5 Law School Writing Tips (for exams and assessments)

Throughout law school, I struggled with the occasional “mind blank”. This is where you know what you want to say but can’t seem to put it into words.

This wasn’t exactly helpful when I was trying to draft up an assignment. It was even more unhelpful when I was in an exam.

My grades improved from 8 failed classes to earning 3 HDs in my last semester. So, I’ve got to tell you the writing tips I discovered that helped me with drafting answers for assessments and exams.

Then, I started doing them in the later part of my law school journey. There are definitely things I wish I had done earlier.

Let’s dive in.

Pre-Work

These are things you can do before starting an assessment or during your exam preparation to help ease the “mind blank” as much as possible.

1 – Brain Dump

The reason why there may be so many things going on in your head, and you can’t put them into words, is that it’s all jumbled up in there.

You need to get it from your brain to paper. You need to write it somewhere, whether it’s written on paper or electronically.

When you brain dump, it doesn’t have to be spectacular. The purpose of it is just to get those thoughts from your brain to somewhere written.

That’s why, in exams, when they are in person, I would bring blank pieces of paper into the exam so I can use them to brain dump.

How I have approached this is when I was going through the exam question, I would:

1. Brain dump as I go
2. Then, after I finished reading the exam question, I would take my brain dump and formulate an answer from there.

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2 – Research case law and legislation

If you are doing an assessment, you can do this step before you outline your paper.

If you are doing an exam, the list of cases and legislation would form part of your exam notes.

So, whatever ideas you have come up with in your brain dump (from Tip 1), it’s easier for you to find a legislation or case law that would support your answer.

In the writing…

3 – Keep the main thing the main thing

The first two tips (brain dump and organising case law & legislation) are supposed to help you with “keeping the main thing the main thing”.

Hopefully, once you’ve done your brain dump, you have a better idea of what your answer will be. It doesn’t have to be a perfectly written answer, but you have something to work with.

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RELATED: How to Improve Your Law School Grades

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4 – IRAC as your fallback

IRAC is one of those law school tips that gets repeated endlessly, and for a good reason!

Whether it’s a hypothetical question or a research-based question, as long as it’s law, IRAC is going to be your fallback.

If you need to jog your memory, IRAC stands for:

• Issue
• Relevant Law
• Application
• Conclusion

During the times you feel a mind blank and can’t think of what to write, you can start with writing IRAC into your brain dump paper (remember when I mentioned earlier that I brought blank pieces of paper into the exam for brain dumping?).

This simple act gives you a starting point and helps structure your thoughts.

Pair this with my other tip: having a list of case law & legislation.

So, when you are stuck, you can first focus on filling up the IRAC template. Again, you don’t need the perfect answer; you just need something to work with.

Once you’ve completed the IRAC template, you can formulate and expand your paragraphs into actual exam answers.

5 – Formatting a paragraph (expanded)

Think of IRAC as the skeleton of your answer. To build stronger paragraphs and exam answers, you need to add more details.

That’s where this template comes in.

I have been using this formula since high school, and I carried it with me to law school, and it still helped me.

Here’s how it goes:

1. Identify/define – identify the solution.
2. Describe – features and characteristics, and examples
3. Explain – cause & effect
4. Analyse – link to the main idea
5. Critically analyse – pros and cons
6. Evaluate – judgement

This transforms the IRAC into a fully developed answer:

• Identify – the relevant issue (e.g., negligence)
• Describe – the elements required (e.g,. duty of care, breach, causation, damage)
• Explain the cause & effect of the issue
• Analyse – link facts to the relevant cases/legislation
• Critically analyse – pros and cons, in this scenario, how it applies & what the defences are
• Evaluate – give a conclusion

By layering your answer in this way, you also build your critical thinking skills, which is an important skill to have in law.

To Wrap Up

Overall, these are the writing tips to help you with law school exams and assessments:

1. Brain dump
2. Organise a list of case law and legislation
3. Keep the main thing the main thing
4. IRAC as your fallback
5. Formula for formatting your paragraphs

Understandably, there may be times when you have a “mind blank” or feel stuck when trying to draft an answer to an exam or assessment question. This was one of my biggest law school struggles.

However, I have learned over time that sometimes, even just having something small to work with can give you some flow. You don’t need to come up with the perfect answer right away, you just need something to start with.

So, if you experience a similar struggle, hopefully these tips can help you improve the way you write your exam or assessment questions, especially in moments when you feel stuck.

If you want more law school tips, you can check out the law school blog here and also my Instagram.

You can do this! <3

-Lauren 🙂

P.S. I suggest reading these blog posts next:

• How I Went From Failing 8 Classes to Getting 3 HD’s
• How I Overcame Failure in Law School
• How to Manage Your Law School Readings

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