Test Luiss common mistakes
Test Luiss · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Studying only the Diritto Privato manuale and skipping Istituzioni di Diritto Romano, treating Roman law as a minor subject to be reviewed only at the end.
Candidates assume Roman law is a small historical appendix, but the Luiss entrance test weights it substantially, and its terminology (dominium, possessio, obligationes, actiones) underpins later private-law questions. Without it, cross-domain items become unanswerable.
What to do instead
Build a dedicated Roman-law block from day one: a compact manual covering res, personae, actiones and obligationes, plus a timeline of sources (Legge delle XII Tavole, ius honorarium, Corpus Iuris). Schedule weekly recall sessions and map each Roman institution to its modern private-law counterpart so one study session serves two domains.
Memorising article numbers of the Codice Civile without being able to state the rule they contain or apply it to a short hypothetical.
Commercial preparation materials often drill article numbers because they are easy to test, so candidates mistake recall of numbering for legal knowledge. The exam instead asks what rule governs a fact pattern, and a candidate who knows 'art. 1376' but not the principle of consensual transfer cannot answer.
What to do instead
For every article studied, write three lines: the rule in your own words, one everyday example, and one borderline variation. Practise converting each rule into a mini-hypothetical ('Tizio sells to Caio, then to Sempronio...') and answer it without looking at the code. Track rules, not numbers.
Reading Diritto Costituzionale as a list of articles to memorise, without connecting the constitutional organs to their reciprocal checks and to concrete controversies.
The subject is taught in university as a systematic course, but self-study candidates compress it into article lists. The test frequently poses scenario questions (a decree-law not converted, a conflict between chambers, a question of constitutional legitimacy) that require understanding the interplay between President, Government, Parliament and Corte Costituzionale.
What to do instead
Draw a single diagram of the form of government and annotate every check and balance with its article. Then solve past-style scenarios aloud: for each, identify the organ, the act, the procedure and the possible remedy. Review the diagram weekly until you can redraw it from memory.
Treating Diritto Privato and Diritto Costituzionale as sealed compartments and failing questions that require combining them, such as the protection of fundamental rights in private relations.
Candidates revise subject by subject in sequence, so knowledge stays siloed. Luiss-style items often cross domains (e.g. privacy, family, property and constitutional rights), and a siloed candidate freezes when a question sits between two manuals.
What to do instead
After finishing each pair of subjects, spend one session on their intersections: rights in private relations, the role of the Corte Costituzionale in interpreting private law, EU influence on both. Keep a one-page 'bridge sheet' per pair and revise it before every mock test.
Answering logical-reasoning and reading-comprehension items by intuition, without a fixed procedure for identifying the conclusion, the assumption or the scope of a passage.
Candidates with a humanistic background trust general culture and reading speed, but aptitude items reward method: locating premises, testing negations, spotting quantifiers. Intuitive answers feel right and are often the trap option.
What to do instead
Adopt explicit routines: for assumptions, negate each candidate and see whether the argument collapses; for inference, mark the exact sentence supporting the option; for passages, summarise the main claim in one line before reading the options. Drill 15 items per day under time and review every error by naming the routine you skipped.
Spending disproportionate time on a single difficult question early in the test, then rushing the final section and losing easy points.
The exam is scored on correct answers within a tight time budget, and difficult items are mixed with easy ones. Candidates who lack a time strategy treat every question as equally costly and sacrifice several easy items to one hard one.
What to do instead
Set a per-question ceiling (roughly one minute) and a hard rule: mark, guess, move on. In mocks, practise three passes - answer certain items, return to marked ones, then fill every blank because there is no penalty for wrong answers. Log the time spent per section to calibrate the ceiling.
Leaving blanks on questions where the answer is uncertain, believing an unanswered question is safer than a wrong one.
Candidates transfer habits from exams with penalties for incorrect answers. Where scoring counts only correct answers, a blank scores identically to a wrong answer but forfeits the chance of being right, and elimination often raises the odds well above guessing at random.
What to do instead
Confirm the scoring rule for the specific session, then adopt a strict no-blank policy. Practise elimination: strike options that contradict a known rule, compare the remaining two on a single discriminating feature, and commit. In mocks, count how many blanks you would have converted into correct answers.
Preparing Diritto Privato only from a summary or slide deck, never reading the Codice Civile directly, and so missing the exact wording that distinguishes similar institutions.
Summaries compress distinctions (e.g. nullità versus annullabilità, possesso versus detenzione, obbligazione di mezzi versus di risultato) into one-line definitions. Exam options are built precisely on those distinctions, and a candidate who has never read the statutory text cannot discriminate.
What to do instead
Read the relevant code provisions alongside each chapter, underlining the operative words. Build comparison tables with two columns per pair of institutions, listing effects, who may invoke them, prescription and regime. Test yourself by writing the distinguishing sentence without notes.
Ignoring the historical and sources dimension of law - how the code, the Constitution and EU law interact - and answering hierarchy-of-sources questions from vague memory.
Candidates treat sources of law as a preliminary chapter to skim. Questions on hierarchy, direct effect of EU law, primacy and the role of constitutional case law then become guesswork, even though the underlying principles are few and learnable.
What to do instead
Master a single hierarchy diagram (Costituzione and constitutional laws, EU law and its primacy, ordinary law, regional law, regulations) with one landmark example per level. Learn three or four leading constitutional judgments by name and holding, and rehearse explaining primacy and direct effect in two sentences each.
Studying with no timed simulation of the real test and never reviewing errors systematically, so the same mistakes recur and stamina is untested.
Self-study candidates read and highlight, which feels productive but does not train retrieval under pressure. Without a mock-test log, errors are forgotten within days and the candidate cannot see which domain is actually weakest.
What to do instead
Run a full timed simulation every two weeks from the start, replicating section order and duration. Keep an error log with four columns: domain, question type, cause (unknown rule, misread, time pressure, guessing), and the corrective action. Re-test the same error categories after a week and retire them only when answered correctly twice.