One of the things I love most about Harry Potter is that the wand chooses the wizard. The wand is so powerful, so effective when placed in the right hands. It isn’t rare for me to wish I had a wand from Ollivanders choose me. I’m not a wizard, but I’d promise to use it wisely. I would waive it to provide students the time needed to showcase their acquired knowledge. But because this is the real world and not Hogsmeade, I’ll just give the three best pieces of advice I have for performing under time constraints:

Dear Professor,

I am terrible at multiple choice questions. Where can I find some to practice? I feel somewhat confident in my ability to write an essay exam, but I just cannot master multiple choice questions. Do you have any advice?

Sincerely,

Student

Most students come to law school having never taken an issue spotting essay exam. Despite this, very little (if any) time is devoted to teaching students how develop this skill. In the most basic terms, issue spotting occurs when a student uses the facts in a fact pattern to trigger a discussion of the relevant law from the course. If a student misses an issue, that student will lose the points allocated to discussing that issue.

Dear Professor,

I need to improve my exam writing. More specifically, I am not very comfortable IRAC. Do you have any advice?

Sincerely,

Student

It happens every semester. One or two students (sometimes more) tell me, “I don’t what happened. I just completely blanked.” These students explain that they were super diligent during the semester, knew all of the course information, but they simply couldn’t remember any of it when they looked at the exam.

Choking under pressure is a real phenomenon. We see it often in sports—a pro golfer misses an easy putt, a pro kicker misses a short field goal, or a favored Olympian loses the race. So what can you do to ensure that choking under pressure doesn’t happen to you on exam day?

Dear Professor,

Now that in-person classes have been cancelled and the semester is almost over, I am thinking of heading to my hometown to study for and take exams. I am nervous about making a change and am worried that it will throw me off. Do you have any thoughts on whether this is a good idea?

Sincerely,

Student

Sleep and Exam Performance. There are a multitude of studies showing the positive correlation between sufficient sleep and exam performance. Sleep is no less important to take-home exams. The simple truth is that sleep impacts cognitive function, improving decision-making and recall. A 2019 study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found that the three most important measures of sleep in terms of impact on exam performance are duration, quality, and consistency. The sleep in the weeks and days leading up to exams has a greater impact than sleep the night before the exam. The time you go to bed matters too. If you go to bed after 2:00 a.m., your performance declines even if, for example, you get seven hours of sleep.

Don’t engage in counterproductive exam review. Do not discuss exams afterward; this is not a good idea in the best of times and is even less so now. The impulse now will probably be greater than normal, as your learning environment and access to study groups have changed dramatically, and the desire to validate what you spotted and what you wrote will increase. With online exams, you will likely have the fact pattern in your possession and your outline near you. Do not scour your outline to see what you should have said or what you might have missed, or discuss the exam with your peers; when one exam ends, put it away and move on.

Exam Substance: If the Time Allows Me to Write More, What “More” Should I Write?

Students writing take-home exams for the first time may think the format is carte blanche to write however much they want and to simply transcribe everything already in their briefs and outlines. For those of you who have mandatory or optional pass-fail grading, let’s face it, this is admittedly a large temptation. Transcribe and you’re done, right?

But just as that was not an effective strategy for live open-books exams, it’s not a good one for a take-home exam either.

Be Aware of Potential Honor Code Violations. Many ethical issues can arise with respect to take-home exams, so be sure to determine your law school’s applicable policy. Pay particular attention to:

Does a new grading policy mean exams will be more difficult? A new grading policy does not necessarily mean exams will be easier or more difficult. Some professors may adjust their expectations according to the amount of material your class has covered, the success of the online learning program, etc. While many professors are sympathetic to the challenges of online learning and the disruptions that COVID-19 has created, they do still want to assess what you have learned and how well you have learned it. Some professors may allocate less points to rule statements since many exams will be open-note, and will, instead, focus on the quality of your analysis. Accordingly, you will still have to spot issues and analyze rules, neither of which are in your outline, so you must still prepare just as you would if these were typical graded exams.

Do exams really matter if my school is on a pass/fail or credit/no credit system?

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:

Whether you are working with a hard copy of your course outline or an electronic one, there are some effective organizational strategies you can employ. Options include the following:

While an at-home, open-book exam may sound like an alien concept in law school, the goal of assessment remains the same—you are being tested on your ability to recognize issues, articulate the relevant law, and apply that law to a new set of facts and circumstances to reach a reasoned conclusion. To correctly identify the issues triggered in a fact pattern, you must understand how the legal issues operate under a variety of factual scenarios. Consequently, you must have a clear understanding of the legal rules, and, just as importantly, have mastered articulating the arguments and counter-arguments that can arise. Thus, successful open-book examinees prepare for the exam with the same amount of effort and practice as one would for a closed-book exam.

That does not mean that you avoid making any changes to your exam preparation strategies. Indeed, you should be strategic about implementing a plan that maximizes the benefit of “open book.”

In addition to setting up your physical space, you need to be deliberate about selecting the optimal time to take your exams. Simply stated, you want to select the time most likely to contribute to your success.

The ideal place for you to complete your take-home final exams and the actual place you must complete your take-home final exams are likely not the same place right now. Nonetheless, you can do this! Here are some considerations as you prepare your physical space for final exams:

This week will focus on exams. A good place to start is by gathering necessary supplies. Because you may need to borrow or buy some items, it makes sense to start gathering them now. Below is a list of suggested items. Use the comments to emphasize items that are particularly helpful to you, provide links to inexpensive options, or mention anything missing. Gathering supplies is likely something you don’t think about much for in-school proctored exams, but it is a must during this time. Let’s help one another to have all that we need to do our best during this unusual time.

Necessary supplies may include: