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Hey everybody, in this episode, let's talk about how you can format your law school exam outlines that you prepare to maximize your chances of acing those exams. Let's talk about it.

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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. Let's get started.

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So I think how you format your law school exam answer is really important. Perception is reality. What you present and how it looks is almost just as important as the substance. You want your professor to look at your exam answer and within seconds say, wow, this is well organized, this is well written, this is refined, it's easy to read. I see bold headers, I see sections, I see creative use of italics that isn't overblown or anything like that. This is a good exam answer. It's the same thing if you add a stack of resumes to review. Do you want the candidate who has a really well-formatted resume or the candidate with a messy resume, right? You want the well-formatted one. So before you dive into this episode, go listen to my episodes about how to prepare a law school outline of your exam answer, because my perspective on that is a little bit different than how you might understand it. And you should understand my thesis before going into this podcast about how to format your exam answer outline. Because how you format this outline plays into how I think you should prepare for the exam and how you should write an exam answer. And my basic thesis that you've probably heard me talk about is that your law school outline isn't an outline of all the content in the law class or the rules that you learned or the cases that you learned. No, you are gonna write an outline of your actual exam answer as best as you can. The headers, the issue statements, the rule statements, the conclusions. You're gonna write everything down in your outline before you go into your exam. And by doing that, you won't have to make an analytical jump on the exam to cobble together rules into an answer. Instead, you'll already walk in with as close as possible to an actual answer to the exam problem. You'll be one step closer to being done with that exam. You'll make life easier on yourself. You'll write a more refined answer because you'll be honing your presentation rather than putting that answer together for the first time. So that's my basic thesis, but go listen to those episodes because in this podcast episode, what I want to talk is about how you can format your outline impeccably in a way that sets you up for success. And I want you to think about outlining your exam answer and the format of it, like the little card that a quarterback brings out to the huddle and onto the field to call plays on the field. So quarterbacks in the NFL and college football, they've got a little band on their arm, right? And on that band, they've got a bunch of different plays. And it's just a little note card, right? They don't get to bring in a whole exam outline. It's just a little note card. But that note card helps them convey to their team what the play is going to be and what each player needs to do. They read that from the note card on their armband. Do you think that note card is messy? Or do you think it's super well organized so they can call those plays? Do you think it is a well-formatted outline so that it's easy to read? Or it's just a jumble of words and stream of conscious, just a jumble of rules that they threw onto a note card. No, that's a well-formatted. It's got bold, it's got headers, it's easy to read, it's visual in nature, just like you want your exam to be, just like you want your outline to be. You are making that armband playbook. That is your outline for your exam. We need to figure out how to format things so you can deploy it in the same way that a quarterback calls plays because that's what you're doing on your law school exam answer. You're calling plays, as we'll talk about. So, how are you going to format and write your exam outline? Well, you want to start by writing a separate section of the outline for each issue that could come up on the exam. How do you know what those are? Well, it's the issues you're learning about as you work your way through the law school course content. Look at the table of contents. Look at where the cases are that you're reading. Look at the issues identified in those cases. That's an outline of the issues that could come up on your exam. So, in torts, right, the issues are different torts and their elements. There's false imprisonment, there's conversion, right? There's all kinds of personal injuries, there's intentional torts, there's negligence. And under those big issues, you've got sub-issues. The sub-issues are each element of those torts, and the sub-issues are the potential defenses. You want a section of your outline for each potential issue that could be a section of your exam answer. So for negligence, duty breach causation damages. I would suggest to you you want a different section of a hair outline for duty breach causation and damages, four different sections for those elements. Because you're going to have an actual section of your exam answer that you'll write on every one of those when the issue comes up. If you don't see it, if you don't spot an issue, just you don't need to do a whole section on damages. If your professor didn't play around with damages and the problem, no, focus on the issues that parties can fight based on the facts that you wrote. But you're going to have a section for each issue that comes up. And at the top of each section, the first thing you're going to do is write a simple header that will help you quickly identify which issues you are discussing in that section of the outline, where you are in the outline. So if it's your civil procedure outline, you might have a section on personal jurisdiction. Is there personal jurisdiction? Is there personal jurisdiction? That goes at the top of that section. You're going to highlight that text and you're going to make it a header using styles in Word or Google Docs. That's really important. Don't skip that