Good morning, law students! Many of you are in the thick of studying for exams, which is almost certainly not your favorite part of law school. Here are a few tips and some words of encouragement from your local (Twitter) legal writing professor. /1

First, a caveat: this is generic advice. If your prof has communicated specific preferences about what she's looking for (yay!), follow those first and use this advice to fill in any gaps (as long as it's not inconsistent with the prof's expressed preferences, of course). /2

Now. The first lesson: what you've done this semester in your legal writing class is, by design, transferable to your other classes. You may be writing a different kind of legal genre (an exam answer vs. an office memo), but the building blocks are the same. /3

Use the building blocks of legal analysis w/which you are familiar: for each issue, explain the law (rules!) and then apply the law carefully and specifically to the exam's fact pattern (application!). In your application, handle "both sides" where reasonable & appropriate. /4

Even though your exam will have time pressure, do your best to help guide your reader--a busy professor who may be reading 80 other exams--through your answer in the same ways you would in a memo. What does this mean? /5

Break your answers into short, sensible paragraphs w/strong topic sentences. Use meaningful transition words & phrases ("Here," "In this case," "By contrast," "But," "On the other hand.") Use headings, even just topic headings (e.g., "consideration" or "duty of care"). /6

Don't just "brain dump" words abt a bunch of irrelevant issues into your answer to prove to your prof you studied them, but *do* mention any issues that are reasonably implicated by the facts. And think carefully about where to spend your time: the meatiest, closest questions. /7

Another point about application sections: just like in memos, really *show your work.* Don't just list a bunch of facts followed by a conclusion, or skip over the facts entirely and just assert the conclusion. Instead, connect law and fact in as many sentences as possible. /8

(How? Echo the language from key rules, make meaningful comparisons/distinctions between the legally relevant facts in your fact pattern and the facts of the precedential cases on this issue, and, if all else fails, remember to include a "because" clause.) /9

If you're running very low on time at the end of the exam and you haven't covered an impt issue, at least bullet-point a few key rules and a preview of the application to see if you can get some partial credit (but this situation is not ideal and not all profs will do this). /10

For exam preparation, here are some of my key tips: https://practicetuesday.com/2017/11/21/the-least-wonderful-time-of-the-year-tips-for-exam-season/ /11

And finally, try your best to take care of yourself and keep the whole enterprise in perspective. Give it your best shot, be good to yourself, and remember that your grades have nothing to do with your worth as a human (I am talking to my 21-year-old-self here). /12

In fact, your grades for a single semester--especially your first semester--often don't even reflect how well you'll do in the rest of law school, let alone what kind of a lawyer you'll be. /13

So let yourself enjoy Thanksgiving this week. Spend some time doing non-law-school things with loved ones, if you can. And then get back to it. And if you need some encouragement from a random law professor--even one who didn't teach you--I'm just a tweet away. /end