Torts
The links below will take you to study aids and practice exams for the Torts course.
The study aids have been carefully selected and recommended for each course. The practice exams have not
been. They are just a collection of exams
I or others have found around the web. I tried to grab relatively recent exams
and tried to pick only one or two from each professor.
Torts exams tend to be a speed typing test. A lot of torts professors just have a list of like 200 issues they see with a question and they just total up the number of those issues that you touch on. Different professors are different, so your experience may be different, but that is a pretty standard approach for torts.
The basic structure of every torts answer is based on the elements for that tort. If you get a big fact pattern, there may be many potential torts buried in there, which can mean you need to step through many sets of the elements. So, you should have a very strong attack outline for each type of tort. If your question has one big major tort, you might spend your time identifying nuances for each element, but if the question has many small torts, you might just be slamming through the elements with a single sentence each except where you note something interesting.
Note that even if your professor does not really emphasize the elements too much, stepping through the elements is still generally going to be your best strategy for answering the questions. Any time you can take an organized approach, that is to your benefit, and elements give you that. If your professor has not focused on them, make sure you read at least one of the study aids.
I would say that practice exams- timed practice exams- are more important in torts than in most classes.
Torts Study Aids
| 1. | Mandatory: The Law of Torts: Examples & Explanations, 5th Edition |
| 2. | Optional: Torts in a Nutshell, 6th |
| 3. | Optional: Questions & Answers: Torts |
| 4. | Optional: Glannon Guide to Torts |
Torts Practice Tests
Torts exams tend to be a speed typing test. A lot of torts professors just have a list of like 200 issues they see with a question and they just total up the number of those issues that you touch on. Different professors are different, so your experience may be different, but that is a pretty standard approach for torts.
The basic structure of every torts answer is based on the elements for that tort. If you get a big fact pattern, there may be many potential torts buried in there, which can mean you need to step through many sets of the elements. So, you should have a very strong attack outline for each type of tort. If your question has one big major tort, you might spend your time identifying nuances for each element, but if the question has many small torts, you might just be slamming through the elements with a single sentence each except where you note something interesting.
Note that even if your professor does not really emphasize the elements too much, stepping through the elements is still generally going to be your best strategy for answering the questions. Any time you can take an organized approach, that is to your benefit, and elements give you that. If your professor has not focused on them, make sure you read at least one of the study aids.
I would say that practice exams- timed practice exams- are more important in torts than in most classes.
Updated November 2019