PROFESSOR SERIES: THE GROSS CONTRACTS EXAM
by Arnab Banerjee ('07)

FORMAT OF THE EXAM

The Gross exam last year did not have any multiple choice questions. It has short answers, one long issue spotter and a policy question. There is nothing particularly tricky about her issue spotter, in fact I feel it was one of the better written and fairer exams I have taken. It is just one fairly long question with several issues, and some of the bigger things, such as UCC 2-207, Staute of Frauds (even though we didn't go over this very much) and the Parol Evidence Rule. The short anwers were straight forward and generally she looked for one or two key points on each of them so it was easy to get full credit on a lot of those.
Her policy question is usually something that she spends a reasonable amount of time in class discussing. Don’t freak out if some of the past policy questions seem especially difficult because Prof. Gross usually selects a few policy topics each year to concentrate on and these vary from year to year. Gross gives you about 4 hours for the exam which I think is enough time--you don't need to rush but I think you can use most if not all of the time she gives you.

PREPARATION

Don't take very much time (or any time) going over cases because Gross does not care about them at all. Her lecture notes I think are perhaps the most useful as she is a pretty straight forward professor and lays out the black letter law for you. If there is a certain concept you don't get, I recommend using Emanuel's Crunchtime (or Gilbert's if you like that better), it is short and has some useful flowcharts and things like that. Also, I recommend reading the optional concepts book by Chirelstein--if you notice sometimes she lectures directly from that book. I have some friends who only read Chirelstein and ended up doing okay in the class, though I don't recommend this approach.
What I thought was the most useful was reading the model answers from previous years. It was a good way of seeing what she thought was important and what she thought wasn't. If I remember correctly some of the model asnwers she released last year had check marks on them so you could see what sentences she gave points to and what she didn't. Because Contracts has a lot more possible issues than most of your other classes, I would recommend a one page checklist or a good table of contents for your outline so you can make sure you are not overlooking any issues.
Also, in the issue spotter Gross will almost certainly ask you to calculate the damages so if you take a couple of hours to practice the math it will most likely pay off. Even if you don't get the math right she gives you partial credit for showing your work. Don't forget to say some things that may seem obvious like: "Because this involves the sale of goods the UCC applies." You can pick up some points with sentences like that.
Finally, remember to study for the policy question that she has had on all her pervious finals. Even though the policy question is worth less numerically, it is often what separates the A’s from the B’s. As I said earlier it will probably be something you debated in class. Maybe take the time to write out the pro's and con's or some of the policy issues you discussed in class and be able to talk about both sides of the issue.

Feel free to contact Arnab at: banerjee@usc.edu
-O