How to Study in Law School

As I move forward through the final lap of this race against myself and my own self-doubt about whether or not I have what it takes to be a lawyer, I thought I’d take this opportunity to share my own insights about exactly “how” to study in law school.  I was recently asked by a 1L student about what percentage of time to spend reading the casebooks and the hornbooks and whether or not the suggested guidelines were correct.  That one question prompted me to reply with what must have seemed like an inordinately long diatribe on “how to study” in law school.  It seemed like an appropriate topic for general publication.  For those personally familiar with the tomes of notes and outlines I’ve been diligently writing for several years, many have asked me not just “how” I do it, but “why.”  It’s a question I thought deserving of a response.

Everyone's "style" for studying is different.  One size does not fit all.  Some people absorb material in a different way than others, and some methods require different amounts of time.  Forgive me if some of this sounds too rudimentary, but it's the sort of thing it took me nearly a year to learn on my own, and I wish I had been told some of this up front.  “If I knew then what I know now…

Everyone uses their five senses differently (and no, most of us don't have a sixth sense - in fact, some of us don't even have common sense!).  Since you cannot smell or taste the law (at least not literally), you are going to rely on sight, sound and touch to absorb this material.  Do not under any circumstances underestimate the value of each of these three senses.  Each provides you with a learning tool that you need to exploit.  Each can be available in situations where the others are not as accessible.  And some will work far better for you personally than others.  So how does this fit with the question?  When you open a textbook, and you read the material, you rely on sight as the first pass at taking it all in.  If you highlight or underline the key passages as you go, part of you is using touch to add emphasis to those key words, and your sight is getting a second pass at that same text.  For me, after I have completed this ritual through the assigned readings, I then go on the computer and hand type in all the selected text into my notes.  Yes, it is incredibly time consuming and labor intensive, but touch is a key sense for me.  Typing in that text word by word, keystroke by keystroke, is a form of memorization.  It helps "connect" me with the words, often more so than I realize at the time.  By the time those long notes are done, I have probably "sensed" the same text about three times and part of it sticks.

Maybe for you, your other senses are a stronger connection.  How about sound?  Are you the sort of person who somehow has the lyrics to a song you absolutely hate memorized simply because it gets played to death on the radio?  If so, try CDs or audiotapes.  Do not listen to them once.  Listen to them until you just want to scream.  Play them in the car if you commute or find yourself behind the wheel for long periods of time.  Load them onto an MP3 player or other portable device and wear it while exercising, doing yard work, shopping, whatever else you need to do that takes considerable time and would otherwise be completely unavailable as study time.  You will find yourself creating hours of study you never knew existed.  You will soon find yourself remembering the order of things on the audio tracks and completing sentences spoken by the instructor.  It works…

Sight can absorb material often in forms much more conducive to memorization that plain text.  Visual cues can be easier with diagrams, flowcharts, and other visual representations of the material.  Create your own in a way that sticks.  Try to create a picture of some of the material that is not simply a written text document.  Visually represent it in a way that is almost a "mind map" that you capture as a snapshot.  Google around for "mind map" and you'll see examples of what I mean.  Take those pictures and stick them to the walls in your office or study.  Just look at them now and then without making it a huge effort, and soon enough they will become familiar to you and require less actual time to review.                                                              

Now, coming full circle back to the original question, the guidelines are just that, guidelines.  You have read enough already to know which "form" of material sticks with you better.  Are you able to recall the black letter law in rule statement form, like a dictionary?  Or do you find it easier to remember the "essence" of the rule in the context of a fact pattern you have read in a case?  For me, I have always been an avid reader.  When I was younger, I loved short stories (less attention span, and fast satisfaction).  I think of each case as a short story.  I read about the people, the situation, the conflict, and I visualize in my mind the whole story as if I were watching a movie.  I put my own images into it, like you do when you read a novel, just for that brief period of time.  Then, I guess I just mentally file it away and move on to the next.  But more often than I would have thought, I will read a quiz question, or see an essay and it will remind me of a "story" I read that was really similar.  I make that "connection" between the two stories and some of the pieces in the middle sometimes materialize on their own.  It's that "synthesizing" of information that in the next three years they'll force down your throat as a very valuable research skill.  Get a leg up and learn it on your own by taking the time to "think" about the cases, and it'll be that much easier in the years to follow.

I know of far too many classmates who pretty much never pick up a casebook.  They buy "canned" briefs and just read the holdings from other outlines and that is it.  Sure, it is a great time saver, but do they really get any value from it?  If all you want are holdings and rules out of context, then yes, the hornbook is enough.  But for me, a ton of rule statements in a vacuum are just pieces of information I simply will not retain for very long, and certainly not for several years to pass the Bar Exam, let alone longer to help in a legal career.  I need the context, and I need the story.  Why do you think children's books have such creative ways to teach a child an important lesson in life?  It is all about the context and making a connection.  Four decades later, I am still the child who just wants to be told a story, and I enjoy it.  The reading is what you make of it.  But don't underestimate it.  It's there for a reason.