Getting to Maybe: How to Excel on Law School Exams

To begin with, I am neither a lawyer, a law student, nor even a prospective law student. I am, however, someone who has always been interested in the law, primarily for two reasons. First, the law is the principal formal means a society uses to try to resolve conflict among the society's members. Second, and closely related to the first reason, the sum shape, both of content and procedure of the law, is an expression of exactly what a society's values are and the goals a society sets for itself or the standards by which it ideally wishes to be judged. I found this book to be excellent, informative, well written, and even at parts entertaining. Although meant as a guide for law students to use to prepare for the strenuous exams that are associated with each course they will take in law school, the book provides much, much more, and hence my belief that it can profitably be read by a far larger readership than its ostensible audience. One of the key elements stressed throughout, and exemplified by numerous enlightening examples, is that there usually is no one correct answer to any given legal question. Arguments can be made on at least two sides of any matter based upon, for example, a "plain reading" of the text of a relevant law and the reasonably understandable intent of those who made the law (e.g., a legislature). The authors bring out clearly such sources of legal precedent as laws, government regulations, individual case law decisions by judges, common law, government policy, and specific codes (e.g., the Uniform Commercial Code, or UCC) and show how differing results to a case can readily come about based upon arguments using the different sources to bolster respective cases. In reality, although by minimal definition a book designed, as said above, to prepare for the taking of law school tests, the book actually also is a good guideline on how to think (not necessarily what to think) about many larger issues in society, including politics and policy issues of all sorts. Finally, the first two thirds of the book discuss ways to think about the wide range of questions that can be posed to aspiring lawyers and introduces the reader to understanding such distinctions as "forks in the law" and "forks in the facts" (a quite useful distinction to keep in mind). The final part of the book provides solid test taking strategies that are applicable to a wide range of academic testing (e.g., answer the question the professor actually asked and avoid wasting time or effort on ancillary matters not really germane to helping to resolve the issue.) Although some of these may seem obvious once read, the tips are the type of thing that, under pressure of exams, many students often forget to apply. In sum, I highly recommend this book to those interested in life in the modern world.

I purchased it twice: the first time in the law school, but I had misplaced it in the school library & lost it. The second time: while preparing for a BAR exam, I have realized that I material, but I was still missing issues. The book helped. Also, I did not get it on my first read & deeply dissatisfied. But, upon reading the second time & reading it later, I have gotten the point completely. The book helps to formulate what the issues are & you have to understand how to "uncover" the issues prior to formulating the issues. The book helped again.

I read this shortly before my first semester exams, and (although I can't know for sure until I get my grades back) I felt that what it teaches, it teaches well. It definitely improved my issue-spotting skills and helped me understand how to effectively tackle the issues once I'd identified them.HOWEVER, I felt like it was entirely lacking in one huge respect: choosing which issues to write about in the extremely time-limited context of law school exams. It has only a couple pages directly addressing time management, and their advice is essentially just "outline whatever you can't get to." Okay, but wouldn't I look kind of silly outlining two dozen issues for each question, and then only comprehensively discussing five of them? Law school exams ≠ drafting complaints at a PI plaintiff's firm where you have the luxury of tossing in literally every single idiot angle on the case that you can come up with, so the art of discriminating between the essential issues versus the tangential ones is something that definitely merits its own chapter - a chapter that GTM lacks.Reading this book was time well spent (and would have been even better spent earlier in the semester, as the book's advice would have influenced how I took class notes). But I'm still hunting for the last piece of the exam-taking puzzle.EDIT: With my grades back now, I think my initial assessment was accurate. I did above average ("Honors" passes... my law school is into the no-real-grades trend) in all the classes where I was able to predict which issues were my professors' personal favorites, so I could focus on applying GTM's strategies to an in-depth analysis of just those issues. But I did average ("regular" pass) in the class with a less predictable professor who gave us 24 hours' worth of issues in a 3.5 hour exam. Given the rest of my grades, I suspect that my merely "passing" exam was analytically sound but didn't hit on the issues that made the professor tick. So, like I expected, there's still that one piece of the puzzle missing...

Any 1L or incoming law student needs to read this book! So, I took the BARBI Law Preview before law school began to get an overview of what law school was like and a heads up on how to do things. During this program I had read just two chapters of the book- and these two chapters alone put me in a crucial mind frame to understand the importance of what your professors are looking for. It is not just about distinguishing the right issues and facts, because there is truly no such thing, but distinguishing both sides of an issue, and of course you have to read the book to get more info, but I feel like it has helped me understand what success sounds like in exams. I am only going into my third week of 1L, but I can tell the book has given me a leg up. I recommend that you read this book before you start, or in the first two weeks (though you'll be burdened with a lot of reading then- so before is best) so you can get into the mindset, instead of doing it right before exams and feeling like you have to rewire your brain to everything you thought you understood.I guess I'll have to update you guys once I see my exams, but so far so good!

This book accurately describes how law school exams work and is applicable to Canada. I recently finished Canadian law school and recommended this to anyone I know who was recently admitted.

A well-known book about law school exams but also about how lawyers argue cases.

Would probably be better read a short way into 1L, rather than beforehand - many of the examples and suggestions assume a working background of some concepts and topics that very few 0Ls will have any idea of.Book itself is thorough, almost to the point of redundancy, with a breezy, conversational tone. My biggest gripe is the lack of examples. The book's subtitle is 'How to excel in law school exams', but the main focus is on how to do well. I was rather hoping for suggestions of 'a C answer would go like this, a B answer like this, which would differ from the excellent A answer which would do this'. By lacking a contrast (I believe there's a single, early example of a paragraph answer which would get a pass), the book gives you things to think about to do well, but doesn't really help you move from one level to another.

This book helped me immeasurably in law school. Highly recommended! 1Ls - read this before you write your first set of exams!

This is a great book for anybody entering or already in law school. A must have book for students wanting a head start to law school.