail?
   • What can go wrong:
     • Sometimes people think they need to get to the point -- to say that “A has standing,” for example. What I’m looking for mainly, though, is your analysis -- how you get there and why. Keep in mind that I have no way of knowing whether you’ve mastered the material other than by what you write. There are different types of exam answers:
       1. Answers written by people who understand the material well and explain their reasoning well;
       2. Answers written by people who understand the material well and leave out their reasoning;
       3. Answers written by people who do not understand the material well and therefore leave out their reasoning;
       Obviously, exams of the 1st type will do the best, and of the fourth type, the worst. What may not be so obvious is that when I read an exam answer, answers of type 2 and 3 will likely look identical to me. People in the second category therefore receive the same (lower) grade as people in the third, even though they know the material as well as people in the first, who receive higher grades.
     • Sometimes people start out an answer by recounting all the facts. That’s a waste of time. I’m not looking for a repetition of the facts. You do need to mention the relevant facts, but the way to do that is to work specific facts into your analysis where they are relevant.
     • Sometimes people think it’s important to state the rules in their entirety at the outset, in the abstract. They may then follow this by recounting the facts and then asserting a conclusion. That is not the same as analyzing the facts -- once again, discussing how the constitutional rules or statutes could apply to the particular facts.
     • While it’s a mistake to be too one-sided, sometimes people mistakenly treat everything as equally subject to a counter-argument. A statute adding to the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court is unconstitutional. Marbury. You would say more about that only if you were asked to comment on what the law should be. Similarly, sometimes standing may be clear-cut, at least without a major change to the caselaw. Not every conceivable argument is worth spending time on.

4. Organize your answer and write clearly.
   • What I’m looking for:
     • How good is the writing? Do the steps in the analysis flow logically? How good is the paragraph structure? Is the answer simply a collection of sentences with no particular organization? Is it repetitive? Are there problems with grammar, run-on sentences, and the like? I don’t specifically grade for how well written the answer is, but if the writing problems are severe enough, it may be difficult for me to follow what the writer is saying. An essay answer should be a series of paragraphs in logical order. Each paragraph should have a topic sentence. A topic sentence is what the paragraph is about. Everything that relates to that topic sentence should be in the paragraph, and anything that does not relate to that topic sentence should not be in that paragraph. The paragraphs should also flow logically, so it’s evident when you move from one paragraph to the next why what follows comes after (as opposed to having been addressed earlier or much later). The way to achieve organization is to outline your answer before you begin to write. See the last page for advice on how to outline.
   • What can go wrong:
     • Sometimes people organize their answer by whatever comes to mind as they think through the question. If this is what you’re doing, you are very likely to leave something out, be repetitive, and hard to follow.
     • Sometimes people first write all the arguments for one side or one party, then write all the arguments for the other side. This makes it very hard to read; you shouldn’t write your answer as if you’re first writing a brief for one side, then another for the other. There are several problems with doing this:
       • It makes it very hard for me to see what you believe the arguments are on both sides as to a particular issue, because I have to find the arguments on that issue in two different places.
       • There is a big risk that for a given issue, when you write it up for side A, you’ll accidentally forget to respond to and it give the other side when you’re writing up the arguments for side B.
       • If I’ve asked you to say who has the stronger argument as to each issue, you’ll have to address each issue a third time, this time giving your assessment. This makes it even more repetitive and hard to follow.
     • Sometimes people organize everything as an alternating sequence of “on the one hand,” “on the other hand,” sentence by sentence. This is very hard to follow. You need to organize your answer by topic. This includes analyzing the counter-arguments to your position, but that needs to be done in an organized way.
     • Sometimes people don’t put any paragraphs in. This is almost always a sign of lack of organization. Of course, you don’t want to randomly hit the return on your laptop); your paragraphs need to be organized and flow logically. But if you’re not putting in paragraph breaks (or doing so only every couple of pages in a bluebook), something is going wrong.

5. Allocate your time properly. A final exam will have more than one question. Make sure you spend the right amount of time on each. What is the right amount of time? It basically turns on the weight of the question. For example, if you have a three-hour exam and three questions, and the instructions tell you that all questions will be weighted equally, then spend an hour on each. Keep track of the time so you don’t spend 2-1/2 hours on the first two questions and then have only a half hour left for the third.

   In another sense, though, allocating your time properly will always be highly relevant. Even if an exam has just one question for 60 minutes, with no subquestions, you still need to allocate your time properly in a second way: you need to spend more time on the more important or difficult issues, and less time on the less important or more straightforward issues. Doing an outline first can help greatly in figuring out, before you spend a lot of time on a particular issue, whether it’s worth a lot of time.