Thomson Reuters’ Five Steps to Law Study Success
For a more detailed guide to ‘Exam success’ please follow the link below:
STEP 1: TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR NERVES
Feeling nervous?
- Remember that you are most certainly not alone.
- Although it is true that some students do fail in law exams, most don’t. If you have spent time studying the law subject, reading cases and understanding the principles of law, it is more likely than not you will pass the exam.
- Try to think of your nerves in a different way. Rather than feeling nervous, think of the feeling as excitement! In your preparation leading up to the exam, feeling excited (nervous) is a sign that you are motivated to achieve, you want to be productive, learn effectively and perform in the exam at a high level.
STEP 2: CHANGE YOUR LEARNING TECHNIQUES LEADING UP TO THE EXAM
Learning law in theory and reading legal principles in abstract will never test your ability to apply these principles to various fact patterns. The key to understanding the law and to achieving in a law exam is to:
- Successfully identify legal issues;
- Isolate the appropriate legal principle; and
- Apply the law to the facts of the problem.
Write summaries of your summary notes. Writing summaries of your summary notes is an excellent way to prepare for the exam. It consolidates your knowledge, puts the law subject in context and enables you to identify issues. Some ideas include: lists, tables, flowcharts, diagrams, pictures.
STEP 3: APPROACHING THE EXAM
- Set up, organise, label and tab your exam folder
In the last few weeks before the exam set up your exam folder. This should happen earlier rather than later so you become familiar with the structure of your summary notes. This folder should be designed as your exclusive and sole exam resource, designed to allow you to effectively and efficiently apply your legal knowledge in a law exam.
Your exam folder should contain:
- Summary notes: 30–50 pages at most;
- Exam summaries: a few pages;
- Practice questions and answers; and
- Time breakdown for the exam (how many minutes per mark or per question).
- Get plenty of sleep.
At some point you must draw the line and say: “That’s it. I’ve learnt as much as I can.” Drawing the line at the exam room door is probably too late. Will you really learn that much more by cramming the few minutes before walking in?
- Pack your bag the day before
STEP 4: DURING THE EXAM
- “IRAC” as leading to success in a law exam
There are 4 principal elements in IRAC:
- Issue – Identify the legal issues from the facts.
The trick to issue-spotting is to remember that, in nearly every fact problem, in every law exam, every single sentence of the facts will be relevant to a legal issue.
If you find, after reading a fact-problem, facts that you have not allocated to an issue, you are usually missing an issue.
Once you have identified the legal issues in an exam, it is a good idea to prioritise them in order of importance. Sometimes the legal issues are complicated, with several parties involved. It may be best to deal with those issues in your answer first. Spend most of your time on the more complicated issues. Leave the smaller causes of action, or those that are obvious, to last
- Rule – Discuss the appropriate legal principles that apply to the facts.
After you have identified the legal issues to address in a fact problem, your next step is to identify the applicable legal principles to apply to each of the legal issues in dispute.
Just writing out the rule of law is usually not enough.
- Application – Apply the law to the specific facts of the factproblem.
The application of the identified law to the legal issue in dispute from the facts is probably the single most crucial step in a law exam.
For this reason, when applying the law to the facts, it is best to avoid writing out a lengthy statement of the applicable legal principles without reference to the facts and simply writing: “This law clearly applies to the facts here.”
- Conclusion – Conclude with an assessment of the likely outcome of the cause of action.
STEP 5: EXAM TECHNIQUE
- Allocate your time. There is a simple formula:
- Work out how long your exam is – in minutes of writing time.
- Divide the minutes by the total number of marks the exam is worth. Now you have how many minutes per mark?
- For each question, multiply how many minutes per mark BY the number of marks the question is worth.
- Decide which question to do first
- Use your reading time wisely
- Use the parties’ names
- Do not rewrite the facts
Good luck!
