TRANSCRIPT 🔗
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Hey everybody.
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In this episode, let's talk about one simple trick that you can use on your law school exam answers to set your answers apart when your professor is grading them.
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We're talking about using headers.
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Let's get started.
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Welcome to Law School Decoded, the podcast that pulls back the curtain on what it's really like to succeed in law school.
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Let's get started.
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Why am I talking about something as simple as using headers on your law school exam answer?
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Well, to start to understand that, I want you to imagine the process that your professor is going through as he or she is grading your exams at the end of the semester.
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The professor is probably a little bit tired.
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They have spent all semester teaching you multiple classes multiple times a week on their feet, doing and leading the Socratic method.
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They've written up this super complicated issue spotter exam.
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They've administered that exam.
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They've met with lots of students outside of class about how to prepare for it and how to understand a ton of course material.
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They've dealt with all that in their professional lives, and you don't even know what's going on in their personal lives.
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But in any event, they are probably a bit tired.
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It's the end of the semester.
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You've now taken the exams, and the professor is given a stack of these exams to grade against the rubric that they create for it.
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So the professor has to go through and see what issues each student spotted, give points for spotting the issue, give a point or two for saying the right rule, and then decide how many points does each student get for their analysis?
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And obviously, the more professional, common sense, creative, persuasive analyses will get lots of points.
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The ones that are disorganized or hard to understand or don't make any sense probably will not get many points.
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All of those exam grades go on a curve.
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The professor has to do the math, add them all up, get those grades entered.
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And this is the last thing between them and a few days off over a winter break or several days off over a summer break.
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This is the last thing that they have to do.
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When a professor has that stack of exams in front of them, you have to imagine that it is a daunting task ahead, right?
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And these exams aren't necessarily page turn.
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They're not necessarily well written.
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They're addressing the same facts over and over and over again.
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And law students wrote them usually in just the span of a couple hours.
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So they aren't necessarily impeccably done.
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It's not a Stephen King novel.
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It's not a page turner.
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So the professor has to get through the exams in this arduous process of grading them.
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Often law students wrote in kind of stream of consciousness, like a blog that really isn't well organized.
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So it's going to be hard for the professor.
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They're going to have an uphill battle to root out what issues you spotted, the rules that you recited, and an organized persuasive analysis of those issues and to what degree each law student achieved those objectives.
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When the professor is reading your exam answers, I want to suggest to you something.
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Perception is reality.
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In many ways, how the answer looks and how well formatted it looks is not maybe just as important as the content, but it is up there.
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I want you to imagine you're hiring for a job, and I've been there, and I've had 150 resumes in front of me, and my job is to pick the people who get interviewed.
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Do you think I want the resumes that are kind of messy and have weird line breaks and use multiple font sizes and are disorganized?
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Or do I want the ones that use a well-selected, tasteful font that justify the text, that use bold and italics and small caps in tasteful, well-organized, and well-presented ways?
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Who do you think I'm going to pick?
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There's a good chance the more organized one might have a slight edge, despite the substance of the two documents and the underlying merit of the applicants.
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Perception is reality.
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The same goes for your law school exam answer.
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How it looks when your professor is reviewing it really does matter and will either make their job really easy or really hard.
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If you just wrote an entire big one block of text discussing all the issues with no line breaks, that would be super hard for your professor to identify when you're talking about which issues and give you the right amount of points for each one.
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They may not even spot that you spotted an issue.
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You might not get points for that.
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Of course, you break
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your discussion up into paragraphs because that helps you write and organize, and it helps your professor read and understand which issues that you spotted and where you are in the discussion of those issues.
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Again, perception is reality.
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How you write is about just important as what you write.
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So I want to suggest to you that when you are writing your law school exam answers, one little trick you can use to help set your exam answers apart is throughout your answer that you are writing in the exam software to use very simple headers each time you are discussing a new issue.
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Very simple headers.
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Think about that.
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Think if you read a document without headers that's twenty pages long, an exam answer.
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Well, it's kind of hard to easily spot where you're talking about what issue.
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You can't do that just by flipping through.
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So your professor can't just flip through the exam in five minutes and see which issues you spotted.
