I am experiencing what can only be described as some type of outline-mania this week. Outlines are great and the process of making them and grappling with the difficult material is essential to success. However, outlines are just one piece of the puzzle. All too often students focus on creating and fine tuning their outlines because they feel that they are not yet ready to do practice problems. I want to be clear on this—I totally disagree. If you wait too long to work through practice problems, your performance will suffer. I could give you many more, but here are a dozen reasons why practice problems are essential.
Completing practice problems develops the skills of:
reading and following exam instructions
familiarizing yourself with exam format
issue spotting
answering within tight time constraints
planning an answer using ¼ of the allotted time
using the IRAC (and mini-IRAC) paradigm
articulating the rules, subrules, and exceptions to rules
developing legal analysis and policy arguments
making and resolving counterarguments
avoiding the brain dump
identifying and remedying gaps in your knowledge or weak spots in your outline
reducing anxiety
The data is clear that students who complete practice exams and self-evaluate or receive feedback on their answers have better performance. Even if you need to rely on your outline to answer a question because you don’t yet know the rules cold, do it. Don’t wait. Get started today!