How to pass prepare and pass law examinations: Often times, students fail Law examinations at the Law school or undergraduate level not because they are not intelligent, but simply because they may have failed to apply the principles of How to prepare for a Law Examination which is regarded as the ultimate test of intelligence of a prospective Lawyer.
This article provides vital information to guide every reader who aspires to be a Lawyer on how to adequately prepare and study for a Law Examination in order to come out in flying colours.
What you should know about Law Examinations
A Law Examination is a set of carefully prepared questions in a specified Law course geared towards testing the Knowledge of Law students either at the Undergraduate Level or in Law school.
A Law Examination is particularly different from any other sort of Examination you may have come across prior to getting admission to study law. This is because of its manner of approach to questions, use of hypothetical facts, use of Legal authorities, and techniques of preparing for the Examination.
How to pass law examinations
Below are some tips to help you prepare and pass any law examination:
1. Attend classes before the exam
It is the first step in preparing to pass any Law Examination. This is because a Law course is not a novel or ordinary textbook which you can easily comprehend at first reading. Often times, there are technicalities or ambiguities in Law textbooks which requires the explanation of your Lecturer in the Classroom to understand.
Also, attending classes gives you a hint of what a Lecturer expects from you in a topic or course as sometimes Lecturers lay emphasis on a particular topic, give illustrations or say an Exam question in passive and only those in the Classroom can take note of it.
2. Consult senior colleagues
Law is a very dicey course owing to the fact that you are expected to know basic things which you will never be taught in the classroom.
For example, no lecturer will teach you how to answer a Law question, how to study for a Law Examination, what is expected of you in such Examination, and the list goes on. Thus, it is necessary to consult senior colleagues who have passed through same process to guide you on How to answer a Law question, what is expected of you in the Law course you are undertaking and secrets to achieve excellence in that course,
3. Understand your lecturers
In your house, in order to be at peace with your father you must avoid what he doesn’t like. In similar vein, in order to excel in a Law Examination, you must know your Lecturer and avoid things they don’t expect from you in an Examination.
Lecturers slightly vary on what they expect from Law students in terms of answering an exam question, therefore to understand what these lectures want in order to excel in their course, you must inquire from Senior colleagues or observe the Lecturer.
Understanding what is expected of you in answering a Law Examination helps you in preparing for such examination and particularly in studying.
4. Study relentlessly
This is the most important stage to prepare and pass Law Examinations. You can’t pass a Law Examination without studying for it. But the question on people’s mind is how will I study?
To pass Law Examinations, you should have a course outline for each Law course. This is because questions in a Law Examination does not come outside what is contained in the course outline.
You should further get the recommended textbook for such course in order to read the topics contained in the course outline. Reading here implies reading the topics at least twice.
After rigorously reading the outlined topics in a course, you must answer past questions on such course. Past questions are questions that have been asked in previous years on that course.
Answering past questions will give you a guide of possible exam questions and will help you in writing such course because sometimes past questions are recycled in a Law Examination.
It is instructive to note that to achieve excellence in answering past questions, you should work with the exam time, answer these questions not exceeding that time and finally give it to a Lecturer or senior colleague to go through it, score you and pinpoint the errors you made in answering the question.
5. Avoid cramming law principles
A typical Law examination requires you to give the principle of Law and authorities either in support or against such principle. The mistake people make is cramming instead of studying for a Law Examination.
Particularly many people cram principles of law, which is very wrong because when you forget it all your efforts for that examination will be doomed. That’s what people refer to as blackout but in the real sense it is just the effect of too much cramming and pressure you put on yourself.
Every Law student must have principles of Law at their finger tips, it is pardonable to cram cases but very wrong to cram principles of Law.
6. Do not gamble any topic
This is persistent amongst Law students. Most Law students in preparing for their examination, map out topics which they will read and map out topics which they will not read because they feel no question will come out from those topics. That’s a typical example of gambling in a Law Examination.
I know of a student back then who read 4 out of 7 topics taught in the semester on the ground that no question will come from the remaining 3 topics. Lo and Behold, three questions were set from those three topics including a compulsory question and when the results came out, this colleague failed woefully not because he didn’t read but simply because he gambled by reading only four topics and neglecting the remaining three.
7. Denying yourself sleep
Rest is very important that’s why it’s advisable to start reading early. Sadly, only a few students read in time; majority allow the workload to pill up, then few weeks to the Examination they start reading like there is no tomorrow and be depriving themselves of Sleep in the process.
In preparing for a Law examination, you must give your body proper rest. Let me use two illustrations to explain:
I know someone who read all night from 9pm – 6am the day of the exam because he wanted to cover up all the topics which he eventually did. But when he wanted to dress up for the examination, he decided to rest his head for 5 minutes and sadly that 5 minutes metaphorised to 5 hours and he missed the Examination.
Also I have witnessed people faint in the Examination hall because their brain has been stressed with too much information and little rest. Therefore, in preparing for a Law Examination, kindly give your brain proper rest by sleeping.
8. Don’t missing vital tutorials
Like I said earlier, when attending Lectures you may get vital tips that will help you in passing the Course. However, when you are not present in Lectures you will miss these tips and also fail in the process. I remember when a Lecturer called for a Tutorial class, only a few came for it; and in that tutorial class the Lecturer taught us how to approach her questions in Examination.
When we went home, we practiced the method with the use of past questions, and when it was time for the Examination those who attended the tutorial class all applied this method of answering questions in her course. But those who were absent in the tutorial class nor had friends who were kind enough to give them details of the tutorial class all failed the course.
That’s why failing to attend Lectures may be fatal to your spirited preparation for your Examination.
Adhering with the aforementioned rules will ensure that you are fully prepared for a Law Examination. I acknowledge the fact that this is subject to individual differences because some people have what works for them. But from general observation, this is the tested and trusted steps that helps excelling students in preparing for a Law Examination.
