1) My first piece of advice to anyone is listen to advice from everyone, but figure out and stick with what works for you. What I mean by that is, advice is free and everyone will be willing to give it. I suggest taking the 5 minutes and listening to everyone’s advice, because you never know what someone will suggest that just might work. HOWEVER, and this is a big HOWEVER, figure out what works best for you and don’t waste your time on everything else. Because what works for you may not work for everyone else and vice versa. Everyone learns differently and the quicker you figure out what works for you, the more time you can spend dedicated to that and not waste your time on things that aren’t working.
2) FIGURE OUT WHAT YOUR PROFESSOR WANTS IN AN ANSWER. Being able figure out what a professor wants in an answer and to tailor your answer to that is key to bumping your grades up. Part of that is being cognitive that not every professors wants the same style of answer. So figure that out.
2.A) The easiest way to figure that out (and admittedly the most intimidating) is to ASK THEM. Ask in the review sessions if they prefer headings in the answer. Or if they want them in a memo format. If they want you to address both sides of the argument or just one. I had one professor who didn’t care if cases were italicized, rather they only focused on the material. I had a different professor tell me that the reason I got the highest grade* in the class was because I took time to spell check and italicize things and my answer looked most like what you could give a client.
If they are willing to, ask them if you write a sample answer to one of their old exams, if they will go over it with you. It’s terrifying to ask (and even more terrifying to do), but it was by far the most helpful thing I did 1L year. I stopped doing it my 2L and 3L years as I grew confident in my abilities to figure out what a professor wanted outside of that meeting. But meeting with my professors to figure out what they liked BEFORE I took the exam, saved my ass in a number of classes. I had professors take a look at my sample answer and just say “absolutely not. Don’t do this on an exam.” Then they walked me through what they were looking for.
If they won’t meet before the exam (and some won’t), meet with them after the exam. Find out what you did write and what they think you could improve on.
2.B) If meeting with the professor is not an option, I cannot stress practice exams/old exams/sample answers, especially the sample answers. Going over sample answers will help you identify what your professor cares about and what they don’t. It’s the next closest thing you can get to asking them personally. Practice exams/old exams will show you what kind of questions your professor typically writes and they style of the questions they write (one long fact pattern is different than multiple smaller fact patterns).
2.C) Talk to upper-Ls who have had the professor before. They’ll be able to tell you what the professor likes and doesn’t. If possible, try to find a 2L or 3L who will give you honest, helpful advice. Advice from a 3L who got a C in the class isn’t very helpful. But upper-Ls will know. My T&E instructor was notorious for wanting to know how the answer would play out in the real world. He discussed the real-life aspects of T&E in class, but many students would tune out because most of our professors only cared about what the law was. I had multiple upper-Ls tell me to make sure I mentioned how it would play out in the real world on my exam. Over half my answers were the real-life implications of the T&E issue and I scored the highest grade* in the class, while my classmates who didn’t pay attention to the real life implications scored Cs.
3) TAKE PRACTICE EXAMS. TAKE THEM LOTS OF THEM. ESPECIALLY 1L YEAR. Yes, I know they’re awful. Yes, I know they take up a lot of time, but there’s so much to gain from taking them. First, you get the feel of taking your professor’s exam. By taking multiple of them, you start to build an internal timeclock for the amount of time you are spending on a problem/the exam. This cannot be understated when taking the exam, because so often there are time-management issues. It can also help you figure out the best way to attack a professor’s exam. My property professor always had 3 page-long fact patterns and 10 short-answer problems on his 3.5 hour exam. I got really good at the short answer problems (which had the same value as 1 long fact pattern) and would do them first. I usually did them quicker than the time allotted and then got to use that on the fact-patterns. Plus most of the other students did the fact patterns first and didn’t leave enough time for the short answers, so I gained points on my classmates there. The other perk to taking practice exams is to compare your answer to a few classmates that you trust. It shows you what you are seeing in the exam vs. what others are seeing in the exam, which opens up your eyes to seeing that in the exam. ALSO, DON’T TAKE THE PRACTICE EXAMS until you are nearly done with your outline. It lets you get a feel for your outline and where things are in your outline. It’ll also give you a chance to add things into your outline that you may have missed.
4) For outside sources, I really liked Examples and Explanations because it gives so sample questions and ANSWERS. They answers are key to understanding how the law applies to a random set of facts. I especially liked it for Evidence and Civ Pro. Also evidence in a flash flashcards were key for my evidence class, because his exam was very similar.
5) MAKE YOUR OUTLINE FOR YOU. It doesn’t matter what other people’s looks like. It’s gotta work for you. This ties back into figuring out how you learn best. I am a visual learner, so creating my own outline from scratch was something I had to do because it allowed me to reread my notes and repeatedly see things. I know others who did much better by just adding into an outline from someone the year before. That worked for them, not for me. So figure out what works best for you.
Best of luck. Remember, grades aren’t everything. After you graduate, people don’t ask about them anymore.
* I don’t mention the grade to brag or humblebrag about the grade. I mention it to provide support for my advice.
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