CALI tutorials are written by law faculty and librarians from American law schools. They are reviewed and revised on a regular basis. The lessons are designed to help you become accustomed to taking multiple-choice examinations and provide feedback to your answers.
Our print Study Skills Collection is located on the third floor of the Law Library across from the Circulation Desk. The collection brings together an array of study aids to help you prepare for your exams. All the materials in the Study Skills Collection may be checked out for two weeks and are renewable twice. We also have a print collection of Exam Preparation Guides you may find useful.
You may access Law School Past Exams from the Law Library’s web site. Many faculty members make their past exams available to students as a teaching aid.
If there is anything specific you might need help with as you prepare to study for your exams, please don’t’ hesitate to schedule an appointment toMeet with a Librarian.
With stare decisis imbuing law and legal study with a sense of tradition, you might hesitate to deviate from the well worn strategies to prepare for your finals. But the law is a dynamic beast, and if something isn’t working for you, it’s up to you to make a change.
Study aids are increasingly catering to the vast diversity of learning methods that suit different law students best, from visual aids such as flow charts to practice questions to audio and visual resources.
MAKE YOUR OWN FLOWCHARTS
Flowcharts guide you through a legal issue, asking questions about the facts each step of the way to determine whether an element applies, and whether the analysis should continue. The structure of arrows and boxes is a big help for visual learners who quickly absorb information in tools such as graphics and maps. It can also help break down a complicated legal analysis into manageable, bite size bits, demystifying questions about estates in land or the Erie doctrine.
You can make your own flowcharts in Google Slides. You can choose shapes with the shapes tool that symbolize steps along the way of a legal analysis, such as rectangles for yes or no questions and ovals for the various potential outcomes of the analysis. The line tool includes an option with arrows to help you organize a complicated analysis, including curves and angled lines to help you fit all elements of a rule into your document. Making your own flowchart helps you process the rules yourself, and understand the process in a different way from traditional distilling of the rules into words alone.
MAKE YOUR OWN FLASHCARDS
It’s no secret that part of the challenge of studying law is memorizing vast swaths of information. It’s a big part of the bar exam. Your outline is an important part of that process of committing the law to your memory, but reading and rereading does not always work optimally for everyone. Sometimes we want to hide the ball from ourselves and see if we can remember what res ipsa loquituris all about without seeing the answer right underneath, and that’s where flashcards come in handy.
The Law Library has a collection of flashcards in its study skills section, and online study aid platforms have a few more resources that may be helpful. Writing your own cards can help you process the information on a much deeper level, though, as you process the law and craft your own rule statements. Here again, Google Slides can help, with a template that helps you quickly craft slides with the title of a legal doctrine, say, promissory estoppel, on one side and the explanation or rule statement on the other. This also enables you to add images that you associate with particular concepts—say, a shoe for personal jurisdiction, or a barrel for res ipsa loquitur.
TRADITIONAL OUTLINING TIPS
Organize your outline by topic. Your syllabus may be a good guide. Write solid rule statements that you can quickly transcribe or modify to use on your exam. As we can see from past exams on the library website, you won’t always have lots of time to reinvent good rule statements on test day.
Write a one page attack outline just listing all of the legal doctrines you discussed in class and studied in your casebook. Test conditions can push your brain into overdrive and legal issues may be well hidden in a fact pattern. Just glancing at your sheet and seeing the rule that you should be analyzing can be the difference between spotting an issue before time runs out and realizing you missed an issue while watching Emily in Paris after you turn it in.
Again, know yourself! You won’t have a lot of time to review your outline during the exam, so you want to be concise. Focus your attention on areas that might not be intuitive to you. Trying to rewrite your casebook, however, might just be an exhausting distraction from more productive study activities, such as running through practice questions.
West Academichas a new, interactive resource to provide instant feedback as you prepare for final exams. The popular Exam ProObjective series, featuring multiple choice practice questions for core law school subjects, now has an interactive quiz feature that provides a modern spin on exam prep.
When you have signed in and navigated to an Exam Pro title, click on “Interactive Practice Questions” in the box below the book title and image, and then click “Launch.” This opens the page containing multiple practice exams of twenty-five questions each. Click on “start” or “continue” to take a quiz.
There, you will find the multiple-choice questions that students have long used to prepare for multiple choice exams in a different format. You may skip questions and return to them by clicking “back” or “next,” or end the quiz early to view feedback. Each time you submit an answer you will get instant feedback on whether you chose the best answer, and an explanation for why your selection was or was not correct.
This format can help you prepare for your final exams in law school, and possibly the biggest exam of all: the bar. Some bar preparation materials have a similar online format, so you can get a jump-start on clearing the final hurdles on the way to becoming an attorney.
If you need any help accessing West Academic, or advice on research for your brief, journal note, or grad writing requirement, feel free toMeet with a Librarian.
Are you rudderless in a sea of books, guides, and online materials? Do you need help taming an onslaught of resources? Help is here. The Law Library’s Electronic Services Librarian, Sean Harrington has prepared a succinct study skills materials chart to guide you through the semester: Study Aids Chart
Sean says, primarily the reason we collect such a wide range of study material is because they present (usually similar) material differently – we want to accommodate for different learning styles. To determine which you like the most it is best to skim the content (either in the library or online) to see which sparks your interest.
