Category: Study Technique

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Exam Preparation law school academic success Study Technique

Case Briefing Demonstration

Case briefing is a learned skill, which takes time to master. It doesn’t have to be long, and in fact should not be more than half a page long. Yet many law students abandon case briefing after a few weeks in law school.  To help you understand how to master this simple yet important skill, I have prepared a case briefing demonstration video. Below you will find the three cases I used, which I highly recommend you read before watching the video. To get the most out of this demonstration, read the cases first, case brief them, and then watch the video. Compare your result with mine.  You should find that you have more time to complete case briefs, and you will also be helping prepare for your finals using the IRAC exam writing method.

 

Cases Used on YouTube Demonstration

Polmatier v Russ

Fruit v Schreiner

Stinnett v Buchele

Categories
Motivation Physical Study Technique Time Management

7 Steps to unlock the power of study motivation

A mountain, which is a metaphor for motivation.

 

Man playing games rather than be motivated to study.

You want to study but aren’t motivated? You know that it is important. But, still you find it hard to study. Every time you sit at your study table and start studying, you cannot concentrate. Your smartphone, video games, TV, and other distractions keep distracting you despite however hard you try to focus. As a result, you cannot study properly. You are not as productive as you can be.

Do you know why?

The answer to this question is simple- you lack the motivation to study. Now, can you do something about it? Yes, you can.

You can unlock the power of study motivation and be your most productive self while studying.

Here are 7 steps to do so:

1. Start your day with affirmations

The first and foremost step is to start your day with powerful affirmations. For example, if you want to study for 2 hours, then you can try reciting affirmations like- I can study for as long as I wish, I can study with concentration and I will. As you recite these affirmations, you signal your brain that you are capable and you can achieve what you want. You can complete all your study targets and accomplish good grades. Thus, you start feeling motivated. Further, you can customize affirmations in accordance with your study targets for the day. In order to get an idea about different ways to create affirmations, you can watch affirmations videos available on YouTube.

 

2. Determine your reasons to study

This is the second step of your journey towards unlocking study motivation. It involves determining your biggest reason to study. For this, you have to sit at a peaceful place and question yourself- “Why should I study?” You can receive different answers to this question from your inner voice like to keep your family happy or to live the luxurious life you have always dreamt of. Whatever be the reasons, write them on a notepad. Now, that you have the list of reasons to study, you have to go through it every morning after reciting affirmations. As you do so, your motivation to study will start soaring high.

3. Create a study space which reflects your reason to study

This is the third important step which you have to follow. Here, you have to create a study space that reflects your reasons to study. For this, you have to create or find from the internet, some posters, images or quotes which align with your reasons to study. Once you finish creating or printing the respective materials, you have to paste them all over your study space. This makes your study space highly motivating and every time you go there to study, you will automatically get motivated.

 

4. Set small study targets

This is the fourth and very smart step to unlock study motivation. It involves setting small study targets for yourself. For example, if you have to complete a whole chapter, break into three or four parts. As you do so, you make your brain believe that the task is small and easy to achieve. Thus, you start feeling motivated to complete your small study targets. Further, as you succeed in accomplishing a study target, your motivation level rises even more. As a result, you can proceed towards your next study target with enhanced motivation to study.

 

5. Use the Pomodoro Technique

The fifth step of your journey to unlock study motivation is to use the Pomodoro technique. It keeps your motivation level maintained by helping you take study breaks around the time when your brain is about to start feeling tired. Given below is the stepwise procedure which you can follow to practice the Pomodoro technique while studying:

  • Select a study target to complete
  • Arrange everything you need to complete it. For example, your textbooks, pencil, eraser, notebook, pen and sharpener.
  • Take a timer and set it to 25 minutes.
  • Take a pledge that during these 25 minutes you’ll only study and that too with full concentration.
  • Start the Pomodoro (timer) and start working on your study target
  • Keep working at your best
  • As the timer rings, you have to stop studying and take a 5- minute break
  • After the break time gets over, reset the timer and start studying again
  • After completing four successive pomodoros, take a longer break for around 20 to 30 minutes
An ice cream treat for staying motivated.
6. Reward yourself at the end of the study day

The sixth step of the process to unlock study motivation is to reward yourself at the end of the study day. You can become eligible for the reward only if you feel that you have actually worked hard. It is not necessary that you have to complete your study targets for getting the reward. This is because some things may take longer to complete than you expected. But, it is just that you should be content with your efforts. At the end of your study time, you should be proud of yourself for having studied well. If so, you can reward yourself with some time to play your favorite game, a chit-chat session with your friends, and your favorite dish to eat.

