Taylor
Caution!
Unfortunately, there isn't a flowchart/checklist for every single issue or sub-issue you might encounter in an issue-spotting style exam. But, the examples you find will help you learn to identify the analytical steps you need to discuss in your exam answers. You can even create your own flowchart/checklist for issues not provided in the study aid series once you see the depth of the analysis that a good exam answer will include.
Honing Your Legal Analysis Skills
One of the most challenging parts of taking a law school exam is taking all the concepts and knowledge you have and applying them to a new set of facts. In particular, it can be difficult to understand how to tackle the analysis for a particular type of issue when there are so many exceptions/sub-issues to consider.
The study aids below include tools—such as flowcharts and checklists—that will help you figure out how to attack a particular type of issue. Many of the aids below also include short answer and longer issue-spotting questions that will let you practice implementing your strategy and test its effectiveness. If you run out of practice questions, you can find more questions and practice exams in some of the resources on the Testing Knowledge tab of this guide.
Resources
You can find these resources in the library's study aid collection on the fourth floor.
| Study Aid Series | Description | Print or Digital |
|---|---|---|
| CrunchTime Series | The books in this series contain legal analysis flow-charts that will help you figure out how to analyze a specific type of legal issue. CrunchTimes also include capsule summaries of legal topics as well as short answer, multiple choice, and essay-type practice questions. | |
| Acing Law School Series | These books offer a "checklist approach" to legal analysis. They contain brief primers on legal topics with step-by-step suggestions on how to spot and analyze legal issues. |
Tips
How can you power up your use of this type of study aids?
1) Remember these flowcharts are not keyed to your specific professor's class. Use the flowchart or checklist provided to make your own attack outline/flowchart, adding in rules or concepts that your professor emphasized.
2) Once you've created your own flowchart/checklist, get comfortable using it by doing some issue-spotting practice questions (either essay or short-answer). If something doesn't flow well as you use it to write your answer or you miss an important part of the analysis, revise it.
3) Once you have a flowchart that works well and you're spotting and analyzing all of your issues well, remember to keep practicing using it with new problems at regular intervals to get comfortable and reconsolidate your knowledge. This will help with long-term retention.