I think he just misjudged how most students study. In law school almost all of my exams were essays. The fact is that most people did not study by writing practice essays.

To answer an essay question well you need to be able to do two main things: know the information the question asks for, and present that information in writing. For me and everyone I studied with the first part was crucial and the second not that important. Everyone trusts their own writing skills to write a proper answer once they have all the info.

So when people study, they concentrate on memorizing the information, not on writing the answer. People just assume that come exam time you will be able to write the answer.

Of course it would be very nice to be able to write a bunch of practice answers, but usually there is not enough time to study, you always feel like you do not remember all the info that you are supposed to remember, so you spend most time trying to remember more things.