step. That's going to be really important later. So highlight it and make it a header using Word or in Google Docs, whatever you choose to write your outline in. So you've got that header. That header is just there to help you flip to that section. That header is there just so you know what section of the outline you are in. It's going to be in big font at the very top. The first thing on the page is their personal jurisdiction. Under that, you're going to start writing an outline of what you'll actually write on the exam. So when you see a personal jurisdiction issue on the exam problem, in the exam prompt that your professor writes up, the first thing you're going to do to discuss it in your exam answer is write a bold header that shows the professor you're going to discuss that issue in this section of your exam answer. So in your outline, you start your outline with a bold header because that's what you're going to do on the exam. Let's do it now. Let's get it ready. Let's have it in our toolbox and ready to pull out and deploy. Copy into your exam answer. So that bold header is going to be exactly as you'd write it on the exam with some placeholders for the party names and maybe a few basic facts, but you don't want this header to be more than probably one, maybe two lines, because long headers are hard to read. Nobody wants to read 10 lines of bold, you know, font. This is just one little sentence or one little header that's a sentence fragment. So for personal jurisdiction, what's the issue going to be? If you've taken CivPro, you know the issue is going to be whether a court has personal jurisdiction over a non-resident defendant, right? So the header that you might write on your exam, if you're reading through the exam problem and you see, aha, there's a non-resident defendant here. There's someone who lives in another state who may or may not be subject to the jurisdiction of the court where the plaintiff is going to want to bring this case. Aha, I've spotted an issue. The header that you write is going to say personal jurisdiction over defendant name. In jurisdiction name. Boom. Highlight that text, bolden it. Personal jurisdiction over defendant name, put that in brackets. In jurisdiction name, put that in brackets. That is the an outline of the actual header that you're going to write on the exam. And when you see it, of course, you're going to copy that in. And of course, you're going to replace defendant name with the actual name of the party in the problem. You're going to replace the jurisdiction name with the actual jurisdiction name in the problem. Boom. That's an outline, right? You've actually outlined what you're actually going to write and you've plugged and played. And it's really well written. And your professor sees that when they're reading and they're like, aha, they spotted my issue. Good job. Let's start assigning some points here. This is a well-organized answer. I can see that you checked that box by spotting that issue. Okay. So you've written that header in your outline. Hit enter. Have some space. Under that, in your exam answer, what is going to come after that bold header? Your issue statement. Your issue statement. So you open a bracket, you type the letter I, and you close the bracket and you hit space. You bold that. That flags for you that you have an issue statement in your outline that you can use. And then after that, you write your issue statement. Exactly as you would on the exam with placeholders and brackets, where you insert the party name and you insert the facts that you think will be relevant to that issue. And that you want to flag for the professor up front to show that you are weaving in facts from the problem, showing that you've identified what the important facts are, what the pertinent facts are, the context. So in the personal jurisdiction example, you might write something in your outline like an issue is whether the jurisdiction name, where the plaintiff name would want to sue defendant name would have personal jurisdiction over the defendant name. That's how you could write an issue statement. You put plaintiff name and defendant name in brackets. You put the jurisdiction name in brackets. We'll do another podcast episode on writing issue statements, but you might put a because phrase at the end of that. So you might say an issue is whether jurisdiction name would have personal jurisdiction over defendant name. Because defendant name only has a few attenuated contacts with jurisdiction name. Ooh, that is a really, really well-drafted issue statement because it weaves in the facts from the problem. So you put the placeholders in brackets, maybe you italicize them, do something to flag them, make them stand out. And then when you need to write your issue statement on the exam, you write that. You refine it, you modify it, you make it fit the problem because you're honing at this point. You're not writing for the first time. Okay, so you've written your issue statement, hit enter twice. Right? New line. Give yourself some space. Open a bracket, type a capital R, close bracket. After that, type your rule statements. So type in all the rule statements you learned from the cases that you read. If you read International Shoe, if you read Calder, whatever it is, type them in. That's your toolbox. When you need those rules on the exam, you've already written, just pluck them out and put them into the problem. Pick the ones that are applicable, pick the ones that work. In reality, when you're formatting your outline and drafting it, you probably want to start just by writing in these rules because that's what you're learning. Write in the rules as you read them in this section of your outline and then refine them over time. So you might read a case from the 1980s with some rule statements, but then you read a case from the 2000s and it modifies those rule statements or says them a little bit better in a more precise way that's a bit more refined over time. So you modify your rule statements for your exam answer to keep with the modern times, right? That's how you can format that section of your exam outline. Have a line for every rule statement you think you might want to