Secondarily, some of the materials serve different functions: One title may restate class materials in a summary form (Examples & Explanations), while another may give you a boatload of practice multiple choice questions (Q&A), and another may be audio lectures for your commute (Sum & Substance).
Click register to create an account. Once you create an account, your WK login will ensure off-campus access to the study aids. You will also be able to print, download, highlight, and take notes. You can download the WK Study Aids Mobile App and study anywhere.
West Academic Study Aids offers you easy online access to hundreds of study aids, treatises, and audio lectures to help you succeed in law school. To access the collection, go to the West Academic webpage.
You must use your ASU email address to create an account. West Academic will recognize you as a member of the ASU community and allow you to create an account when you use your email address as your username. Once you create an account, your West Academic login will ensure off-campus access to the study aids and will also enable you to print, download, highlight, and take notes. You can download the West Academic Library Mobile App and study anywhere.
West Academic has a video course for first year law students. The 1L of a Ride video course is by Andrew McClurg, a professor at the University of Memphis School of Law. He wrote the law school prep book, 1L of a Ride on which this course is based.
1L of a Ride Video Course isa candid, comprehensive road map to both academic and emotional success in law school’s crucial first year.
You may also want to take a look at these digital books from West Academic.
Critical Reading for Success Presents critical reading strategies in a systematic sequence so you can become an effective reader in both law school and in practice.
Get a Running Start Covers all the major concepts taught in each of the courses most commonly offered in the first year of law school.
A Short and Happy Guide® to Being a Law Student Learn how to be your best in and out of class, how to prepare for exams, how to cope with stress, and how to create value in everything you do.
While theMPRE, or Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam, is the smaller and less grueling of the two exams required for admission to the bar in Arizona and most other states, failure to respect its significance can cost you valuable time.
In addition to valuable resources in the print Study Skills collection on the third floor in front of the circulation desk, the library subscribes to online study resources to help you master legal ethics. Wolters Kluwer offers Strategies and Tactics for the MPRE, which provides tips and dozens of practice questions to help you prepare for the two-hour MPRE, which includes sixty multiple choice questions. West Academic, for its part, offers an efficient resource for last minute MPRE preppers, The Weekend MPRE, which includes two full length practice exams.
For students seeking more depth in their knowledge pool of professional responsibility, CALI offers a series of lessons highlighting specific issues arising under the law governing lawyers. Wolters Kluwer, in addition, provides detailed guidance in solving legal ethical problems inExamples & Explanations: Professional Responsibility.
For perhaps a preview of the bar exam preparation course to follow, a number of exam preparation companies offer free MPRE preparation courses (see box at top right). Finally, we have compiled Web resources including the full texts of the rules and commentary governing attorneyand judicial conduct, as well as resources offering valuable advice on study and exam taking skills.
For additional help choosing materials to prepare for the MPRE, the bar exam, or law school exams or research projects in general, please Meet with a Librarian.
CALItutorials are written by law faculty and librarians from American law schools. They are reviewed and revised on a regular basis. The lessons are designed to help you become accustomed to taking multiple-choice examinations and provide feedback to your answers.
You may access Law School Past Exams from the Law Library’s web site. Many faculty members make their past exams available to students as a teaching aid.
The law library collects a wide range of study materials because they present similar material differently. We want to accommodate for different learning styles. Some materials serve different functions. One title may restate class materials in a summary form (Examples & Explanations), while another may give you a boatload of practice multiple choice questions (Q&A), and another may be audio lectures for your commute (Sum & Substance). To determine which you like the most, it is best to skim the content either in the library or online to see what will work best for you. Please consult our succinct study skills materials chart to guide you through the semester:Study Aids Chart
If there is anything specific you might need help with as you prepare to study for your exams, please don’t’ hesitate to schedule an appointment to Meet with a Librarian.
West Academichas a new, interactive resource to provide instant feedback as you prepare for final exams. The popular Exam ProObjective series, featuring multiple choice practice questions for core law school subjects, now has an interactive quiz feature that provides a modern spin on exam prep. Click on “Take Quiz” in the bottom right corner of the gray box containing the book title and image. This opens the page containing multiple practice exams of twenty-five questions each. Click on “start” or “continue” to take a quiz.
There, you will find the multiple-choice questions that students have long used to prepare for multiple choice exams in a different format. You may skip questions and return to them by clicking “back” or “next,” or end the quiz early to view feedback. Each time you submit an answer you will get instant feedback on whether you chose the best answer, and an explanation for why your selection was or was not correct.
This format can help you prepare for your final exams in law school, and possibly the biggest exam of all: the bar. Some bar preparation materials have a similar online format, so you can get a jump-start on clearing the final hurdles on the way to becoming an attorney.
If you need any help accessing West Academic, or advice on research for your brief, journal note, or grad writing requirement, feel free toMeet with a Librarian.
