How to write better; hack your lawschool exam

hack your exam

You may mug up all the cases and read up the entire Bare Act, you may slog throughout the semester and stay awake in all the classes, however, the grades you get depends just on what you write in your answer sheet. While what you write in your exam is not only determined by what you know but how you write.

In this post, influenced by my legal writing class, I will give some gyaan about how to write an answer to a problem based question in law school exam.

The first step that is involved in answering the question is identify the issues involved in the problem. Start your answer with identifying the relevant issue.

After you identify the issues, write down the precise solution, a reader would not like to wait till the end to know the answer or solution.

Once you state the solution, you need to give the reason behind it, the rule or law that leads to such conclusion. For instance, if the question asks you that whether a contract between X and Y which involves transfer of some property by X to Y without any consideration is valid or not and you give the answer is negative, you need to provide the reason that is the law or the rule behind it.

After you state the law, it is important to mention the application of rule/law, how is the law applied to your case. According to Prof. Shannon Jhunjhunwala who is teaching us the legal writing course, this is the most abused section in which people generally end up writing case summary of similar cases.

However, the right approach is to identify two or three cases that justify your stance, analyse them along with the facts of your case to justify the application of the law you have stated to be applicable in the present case. It is advisable to mention only the relevant facts of the problem in hand.

Along with the application of rule, you can also give your own arguments regarding how you reached that solution.

The application and argument part is the meat of your solution where you not only justify your stance but also analyze the case law from your view point that gives uniqueness to your answer It might also please your teacher as they also seek something more then mere reiteration of the Sections of the Act and name of the cases.

Followed by the application of the rule, comes the last part of the answer that is the conclusion, where you sum up of the issues, rule you applied to each of them and the application of rule. The conclusion is supposed to provide quick summary and give a cogent, clear and concise reflection of what you want to convey.

Hope these tips help you in getting more marks in your exam, all the best!