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No, but if you have those bold headers and you use them for each and every issue that you spotted, your professor could, if they wanted to, just flip through it really quick at the beginning and say, aha, I see that this student picked up on these eight issues out of the ten that I wanted them to.
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Okay, now I know where I'm going with this one.
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Let's dive in further.
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It's going to make their job easier.
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And you want the professor's job to be as easy as possible when they are grading your exam.
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So when you are taking an exam, each time you see a new issue in the issue spotter exam, my suggestion to you is that you write down a simple header in the exam answer software identifying that issue, and that you highlight it and that you put it in bold.
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Capitalize the first letter of the first word, but otherwise, don't do all caps and don't capitalize random letters of random words.
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Capitalize proper nouns like people's names or companies' names, and again, that first word.
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But if you put it in all caps, you're just making it harder to read.
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If you capitalize random words, ones you feel are important perhaps and not prepositions, it's just harder for someone to read.
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Your job is to make your exam easier to read.
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And a lot of legal writers, good legal writers do this when they're submitting briefs.
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Good legal writers often don't have all caps headers or capitalizing random words instead.
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They write it like we read.
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They capitalize the first letter of the first word and then the proper nouns after that.
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So that the reader has an easy time.
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So every time you spot an issue, you're gonna put a header.
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So say you're reading your contracts exam and you see there's an issue about whether one party offered a contract to another.
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You do a bold header.
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Say the parties in that problem are named Jack and Jill.
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And the issue is whether Jack offered a contract to Jill to buy 10,000 widgets.
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Boom.
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There's the issue.
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You can tell your professor played around with the facts related to the offer.
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It's ambiguous as to whether there was an offer or not.
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There's an argument.
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Maybe Jill wants to get out of it.
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She doesn't want to have to buy what she agreed to, or Jack doesn't want to sell it to her.
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So one of them is going to want to get out of that contract maybe that they made.
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And an issue is going to be whether a contract ever formed in the first place.
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So you're going to put a bold header.
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And that bold header might say, whether Jack offered a contract to Jill for widgets.
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Whether Jack offered a contract to Jill for the widgets.
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That is a really simple header.
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You can bold it, you press enter, and you're on a new line.
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That header is one line long, right?
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It's not going to be super lengthy or hard to read.
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And your professor can, the second they flip to that page, within about three seconds, they know, aha, this student is going to get some points on this page because they spotted that contract formation issue that I wanted them to.
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So they're going to get some points.
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And then you go ahead and discuss that contract formation issue.
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You discuss whether Jack offered a contract to Jill and what the arguments are that Jack would make and Jill would make based on the positions that they're going to want to take.
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And you analyze those issues robustly using the facts and the problem and the facts that you're not seeing, as we'll talk about in other episodes.
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But that header is going to get you some points really quick and make your professor's life a little bit easier.
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You will keep writing until you see a new issue.
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When you see a new issue in the exam problem that you're reading, you draft a new header and it's in bold and you highlight it.
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So when I was getting really good at exams in law school and was really acing them towards the end of my law school career, the way I would proceed when reading an exam, one of those lengthy issue spotters, is as I read through the first time, I was actively reading.
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So I'm outlining, I'm circling, I'm making some notes in the margin.
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But every time I saw an issue, I went ahead right then and there, as I'm reading for the first time, I typed out that header in the exam answer software.
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Every time I saw an issue, I'd just go ahead and type it out.
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So I said to myself, aha, okay, I see an issue there.
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I know I'm gonna get some points for it.
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I need to go back to it.
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Let me type it out now.
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I'm gonna keep on reading, and then I will go back and I will start writing about that issue once I'm done reading the entire thing and outlining all the issues.
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I didn't outline on paper.
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I didn't write the headers on paper or scratch paper next to me.
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Why?
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Because I only got points for what was in that exam answer software.
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When I saw something that was going to get me points, it wouldn't get me points to write it down by hand on some scratch paper.
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Instead, I wanted to write it down in the place where I would get graded.
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And then of course, as I read further, I could refine those headers.
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I could rewrite them.
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But at the very least, I had them in there so I knew I am not going to forget this issue.
