Dear 1L: Try Pre-writing Your Rule Statements

I’ve read about law students pre-writing their “Rule statements” for use in their essay answers.

{In other words, they pre-type paragraphs that state & explain each possible Rule, then on an exam question giving rise to the Rule, they simply plop in the pre-prepared “R” part of their IRAC essay.}

I’d never heard of doing this (we hand wrote our exams), and I’m not sure how it would work logistically—perhaps it’s only an option for take-home exams—but I wanted to get your input.

Have you tried prewriting Rule statements and, if so, was it helpful?

I see Pros & Cons.

▪️ It certainly might save you time when typing answers on an exam, and it would help ensure a complete Rule statement.

▪️ On the other hand, for most Rules, there will be more potential explanation sentences than apply to any specific exam hypo. For those, you’d need to be meticulous about omitting the irrelevant explanations from your answer.

Overall, I lean toward the view that as long as you tailor template Rule statements to fit specific questions, there’s no real downside to pre-writing.

Even if you don’t end up using your pre-writes, the exercise of typing up all the Rules & explanations in your words should help cement them in your mind.

Thank you for your thoughts!

Fondly,

💌 Amanda