In his latest Justia column, Illinois Law dean and professor Vikram David Amar offered tips for succeeding on law school exams. He writes:
"Over the next few weeks, law school final exams will be in full swing at almost every law school in the country. Like most of my law professor colleagues, I find writing and grading tests to be among the least pleasant aspects of what, overall, remains—notwithstanding recent stresses over the past few years—a great job. Exam drafting and evaluation is necessarily time-consuming and tedious. And no professor can avoid feeling somewhat bad knowing that the grades she gives will be disappointing, if not devastating, to some significant number of students who, until they got to law school, had rarely gotten any marks lower than an A- or B+.
"But another, perhaps bigger, reason I lament grading finals is that over the years I have sometimes felt, after reading exam responses, that my students didn’t learn as much as I thought they had. In fact, and on reflection, I believe that students generally do learn what professors desire and expect, but that students sometimes don’t effectively convey what they really know on written exams. That is, I think many law students do not effectively demonstrate all the substantive legal knowledge and sophistication that they in fact possess, when it comes time for them to write their final exams."
He goes on to offer a series of suggestions.
Full post at verdict.justia.com