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I'd type it out, I'd bold it, I'd hit enter a few times, and then I would go back to it later, once I had read the whole problem, and then I'd analyze it, and then I'd go on to the next one.
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And as I'm reading through the problem, I'm checking for more potential legal issues.
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And every time I spotted one, I'd put in the header.
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And that is the outline of my exam answer.
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So then when I'm going back, of course, I've got my outline with me if the professor allows it.
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If it's an open note exam, I see the issue.
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I've got an outlined answer already drafted for that issue.
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I
turn to that section of my outline, and then I've already got the header in.
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I refine it maybe a little bit, maybe drop in, sprinkle in some more facts because discussing the facts is going to impress your professor.
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The test is about whether you have a good grasp of the facts.
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So let's show that.
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And then I would drop in my pre-drafted issue statement.
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I'd drop in the facts.
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I would drop in the rule statements that mattered for that particular issue and that mattered based on the facts that I was seeing.
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And then we're in the analysis.
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Then we have a new paragraph that says, hey, this party is going to argue XYZ.
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And here's some facts they'll use.
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This other party is going to argue ABC.
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And here's how they'll use the facts that I'm seeing in this problem.
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Finally, here's who I think has the stronger argument in front of a jury and why.
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Here's who I think would ultimately be more convincing, just using my common sense.
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This professor seems to be the most persuasive fact in my view.
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So that's who I think wins.
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I'm done with that section.
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I scroll down.
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I've already got the next header written.
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So I'm already grounded.
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I'm not going to forget that that header exists.
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I go ahead and I start reading.
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And I read the exam problem and I start analyzing that issue in the same way, writing an issue statement, a rule statement, analysis, and conclusion, basic IRAC under that header.
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How many headers should you have on the exam?
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Again, I think that you should use a bold header for just about every issue.
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You may want to have subheaders.
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It really just depends on the exam problem.
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And what is the best way to give a robust, organized answer to the problem that you are presented with?
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So let's say on your contracts exam, it appears there could be a contract between two parties, Jack and Jill, but there's actually offer acceptance and consideration issues.
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Well, maybe your bold header at the beginning just says whether there is a contract formed between Jack and Jill.
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And then you go to a new line and you have an italicized header, whether there is an offer.
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And then you go to a new line and you have whether there is acceptance.
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And then you have a new line for consideration and so on, whatever the formation issues are that you're seeing.
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Now you've got subheaders and you italicize those.
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They're still emphasized, but a little bit lighter than the bold ones that you put at the top.
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And then under each of those italicized subheaders, you are going to talk about the issues that you are seeing and the arguments that the parties would make.
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What I would say is use common sense.
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Use common sense in deploying headers and subheaders like this.
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I think you can probably go down to three levels of subheaders or three levels total before it really starts to get convoluted and hard to read.
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But use your best judgment based on what the issues are on the exam and how you think it is easiest to organize an answer that will be simple and straightforward for your professor to read.
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Consider using subheaders.
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But if you don't, even just a bold header for every issue will flag for your professor that you have at least tried to organize an answer in a way that will make it easier for him or her to review it and to give you points.
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But consider using subheaders if you think that those will help.
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And obviously, every subheader under a header has to be somehow related to that header.
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You don't want a subheader that's a completely different issue.
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If your header says, hey, I'm talking about contract formation issues here, you don't want to talk about breach under that header.
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If there are breach issues and a dispute about whether a material breach occurred or any breach, you don't want to discuss that under that header because now you're on a different topic.
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That wouldn't make sense.
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You want a new bold header for whether there was a breach, right?
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And then put the party's names in, put a brief description of what they might have done for a breach that caused a breach, whatever it is that gives reasonable detail without giving a really long header.
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By the way, this is how lawyers in real life organize their memos and the briefs that they submit to courts on a day-to-day basis.
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You have to decide how do I organize these headers in a way that's going to be easiest for a judge or a clerk or both to understand my argument.
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And when I'm writing a brief, I've taken pretty much the same approach as
I'm suggesting here.
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I try to do headers pretty frequently.
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I try to put them in just about every page or so.
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And I think that's about the cadence that you should have on your exam.
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Every single spaced page or so, you should probably have a header saying, Professor, now I'm moving on to this other topic.
