A law school exam is not a memory test. It is a timed performance under pressure, and like any performance it rewards people who have rehearsed the moves. Lewis Law School Success Coaching works one-on-one with students on the mechanics of that performance: reading the fact pattern, finding the issues, budgeting the clock, and getting a clean, organized answer onto the page before time is called.
Law School Is a Skill, Not a Mystery
Most students who struggle are not lazy and are not short on information. They work hard at the wrong things — rereading casebooks, recopying outlines, highlighting until the page turns yellow. Grades come from methodnot from how much you know. Once a student learns how the exam is actually scored, the same effort starts producing very different results.
Curtis Lewis coaches that method directly. Sessions are conversations, not lectures: you bring a practice question or a returned exam, and the two of you take it apart line by line until you can see exactly where the points were available and where they slipped away.
What Happens in the First Sixty Seconds of an Exam
The opening minute decides a lot. Students who dive straight into writing almost always lose track of an issue and then run out of time defending the one they spotted first. Coaching focuses on a repeatable opening routine so the panic never gets a chance to take hold.
- Read the call of the question before you read the facts, so you know what you are hunting for
- Mark every party, date, transfer and conversation — these are the fault lines where issues hide
- Split the total time by the point value of each question and write the cutoff times in the margin
- Sketch a short issue list before writing a word of analysis
- Rank issues by weight so the big ones get the paragraphs they deserve
- Leave the hardest issue for last if the clock is tight, but never leave it blank
Building a Writing Pattern the Grader Can Follow
Graders read fast and they read with a checklist. An answer that buries the rule in the middle of a paragraph costs you points even when the reasoning is right. IRAC exists for exactly this reason — it puts the reader where you need them, in the order they expect.
In session, students practice writing a tight issue statement, stating the rule in its elements, and then doing the part that actually earns marks: applying each element to the specific facts in front of them. Most lost points live in that application step. Coaching also covers how to argue both sides without sounding undecided, how to write a conclusion that commits, and how to handle a question where the facts are deliberately incomplete.
Show the grader your thinking in the order they are looking for it, and the same analysis is suddenly worth more.
The same habits carry forward. Students preparing for essay and performance sections often come back for bar exam preparation because the structure they built in 1L is the structure the bar rewards too.
Where This Coaching Helps Most
- Issue spotting in dense, multi-party fact patterns
- Time allocation across essay and short-answer sections
- IRAC structure and paragraph discipline
- Turning outlines into usable attack plans instead of reference books
- Reviewing a graded exam to find the pattern behind the lost points
- Multiple-choice technique: eliminating distractors and reading the stem carefully
- Managing exam anxiety so the first hard question does not derail the rest
Start With a Conversation
Coaching runs one-on-one by phone and video, seven days a week, Monday-Sunday, 9:00am-7:00pmwhich means sessions can land around class, work and family. The first step is a short conversation about where you are in the semester, what your last exam looked like, and what you want to fix before the next one. Call Curtis Lewis at (903) 651-6999 or email curtislewis420@gmail.com to set up a time.