With law school fall exams around the corner, I thought I would provide a link to my 2007 post on how to answer law school exam issue-spotters. The post begins:
Students are often puzzled about what professors are looking for on exams, so I thought it might be helpful to offer some thoughts on what makes an answer bad, good, or terrific. Obviously different professors look for different things, but my guess is that what works for me is relatively close to what works for other professors. Abstract guidance on how to answer exam questions is easily found and usually pretty useless, so instead I’m going to conjure up an imaginary law school class with an imaginary exam. I’ll then grade an imaginary set of five different answers and explain what makes the different answers better or worse.