 

7. List your achievements for the day

This is the final step of your way to keep yourself motivated to study. Here, you have to list down your achievements for the day on a notepad. As you write your achievements, your heart smiles at your success. You bask in overwhelming joy at your study progress. This happiness which you feel is addictive in nature. Thus, it motivates you to perform even better. As a result, your study motivation keeps soaring high.

 

To conclude, the above-mentioned steps can help you unlock the power of study motivation. It is with this power that you can stay away from distractions and study with concentration.

Guest Author:  Jessica Robinson is a creative woman by heart and a research writer, who is solely dedicated to the task of conceptualizing, analyzing, and drafting articles on many issues. She is a woman of words, who has been delivering quality, accompanied by efficiency from the past 10 years. Additionally, it is much owing to her professional management degree from Melbourne University, which has exposed her to such proficient skills.

Categories
Study Technique Time Management

Time Management Using the Pomodoro Technique

Do you struggle with wasting time and need a tool to help you focus your attention?  The Pomodoro technique, developed by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980’s, is been used by me and millions of others. Let me quote from his book, The Pomodoro Technique. “Every day I went to school, attended classes, studied and went back home… feeling that I didn’t really know what I’d been doing, that I’d been wasting my time…. It was clear to me that the high number of distractions and interruptions and the low level of concentration and motivation were at the root of the confusion I was feeling. So I made a bet with myself, as helpful as it was humiliating: Can you study – really study for 10 minutes?” Does that sound familiar? Do you have problems keeping focus? Even if you are reading, do you ever find that you’ve been reading but you stopped thinking about the reading several pages earlier?

Franceso’s Plan

So here is what Francesco did. He went to his kitchen and grabbed his tomato shaped timer (this is the link to the one I purchased).  By the way, the Italian word for tomato is pomodoro. He then forced himself to study in concentrated bursts, with small breaks in-between each study segement.

Recommended Approach

First, decide what task you are going to work on. Second, set a timer for 25 minutes.  Third, start the timer and continue working on your task until the timer goes off.  Fourth, stop when the timer rings, place an X on a piece of paper, and take a 5-minute break.  Fifth, after the break, go back to the second step and do another pomodoro.  A pomodoro is each uninterrupted 25-minute session, so if something breaks the 25 minute session you don’t mark that down as a completed pomodoro—your good intentions don’t matter.  Finally, when you have four X’s on your piece of paper, take a longer break:  15 to 30 minutes. For those of you that are already studying for long periods of time, you may find that this method helps you with mental exhaustion.  Also, it will help you with knowledge retention. Our brains need breaks to process what we have just learned, so you may learn more by taking mini-breaks rather than longer breaks every few hours. In other words, this technique may allow you to study more efficiently.

Kitchen Timer

With regards to the timer, Francesco recommends a manual kitchen timer, a piece of paper, and a pen or pencil. He believes that taking the timer and winding it creates a psychological decision on your part to complete the task. From a behavioral perspective, you now associate setting the timer and working till the timer goes off, which strengthens your commitment to completing the task. The key is to not give up right away. You should notice a difference within a few days, and mastery of the pomodoro technique anywhere from a week to three weeks of use.

My Experience

As I was preparing this episode I decided to search for pomodoro apps. Sure enough there are several, so I downloaded a free one called Focus Keeper Free. It makes a ticking sound, just like a manual kitchen timer.  It has a digital countdown and an analog rotating scale like a kitchen timer. At first I thought the clicking sound would be disturbing, but the sound was actually soothing.  Ironically, I usually have long periods of time without interruptions, but during my first 25 segment I got a phone call and my wife came in to talk to me.  This means I can’t count that segment as a pomodoro.  The app also has a five minute timer that comes on for break time. After a few weeks, I decided to purchase an analog kitchen timer.  I like the physicality better, and it also allows me to move my phone away from me (one of my main distractions). As with any time management technique, the pomodoro technique may or may not work for you. Some people swear by it and others despise it.  All I can do is suggest that you try it for a few weeks and see if it works for you.  For example, do some practice essays using the IRAC method.  If you’ve got a kitchen timer start with that, but if not, try it with a free time management app for a couple of days.

