Though not every law student outlines, law outlines are an indispensable tool for the first year of law school. Law school outlines help a 1L figure out what’s important and make the transition from cases to legal rules, a gap that can be difficult to bridge at first, given the heavy focus on cases in class.
Start Outlining Early and Find Out About the Exam Format
Many professors will reveal the exam format on the syllabus, or very early on. If not, it never hurts to ask. The library may also carry old exams. In most closed-book exams, students can ignore cases entirely. Even on open book exams, professors rarely require that students remember the name of a case, with the possible exception of two or three big ones.
What are important are legal rules. If the exam is multiple choice, it will be essential to understand legal rules and how they might apply to fact patterns. Multiple choice fact patterns, as with essay patterns, may resemble the facts of a case, but often there will be small changes. For this reason, it’s better to understand why a case was decided how it was, as opposed to every little detail of the fact pattern.
For open-book exams, a clear and concise outline is essential. The student should always organize the outline in a way that makes sense to him or her, and be sure to highlight key points, especially those that are emphasized in class. Exams normally focus on what the professor considers important, not what the book does, so those points should be boldfaced or highlighted.
Fine Tune the Outline Before the Exam and Create Additional Study Aids
It is crucial to work on the outline throughout the semester. Outlining at the last minute often turns into not outlining at all, or being very unfamiliar with the outline. The last few weeks should be used not for creating outlines, but for fine-tuning them.
If the exam is closed-book, the outline can be used as a study aid. Visual learners may be better able to remember important legal rules if they are bold-faced or highlighted. For open-book exams, students should keep in mind that there will not be enough time to flip carefully through materials or learn anything new.
The best strategy for an open-book exam is to have all the information easy to access. This includes using colored flags to mark each section of the outline and casebook, using boldface or highlights for the most important legal rules, and creating a separate guide for supplements (the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, for example, or the Model Penal Code) with each section’s topic listed and the most important topics bold-faced and easy to find.
One final useful strategy for exam preparation is to use other materials to fill in any gaps. If part of the outline seems fuzzy or doesn’t make sense, a good way to figure out what goes there is to consult an outline done by another student who had that professor (these may be available for legal fraternity members, or can be found just by asking around). Commercial outlines can also be useful, but students should always check the date of the outline and be wary of errors
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