use. Have an R at the beginning of them, bold that again, put the R in brackets and bold it so it's obvious that it's a rule statement. And then when you are writing your exam answer, all you gotta do is sit back and copy in those rule statements, pre-written, impeccably written, modify them as needed, refine them as needed, but you just drop them right in there. It couldn't be easier, right? You just pull them out of your toolbox like they're a hammer, like they're a screwdriver. Next, you have an analysis section of your outline. Now, this part is harder to do because you don't know what the facts of the problem are yet. And your analysis section is going to be based on the facts of the problem. But I would suggest to you that you can start writing some prompts for your analysis section in your outline. So open a bracket, write A, close the bracket, and then write things like who are the parties to this problem and does that matter? So, in this personal jurisdiction example, if it's a business and they have a bunch of contacts in a state or they're national, they're all over the place, it doesn't seem unfair to sue them. The identity of that party matters to how a judge would view personal jurisdiction. Use that creatively in your exam answer. On the other hand, if the defendant is an old lady who's never been to that state where she's being sued, she's all the way across the country, she's 93 years old, it would be really hard for her to travel because of health issues. Oh my gosh, a judge might actually consider that. And if you represented her, you better believe that you are going to put that fact in your brief opposing personal jurisdiction. So use the identity of the parties. And if the plaintiff is a big corporation, well, they can sue that old lady in her home state. They can sue people everywhere. The parties matter. So put in your analysis, who are the parties? And does that affect the analysis? Right? How can you creatively and persuasively use that? What did the parties do? Right? What are the actions that they took? What are the things that they said? How can you use that to establish jurisdiction over them or argue that there is no jurisdiction? Why? What are their motives? So you can put some bullet points there for the analysis section that might prompt you in the exam room to think, oh my gosh, I forgot to think about who these parties are. I better consider that and think about how the parties would use that persuasively to advocate for themselves in a real court action. Because that's what you're going to do in your exam answer. So you can start drafting bullet points for the analysis using facts like that. You can also take note of how your professor plays around with facts in class using the Socratic method. That is essentially how you will play around with facts in the analysis section. So note how your professor plays with facts because they may do the same thing on the exam and see if you can write bullet points in your exam outline in the analysis section that are going to help you write an analysis section on the exam answer. And finally, what comes last in IRAC? It's the conclusion. So you go to a new line after those analysis points, you open a bracket, you type a C, you close the bracket, you bold that. And we'll do a podcast episode about ways to write those. But you might write on balance, a court would probably exercise personal jurisdiction over defendant name. Overall, defendant names, minimum contacts in the state, in the state are extensive enough that it would not seem unfair to make them defend a court action there, particularly because this plaintiff actions appear to be very related to the defendant's contacts in that, and then insert facts, right? So you write that conclusion statement in advance, folks. You can write it beforehand and then weave in the facts. Write it beforehand right there in your exam outline. Now, so you've written a header, the issue, the rule, the analysis, conclusion. Everything that you need to write a robust exam answer. All you got to do now is fill it in with the facts from the problem, using them persuasively and creatively as a lawyer would. So go back, format your exam answer in a way that it's easy to read. Put in the placeholders that you want to put in. Read it after you write it. Revise it. Make it better over time. Revisit it throughout the semester and say, Did I do a good job at this? Revisit it at the end of the semester and ask, did this make sense? Format it that way as you go. Now you've only done that for one section. You want to do the same thing for every other issue that could come up on the exam. So once you're done with that section that you just wrote, hit control enter, go to a brand new page, insert a page break, go to a new page and write the next issue. Write the next issue that that section is going to be about. So in your civil procedure class, sticking with that, the next issue that you write about might be subject matter jurisdiction. So you write at the top, is there subject matter jurisdiction? And you highlight that and you make it a header using styles in Google or Word. I'll explain in a minute why that was important. So you do that for all the issues that could come up in the class that you have identified and talked about in class. You end your outline with the whole universe of all issues that you could write about on your exam answer. And each one appears on its own page. Why is that? Why do I emphasize that it needs to be on your own page? Because you need to very quickly find that issue in your outline on exam day. You need to flip to it, and then you need to focus solely and exclusively on that. You don't want any distractions. A football player doesn't keep his basketball, you know, plays on his card on the field just because he plays pickup basketball on weekends. No, he focuses on football. The only issue in front of him. I might be stretching the analogy a bit now, but you get what I'm saying. You want to focus solely in that issue when you're focused on it. You want to lock in, not get distracted by other things. So one issue per page, and then hit enter, bold header, go to the next one, make it a style in Google