 

 

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Classroom Study Technique

How to Take Notes in Law School

Law students in classroom taking notes

Cornell UniversityHow to take notes in law school isn’t difficult, if you use the Cornell notetaking method. Developed at Cornell University over 50 years ago, it has been used by people around the world to better organize their thoughts. Once class is over, you will have a better way to find what you covered in class, and to connect ideas covered in previous sessions.

Handwrite or Type Notes

This has become an issue because many students wanting to take notes in law school on their computers during class. While it is possible to use this method on a computer, the preferred method for taking notes during class is by hand. I’ve discussed this extensively in a video called Handwrite or Type Notes. The problem with typing notes is that the mind uses a different part of the brain when typing. And that part of the brain doesn’t retain information very well.

Paper

Cornell method paper take law school notes

The first step is to have the right paper. While you can search for Cornell Method paper and purchase it pre-formatted, you can easily format any paper, lined or blank, with a ruler and pen.  To format the paper yourself, go two inches (5 cm) from the left side and draw a line from the top to bottom, dividing the paper into two columns.  You will take your notes in the much larger right column, and leave the left column alone during class. At the bottom, draw a horizontal line two inches (5 cm) from the bottom, which you will also leave blank during class.

During class you will place all of your notes in the right column.  Don’t try to outline your notes during class. Instead, focus on the content of the discussion.  Now, if there is material that is sequential in nature, then you may want to number it. But don’t try to place the material into a much larger organizational system during class.  For example, suppose that your Torts outline you have Trespass to Land under section III(C).  That is fine, but don’t worry about that during class time.  So if your professor says there are 5 elements to Trespass to Land, then by all means write down 1 through 5, along with the elements. Just don’t worry about aligning it to your outline during the class discussion. By the way, I made a video on Trespass to Land that you might find useful.

Capture Ideas

Next, don’t take verbatim notes. Instead, capture the most important ideas. Since they are your notes, write telegraphically. You have likely seen movies where someone received a telegram. Because people paid by the individual letter they sent, telegrams sound choppy, yet they are completely understandable.  You can employ the same technique and avoid words like a, an, the, or for.  Also, use abbreviations.  In law school, many students use a capital K for contract, a p for plaintiff, and d for defendant.  These are your notes, so create abbreviations that work for you.

CUE Column

Shortly after class, you will use the left side column, which is called the cue column. Cue, spelled C-U-E, are your cues for helping you understand what is in your notes.  You should write down key words in the cue column that correlate to your notes in the right column.  For example, suppose your class discussion was about mutual assent for a contract.  In the cue column you might write down “offer” in one spot and then further down the page you might write down “acceptance.” One advantage of using key words is that you can then find those key words on other pages where they appear, allowing you to tie concepts together, even though they might have been discussed at different times during class, or even over several classes.

Summary Section

Finally, the blank section at the bottom of the page is a summary section.  After you complete the cue section, summarize your notes on that part of the page. This is critically important, because each time you engage with the material you learn it at a deeper level.  Much more so than will occur if you only reread your notes. This is very similar to the Elaborative Interrogation technique, which helps create new connections between concepts.

 

 

Categories
law school academic success Physical Study Technique

Study Space Ideas

Are you looking for some good study space ideas? Do you know how to create a study space that will help your learning? In this article I will discuss some tips to help you create a better study space that is more conducive to learning. Primarily, you can accomplish this by eliminating distractions from your study space.

Distraction #1: Internet

student surfing internet. Study space ideas post

When you get bored or the work gets hard, do you start checking your favorite social media site? Do you prefer Facebook, YouTube, and Reddit over boring tasks? Who doesn’t. When I grade exams, which I hate to do, I go and find a quiet spot in the library.  One great study space idea is to find a space without the Internet or your smartphone. Maybe you can leave your phone in another room, so you aren’t tempted. If you need your phone, there are apps that you can use to shut off Internet access for a set amount of time. Shut is off for 15 minutes to begin with, and then turn it off for longer periods of time. You might also find the Pomodoro technique useful in fighting an Internet addiction.

Distraction #2: Environment

For most people, the best temperature to study at is 77 degrees Fahrenheit, 25 degrees Celsius. A few degrees colder or warmer, and you won’t study as well.  In addition to temperature you need to think about the lighting in your study space.  Ideally, natural light is best, but if you are studying at night or in a room without a window, get bulbs that mimic natural night. This means avoiding yellow lights, which mimic candle light.  You want a bulb in the 5,000 to 6,500 kelvin range, which may look blue to you initially if you’re not used to them.  But in reality, bulbs in that range mimic natural sunlight, especially if you purchase a decent LED light bulb.  Compact fluorescents, by the way, are generally not very good at keeping their color, and might create a strange light.  I recommend that, in addition to getting a light in the 5,000 to 6,500 kelvin range, that you also look for an LED bulb that has a CRI above 90. CRI stands for color rendering index, so anything above a 90 will look natural, and not strange. I personally use the Hyperikon wide flood and Hyperikon standard base bulbs. Finally, make sure that your seating is comfortable.  Find something that is comfortable for you, whether that is a chair or a standing desk.

