Everything else on this site is about arriving at the exam prepared. This page is about the 180 minutes themselves: the time budget, the first ten minutes, the writing order, the mid exam triage decisions, and the final sweep.

The premise, established in the A exam teardown, is that exam performance is a set of executable behaviors. Execution under a clock is its own discipline, and it is the one thing no amount of outlining can substitute for.

The time budget

Before exam day, fix the ratios. Reading and inventory: fifteen to twenty percent of total time, which feels extravagant and is the single highest return allocation on the exam. Writing: seventy five percent, divided among issues by weight, not equally.

Final sweep: five minutes, protected. On a three hour, three question exam where the professor states point values, convert points to minutes directly, a 40 point question gets roughly 40 percent of writing time, and write the end time for each question in the margin before you begin. When no values are given, fact density is the weighting signal: the question the professor spent the most facts building is the one carrying the most points.

The first ten minutes

Run the five step read from issue spotting without abbreviating it under adrenaline: call first, because the call defines the assignment; one fast story read; one pen read marking actors, dates, quantities, and every detail that fails the why is this here test; then the inventory, a pairing grid for litigation patterns or a labeled timeline for transactional ones, with each issue marked heavy or light. While the inventory settles, dump your memorized attack checklist onto scratch paper, the compression product from the outline pipeline, and run it against the inventory to catch what reading missed. Ten minutes in, you have the map and the plan; most of the room started writing at minute two and will discover their map at minute ninety.

Writing order and unit discipline

Follow the professor's structure where one is given, answer the questions in their order and their parts in their order, because graders read against a rubric organized the same way. Within a question, lead with the heaviest issue while your time is intact, and take the light issues as one sentence recognitions where they fall. Every analyzed issue is an IRAC unit executed to spec: issue framed as a collision, rule stated clean, application where every sentence carries a fact after because, both directions argued on the built fights, one committed conclusion.

Headers on every unit, one issue per paragraph, no introduction, no restatement of facts, no closing essay. You are not writing prose for a reader; you are placing points where a fast moving grader cannot miss them.

Triage in flight

Two rules govern the middle of the exam. The sunk cost rule: when an issue's budgeted minutes expire, conclude it in one sentence and move, because the marginal points on a fifth minute of a two point issue are zero while an untouched issue is bleeding. Perfectionism on early issues is the leading cause of exams that die at question three.

And the collapse protocol: if the clock breaks catastrophically, ten minutes left, two issues standing, switch to structured bullets, issue, rule in a clause, the deciding facts, conclusion, for everything remaining. Graders award substantial partial credit for visible analysis in skeleton form and nothing for issues that exist only in your head. Word limited exams invert the pressure, the constraint is space, so the same triage runs on sentences: recognitions get one, fights get the rest, and rule dumps become unaffordable.

When you blank

It happens, mid exam, on a rule you know you know. Do not stall on retrieval.

State the standard at the level of generality you do hold, the court will weigh the fairness of exercising jurisdiction, apply the facts to that standard, flag the refinement honestly, and move; partial rule plus real application outscores perfect rule plus nothing every time. Frequently the act of applying shakes the precise formulation loose a paragraph later, and you can revise in the sweep.

The final sweep

Protect the last five minutes for a checklist pass, not proofreading: every part of every call answered, a conclusion present on every unit, headers in place, and any parked refinements filled in. Typos cost nothing; an unanswered subpart costs its full allocation.

Then stop. The between exams protocol, and the six weeks that make this page executable, live in how to prepare for finals.

FAQ

Should I outline my answer before writing?

The inventory and checklist pass is the outline, five to eight minutes of structure, not a polished document. Skipping it to start writing sooner is how answers end up organized by the order of discovery instead of the order of points.

Heaviest issue first or chronological order?

Inside the professor's given structure, heaviest first while time is whole. Purely open ended essays can run chronologically when the facts are a timeline, since transactional graders often rubric in event order; the inventory tells you which shape you are holding.

How much does typing speed matter?

Less than allocation. A median typist executing triage beats a fast typist writing rule dumps. If you handwrite, the same budget applies with smaller unit counts, and legibility becomes a points issue worth practicing for.

Written by Ali, Georgetown Law, founder of Lovare Institut.

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