[MUSIC] One of the surest ways to screw up an issue spotting question is to fail to spot and discuss an important issue that your law professor believes is important. To reduce the chance of making this error, part of your preparation for any exam should be to create a major issue summary sheet with your assessment of the top 50 issues that were covered in the class. On an open book exam, you should force your eyes over this list of issues and ask yourself proactively whether the issue is raised by the exam question. This requires a bit of discipline. Under the stress of an exam, you'll often read the question and wanna jump in and immediately write about the issues that comes first to mind. But it's better to spend a few extra moments to assess additional issues that might be put in play. On closed book exams, you should still prepare your summary issues sheet, but you will need to go further and try to memorize the list of potential issues. Then, when you're taking the exam, you should cast your mind back, and again ask, which of the issues are raised by the question? Once you've identified a set of issues that might be at play, you then need to decide which of the issues you want to discuss in your answer and at what length. In timed exams it's usually not possible to fully discuss all potential issues. In deciding what to discuss, you should think about whether it's better to deploy the shotgun strategy of addressing a large number of issues in less depth, or the rifle strategy of addressing a smaller number of issues in more depth. Each strategy can be appropriate in certain circumstances. The shotgun is preferred when you're less sure about what the professor is looking for. By mentioning a large number of issues, you'll reduce the chance that you screw up and fail to mention an important issue at all. The shotgun strategy is a great way of turning a C or a D grade into a B. But the shotgun approach is not a great way to turn a B grade into an A. To get an A on a question, you'll probably have to provide more analysis of a smaller set of issues. When you're more confident about what the professor is looking for, you might instead pull out the rifle and focus your limited time in covering the most pertinent issues. On some exams, you might deploy the shotgun strategy to answer the first question and turn around and employ the rifle strategy to answer the next question. As you write your exam, keep in mind your audience, a sleepy professor. Reading law exams is like having to watch a bad movie 60 times in a row. People do not create great art under the time pressure of an exam. It's often unpleasant and mind-dulling to read. You can improve the experience of your professor by including in your answer judicious use of underlining or bolding or highlighting. And you should definitely break your discussion of issues into separate paragraphs and possibly separate them with individual section headings. Writing answers that are single, run-on paragraphs for pages without any highlighted words are ill-conceived for at least two reasons. First, these undifferentiated mass of words make it harder for professors to skip your discussion of silly issues. When I am grading an exam, I sometimes read an answer that wastes time on an issue that's not at all relevant to the question. I'd like to jump ahead to the point where the student starts to discuss another issue instead of focusing my attention on something that's annoying me about the student. But if there are no paragraphs or highlighting, I'm forced to keep reading the poor parts of the answer and can't focus my time on the parts where the student is saying something more intelligent. Second, have you ever had the experience of reading a novel late at night and suddenly find that you've zoned out and can't remember what you've read for the last several pages? This happens to professors all the time when they're grading an exam. When the student has used paragraphs and underlined key words, I'm often able to go back and remind myself of the student's key points. But, when there's an undifferentiated string of sentences, it becomes much harder for me to figure out how far I go back and what were the key points. Argh. That does not make me happy. The bottom line is that you should keep in mind, that your exam falls in the midst of dozens of others, and you should strive to make it easy for your professor to extract the information from your exam. Students often wonder whether on their exams they can criticize arguments that the professor made in class. The answer is yes, but in doing this be sure to regurgitate the professor's argument before you take it on and criticize it. Make clear that you attended class, possibly even referencing class discussion, and that you understood what was argued before you dispute it. On policy questions, I sometimes encounter answers that show no inkling of the class discussion on the particular topic, and I tend to give lower grades to these answers. Finally, it's standard advice, but it's so important to keep track of time. I routinely encounter exams where student leaves some answer completely blank. Many professors are inclined to give partial credit for incomplete answers, but we can't give partial credit for an answer that doesn't exist. So whatever you do, make sure that you leave enough time to say something so that you can receive at least partial credit on every question. And finally, here is a bonus tool. In trying to identify issues, pay particular attention to fact patterns where the same conduct occurs twice or more. Ask yourself, what are the differences between these repeated events? Professors, in crafting exam questions, often repeat an event with slight variations to highlight an issue that they want you to discuss in your answer. [MUSIC]
