Getting to Maybe: How to Excel on Law School Exams, Second Edition

by Richard Michael Fischl, Jeremy R. Paul

Getting to How to Excel on Law School Exams has been the best-selling book on law exams since its original publication in 1999. It appears on summer reading lists at countless law schools, and professors often recommend it in first-year courses. What sets it apart from its competitors is its frank recognition that law exams test legal reasoning and that legal reasoning cannot be reduced to any simple "check the boxes" template. Yet law students give it high marks because it avoids abstruse lectures and instead offers a clear, readable, and often humorous guide to how lawyers and judges deploy legal reasoning in real-world disputes and how law professors test such disputes—and the reasoning required to resolve them—on law exams.

It's therefore the best resource available for helping students successfully make the transition from undergraduate studies—where exams frequently call for "right answers"—to law school, where exams reward students for "getting to maybe" and mobilizing persuasive arguments on multiple sides of legal problems. Responding to reader feedback, the authors offer a much-anticipated second edition with new material focusing on exam preparation; drafting successful exam answers while avoiding common mistakes; and tackling multiple-choice questions.

Genres: Law

490 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 1, 2023

Reviews

[Serene Chang · Rating 3 out of 5]

Assigned summer reading for law school. Very helpful in giving you an initial approach to forming arguments and analyzing cases by identifying points of ambiguity in the law and in the facts of an issue. Three stars for now because I won't know until I start law school how useful this will be.

[Meg Gawron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recommended reading from my law school before the start of the semester. Well written guide on what to expect on and how to navigate exams.