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Or now I'm moving on to this other subtopic.
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If you go longer than that, you have to ask yourself, am I still writing about things that fall under that header, or have I moved on to other topics?
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Or is my discussion of this topic so rambling and inefficient that at this point, I'm not getting any more points under this analysis?
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My professor is going to be like, where are we?
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These arguments are weird.
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I think they are just dumping arguments on me.
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I wanted the best arguments because that's lawyer-like analysis.
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That's what lawyers do.
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Throwing spaghetti at the wall ain't gonna help you.
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So I tend to think that at least about a header a page or subheader a page is going to help you ensure that you are roadmapping your argument for the professor using those bold headers in a way that's easy to read.
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You should also have roadmaps of arguments around the headers.
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So if you do a bold header and then you're gonna have subheaders underneath, under the bold header, you should discuss and and roadmap what it is that you're going to talk about in that section under the subheaders.
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So if it's contract formation issues, under that bold header, you want to write something like one issue is whether Jack and Jill formed a valid contract.
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Specifically, the issues are and then roadmap them, right?
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Whether Jack offered Jill a contract, whether Jill accepted a contract, and whether there was consideration.
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You can also, in that roadmap, start getting more specific.
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For example, if there's clearly only one or two things that Jack did to offer a contract, go ahead and drop in those facts very briefly.
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Whether Jack offered a contract to Jill when he wrote down terms of sale on a napkin, right?
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Whether Jill accepted the contract when she said, okay, and put the napkin in her pocket.
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If those are the only facts, you can start weaving them in, right?
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Into that roadmap because your professor is gonna say, aha, I see that you see the issue because you are using the facts from my problem.
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Thank you.
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You read my problem.
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I am so touched and honored that you paid attention.
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And I'm gonna give you some points for that.
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I've got my pen out and I'm ready to drop points.
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Let's get into that analysis because you've already got some issue points here.
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Drop that in really, really quickly.
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Make that secondhand nature and use common sense in doing so exactly as if you were writing the issue out to a judge to whom you needed to explain it.
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So there's no exact rule of thumb, but having a header every one or a couple pages is going to help your professor read your exam and specifically make it easier for that professor to put in points for spotting the issue.
00:19:53.359 --> 00:19:57.440
This is not going to get you points for the most important thing, which is your analysis.
00:19:57.680 --> 00:20:09.039
Your lawyer-like, creative, persuasive analysis for each party and the arguments that you raise for each party like a lawyer would is what's going to get you points that set you apart from your classmates.
00:20:09.279 --> 00:20:12.400
But identifying the issues is foundational.
00:20:12.640 --> 00:20:16.799
If you don't identify the issue, I can guarantee you won't get points for it.
00:20:17.039 --> 00:20:18.160
Here's the other problem.
00:20:18.319 --> 00:20:32.400
If you identify the issue, but you don't make it obvious enough to your professor that you did, the professor might gloss over your part of the answer that discusses that issue in a way that deprives you of points, perhaps unfairly.
00:20:32.559 --> 00:20:38.960
But if you make it obvious and easy for your professor, then that will make it easier for the professor to award you points.
00:20:39.200 --> 00:20:43.440
One other tip I have, let's say you finish your exam early.
00:20:43.680 --> 00:20:44.960
You get it done.
00:20:45.200 --> 00:20:47.279
I don't think you should ever leave the exam room.
00:20:47.440 --> 00:20:49.440
And I'll do another podcast on that.
00:20:49.599 --> 00:20:59.279
But at the end of the exam, you should go back, take a breath, take a drink of water, use the restroom, and then go back and read the problem again.
00:20:59.519 --> 00:21:01.359
Read the problem again, right?
00:21:01.680 --> 00:21:10.960
Spot other issues potentially that you totally missed, or spot facts that the professor dropped in there that you hadn't used and asked, gosh, how would one part or the other use that fact?
00:21:11.039 --> 00:21:16.240
But another thing you can do with your headers is to go ahead and number them.
00:21:16.480 --> 00:21:26.000
You can put Roman numerals in front of your bold headers, Roman numeral one, two, three, four, and in caps
with a period after them.
