Getting To Maybe: How to Excel on Law School Exams

This is full of common sense info. If I had to do it again, I wouldn't buy this book.

I started my first year at law school with the impression--the conviction!--that someone was going to take time out of his/her lecture schedule to teach us how to write law school exams. This, of course, never happened and, after bungling through a practice midterm with a slipshod IRAC, I decided to seek some advice. My law school's academic preparation (resuscitation?) program recommended this book, and I picked it up from Amazon several weeks prior to finals.

I've generally considered test-taking "manuals" to be overly simplistic and far too general to be effective. But this book is different. It doesn't prescribe worthless "strategies" for stock scenarios (like those dreadful LSAT books), but instead attempts to get you to rethink your approach to the exam--from preparation to execution. What impressed me the most about _Getting to Maybe_ is that it makes a point not to provide pat answers, or to patch up poor preparation. Rather, it suggests new ways to think about the law, and about the scenarios that appear on law school exams.

One caveat is that, to get anything out of this book, you need to pick it up well before finals: this book tries to get you to approach law school differently, and this is something that can't be done a day before the exam. This book is worth your time--not only is the prose far more lively and entertaining than, say, that of International Shoe, but you really come away from _Getting to Maybe_ feeling like the effort was worthwhile.

I've never written a review on Amazon before, but I think this book warrants one. While everyone's approach to studying for law school is different, this book is the only one I've read (out of more than I'd care to admit) that's really helped me to organize my studying in a systematic way. It provides a rubric for understanding exam questions -- and, in truth, law school in general -- from the perspective of the teacher: in other words, it forces you to think about what they're trying to teach you, how, and why.

Obviously, I can't speak for anyone else, but I can say confidently that it'll be worth your time to check this book out.

I read this book right after trying to apply IRAC to my first midterm and doing horribly. After reading the first 50 pages I knew exactly what I did wrong and how I could have handled the question differently. I recommend also doing LEEWS as both methods are similar in that they teach you how to answer legal questions from both sides and arrive at a thoughtful response

I bought this book prior to beginning law school on the advice of the summer reading list. Although I haven't gotten through even my first semester, already what I have read has really made things in class seem clearer and I feel much more confident for the exam. I wholly recommend it.