Docs or Word, write the header as you'll write it on the exam, the issue statement, the rule, the analysis, conclusion on separate lines. Consider indenting some of those things. So if there are sub rules that might come up or sub-issues, feel free to indent them so that they are easy to identify on exam day. Use common sense so that your outline is easy to read. Okay. So you've written all the sections, you've identified all the rules that could come up, and you've written a section of your outline on each and every one. Scroll to the top, the very top of your outline. And before that first section, hit enter, hit control enter, insert a page break. So you've got a blank first page. You've got a blank first page. Go to insert and then insert a table of contents. Insert a table of contents. That table of contents that you automatically generate in Word or Google Docs is going to pull in all those headers you wrote. Is their personal jurisdiction? Is their subject matter jurisdiction? What choice of law would a court apply? Would a court allow voluntary dismissal? I don't know. Whatever your professor goes over, is summary judgment proper, right? Is dismissal on the pleadings proper? Whatever your professor goes over in the class, those are the potential universe of issues. You've written all those headers to flag the sections of your outline that you need to go to. And now you have a table of contents on page one that has all those section headers and the page that they are on. And you've got page numbers inserted at the bottom of your outline. So insert the table of contents and then insert page numbers at the bottom of your outline. Do you want to get really fancy? Make them formatted page one of total number of pages. That's a great way to look at page numbers, always, right? You want to know what you're looking at. So your table of contents has those pages. Why is that important? Because what are you going to do on your exam? You are going to have that outline there. And when you see an issue on the exam prompt, you say, aha, that issue I've already outlined on page 16. So I'm going to flip to page 16. Oh, look at that. I've got my exam answer like half written. Awesome. Let's copy paste that in and fill in the blanks and refine how I present it in a common sense way. Wow. That formatted outline just helped you write a better exam answer. Just helped you write the exam answer that your professor is going to have an easier time reading because you got to the answer quicker. So when you spot an issue, you flip to that section and you start writing in what's in your outline. You've already done a lot of the hard part, the writing. Now you're just customizing it. You're sprinkling in facts, you're inserting the facts into your placeholders. Why does writing it this way help? You may get overwhelmed on the exam. It's a long fact pattern, it's single spaced. It can be stressful. You have a lot writing on this. So you want to de-stress by having not just an outline, but a game plan just like a quarterback, just like the quarterback who has everything on the line when they're trying to score a touchdown. You want to have that playbook on the field with you so that you can succeed. A quarterback doesn't go in with a messy outline. Think if you went in with a messy outline. It's hard to read. It might literally cause you physical headaches. Your exam answer is likely to be messy and unformatted too, or you can't find the things that you need to put in there. Ugh. You want your exam answer to look the best and to be the best. Perception is reality. How your exam answer looks actually matters for your success. So make your exam answer look good by making your outline look good. Make your outline well formatted because your exam answer must be well formatted. Perception is reality. And by the way, you're going to do the same thing in real life too. When you are writing briefs, when you are writing memos in real life, you're going to make them look good. When I write a memo for my client, I keep them short, I keep them sweet, and I keep them well formatted. I get to the point. I bold the things that need to be bold, like headers. I italicize things that need emphasis. I put things on separate lines when they need to be broken up so it's easy to read. You're going to do this in real life. So do it now. Do it on your exam. Is this overkill? You might be thinking to yourself, oh my gosh, I don't need to do all this. Maybe not. You know, maybe you are so good at writing law school exam answers that you can just kind of kick back, go in with some rough notes, and you can succeed. Certainly, I probably had some law school classes where I was able to do that. But I'm somebody who likes to make my own luck. I like to maximize my chances for success. And for me, this is the way to do that on a law school exam answer. It's not to have just a mess of notes going in that I've got to analytically pluck out the things that I need and find them and rephrase them and write them for the first time. No, I want to make writing that exam as easy for me as possible, as stress-free as possible. Formatting your exam outline is going to be the way to do that. And if you think this is overkill, in a subsequent episode, I'm going to talk to you about why you should take this beautiful exam outline over to Kinko's or a print shop, and you should have it bound and you should put a clear cover over it. Wow, that's crazy. You might think I'm nuts, but I'm going to do a whole nother episode on how that can uplevel your exam performance as well. So for now, thank you all for joining. I hope this was insightful. I hope this helps you give you confidence going into your exams, gives you a playbook for how to outline, how to format that outline, and how to win when you write your exam answer so that you can be the very best law student that I know you can. So hang in there. Good luck. I hope this was helpful, and we will see you next time.

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That's it for today's episode of Law School Decoded. Visit us online at lawschooldecoded.com and make sure to subscribe. Until next time, keep decoding the law one step at a time.