00:21:26.400 --> 00:21:30.319
That is going to make your answer look even more refined.
00:21:30.640 --> 00:21:33.920
Your professor is going, oh wow, this isn't a disorganized answer.
00:21:34.079 --> 00:21:37.839
This person was so intentional about what they're presenting to me that they have sections.
00:21:38.079 --> 00:21:39.680
I am so impressed.
00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:44.559
So do Roman numeral one, two, three in your subheaders.
00:21:44.799 --> 00:21:46.079
Do A B C.
00:21:46.400 --> 00:21:50.240
Do one, two, three, the Arabic numerals, right?
00:21:50.480 --> 00:21:56.319
Do whatever you have to to make it really obvious that you organized your answer impeccably.
00:21:56.559 --> 00:21:57.519
You can do that.
00:21:57.680 --> 00:22:02.559
That may not necessarily set your answer apart much, and of course, make sure you're doing it accurately.
00:22:02.720 --> 00:22:11.279
If you move things around, make sure you're doing it in an organized way so that you don't mess with the flow and make your professor wonder, hey, where's section two?
00:22:11.519 --> 00:22:12.000
I don't see it.
00:22:12.160 --> 00:22:13.039
That wouldn't be good.
00:22:13.200 --> 00:22:15.039
But you could go back and number them.
00:22:15.279 --> 00:22:17.359
That is how you'd write a brief for a court.
00:22:17.519 --> 00:22:22.480
You would number the sections because it makes it easier for the judge to read your brief.
00:22:22.640 --> 00:22:29.599
Since you do it for a court and since it makes it easier to read, you should also consider doing it for your professor.
00:22:29.759 --> 00:22:37.039
And hey, every textbook you've ever read, they've gone ahead and put those numbers in there for you to make it easier for you to read, right?
00:22:37.359 --> 00:22:49.839
So when you're handing your professor some academic content, maybe do the same thing to make it easier for them to read and to understand where they are in analyzing your answer.
00:22:50.079 --> 00:22:52.240
So here's the bottom line.
00:22:52.480 --> 00:22:56.559
Headers aren't going to knock your exam answer out of the park.
00:22:56.640 --> 00:22:58.799
It's the analysis that matters most.
00:22:58.960 --> 00:23:03.279
But you've got to spot the issues and you need to show your professor that you spotted your issues.
00:23:03.440 --> 00:23:09.680
Your professor needs to perceive that you spotted the issues and get in order to give you points for it.
00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:12.880
Perception is reality.
00:23:13.119 --> 00:23:18.400
You want to make life as easy as possible for the professor as they read your exam answer.
00:23:18.720 --> 00:23:32.640
Using headers in your answer that you bold and keep very simple, but weave in some of the facts of the problem is going to make it much easier for your professor to give you points for spotting issues.
00:23:32.799 --> 00:23:37.759
It's going to make it much easier for your professor to read your exam answer.
00:23:38.000 --> 00:23:38.880
So do it.
00:23:39.119 --> 00:23:44.559
Take the time, do it carefully, consider doing it as you read the problem for the first time.
00:23:44.720 --> 00:23:58.000
That way you'll be outlining your answer as you go and making sure that you drop in the information in your answer so that you can go back and write a robust analysis that's going to get you awesome points for that.
00:23:58.160 --> 00:24:07.519
And then when you scroll down, you've got all the other issues already written out and bold headers so that it's easy to go back and write about those two.
00:24:08.160 --> 00:24:23.200
Headers won't solve all your problems in law school exams, but again, they can set your answers apart in a way that can help you write not just a great answer to your professor's issue spotter exam, but an exceptional one.
00:24:23.359 --> 00:24:31.839
So consider doing it as you practice, consider doing it when you walk into the room, fire up the exam software, and start writing.
00:24:32.000 --> 00:24:33.839
I hope this was helpful and insightful.
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We will see you next time.
00:24:36.880 --> 00:24:40.000
That's it for today's episode of Law School Decoded.
00:24:40.160 --> 00:24:44.640
Visit us online at Lawschooldecoded.com and make sure to subscribe.
00:24:44.799 --> 00:24:49.359
Until next time, keep decoding the law one step at a time.