This is 5 of 10 posts on exams, also known as “The Exam Series,” created by collaborators Amanda Bynum (Professor of Practice, Law | Director, Bar & Academic Success | The University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law); Shane Dizon (Associate Professor of Academic Success | Director, Academic Success Program | Brooklyn Law School); Halle B. Hara (Professor and Director of the Academic Success Program | Capital University Law School); Jacquelyn Rogers (Associate Professor of Law | Academic Success & Bar Preparation | Southwestern Law School); and Sarira A. Sadeghi (The Sam & Ash Director of Academic Achievement | Dale E. Fowler School of Law at Chapman University).

Practice Exams Are Key to Preparing for Take-Home Exams 

With the change to open-book exams, it may seem that practice exams are not as necessary as they were to prepare for closed-book exams. You must reframe that thinking by exploring the many benefits of practice exams when taking any type of exams. In particular, practice exams allow you to:  

• Identify how legal issues arise in a variety of factual scenarios. There is no substitute for issue-spotting practice, as well as prioritizing the larger issues (those worth more points) over the smaller issues.  

• Mastering legal analysis. As we all know, rote memorization (or regurgitating the rule statements) will afford little points in the grand scheme of a final exam. The “bread and butter” of your essay answer is your analysis. There is no substitute for practicing how you will articulate the arguments and counter-arguments that arise from various factual scenarios and applying them to your understanding of the relevant law. In sum, you don’t know what you don’t know until you practice. 

Should I Still Use Old Practice Exams, Even If They Were Not Administered in the Take-Home Environment?  

In a word, yes! Best practices advise taking the following steps: 

Step 1: Take the practice exams under the time limit originally allotted. Hence, if it was a three-hour exam, write it for three hours, even with the open-book and open-resource format. You’ll find there is little, if any, time for exploring your resources. 

Step 2: Stop writing at the deadline. Draw a line/page break where you stopped. 

Step 3: Keep writing, adding what you would have wanted, and note how much more time it took to add what you wanted. Even with a take-home exam, you should be aware of your pacing. This will give you realistic expectations for the actual day on which you will be downloading and writing the exam. 

Step 4: If your professor has posted a rubric or sample answer, read it carefully and assess your answer thoroughly. Even in the absence of grades, we still want the transformative benefits of self-assessment, good formative assessment, and metacognition, which is what expert law students use to get better every time they practice an exam. 

Step 5: Seek feedback! While we are all feeling isolated these days, don’t forget that the same resources that were available to you previously are still there. For example:  

If your professors are willing to review your exam answers, have them do so. Don’t know if they are? Ask! If you’re able, it’s important to demonstrate this initiative to your professors (whose reference you might need down the road) and to build the kind of resourcefulness you will need as your clients’ best advocate in the long run. 

Your professors are still holding office hours—“Zoom” in and ask the questions you collected after completing practice exam(s).  

Your academic success faculty are available and would love to meet with you.  Screen sharing works very well to review a practice exam together.  

Your teaching assistants would love to hear from you. Reach out to them to set up a time to chat.   

Study groups and study partners are still available. If you have study partner(s), set up a weekly standing time where you all sign into a video conference. Maintaining study groups is also a great extrinsic motivation for getting those practice exams completed!

What’s your plan for using practice exam? Let us know in the comments!