Cluttered desk. Study space ideas post.

Distraction #3: Organization

Your study space should be uncluttered, and it should be clean before starting the next day.  This will help you focus on studying, and not the mess around you. Also, make sure your study materials are all nearby.  You don’t want to keep getting up and down to go get something you need. Also, get rid of anything in the study space that might distract you, like novels, magazines, and pictures that cause your mind to wander.

What to Bring

Bring a large drink so you don’t have to keep getting up.  If you are going to snack, bring your snacks with you. Keep a small notepad on your desk to write down distractions.  For example, if during your study time you realize that you forgot to pay a bill, write it down and deal with it after your study time.

Location

Finally, think about moving your study space from time to time.  Scientific studies have shown that our brains work better when we are in new environments and do things differently.  To help my brain, I avoid driving the same way all the time, instead varying my path to keep the neural connectors working better.  For you that might mean studying at different coffee shops, or at least at different tables in the coffee shop.  In the library, move around—don’t always go to the same table.

Breaks

Make sure to take regular breaks. The brain is not designed to work without some rest, so build that into the routine. At some point, you may hit a mental roadblock and need to do something to break the mental roadblock.

 

 

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Exam Preparation law school academic success Study Technique

Study Group How To

study group

Are you wondering whether you should join a study group, or if you’re in one, how to make it work better? There is an ancient Japanese proverb that says: “None of us is as smart as all of us.” In general, that is true. But study groups that are not designed well can lead to pooled ignorance.

Advantages

One advantage of study groups is that it creates accountability. If you know you must complete a group project by a certain date, you’re going to get it done. But if you’re not convinced, here is a scientific article on the benefits of small groups outside of the classroom.

Here are seven tips for successful small groups.

Tip 1

One, set a time limit and the number of hours you will meet. For most of the semester, a one hour meeting, two or three times a week should be enough. As you get closer to finals, you will want to increase that amount. But any more than that and you will probably be wasting time.

Tip 2

Two, focus on discussing the confusing areas, not everything that was discussed in class. All too often, a study group can morph into a social group. While we all need community, too much social interaction defeats the learning aspect of the group, as group members start gossiping about others and griping about professors. That’s just not productive.

Tip 3

Three, trade outlines. Before your meeting, decide on what part of the law you are going to work on and then at the meeting, swap outlines. Everyone has to prepare their own outline, but by trading them you can expose gaps in your understanding and discover errors.

Tip 4

Four, do practice exams and then grade someone else’s essay. Doing a practice exam, without feedback from someone, is practically worthless.   Take an old exam, or a commercial practice exam. Once you complete the exam, trade it with someone else in the group. Each person will grade that other person’s exam, and you have to agree to be brutally honest in your grading. Now, here’s the magic with this approach. Not only are you getting feedback from someone else, but you are grading someone else’s exam so you will be more objective. Unfortunately, when we grade our own work, we are often unable to see the flaws. But when you grade somebody else’s exam, you see more of their problems than they do. And by spotting that other person’s problems, you develop a more critical eye, which will help you when you take your final exam.  If you need some practice exams, there are some exams you can download for free at this exam bank.

No cell phone sign. Use with study group.Tip 5

Five, eliminate distractions during your sessions. This means either turning off your phones or turning them to airplane mode. You may have to agree to place all your phones in the middle of the table to prevent distractions.

Tip 6

Six, review the law by asking each other questions about the law. You can make a game out of this, where two of you take one side, and two on the other. You might even want to use flashcards, which will help you expose gaps in your knowledge–I recommend the creating a Leitner box, which is an advanced flashcard method.   The key is for the study group to focus on the rules of law that are likely to appear on the final exam.

Tip 7

Seven, assign tasks. Divide the work evenly and in a way that each member knows exactly what they are responsible for.

Membership and Don’ts

So who should you include in your study group? Limit the group to 3 or 4 people. Two is not enough, and when you start getting to 5 and above, you create a situation where some members may not fully participate. You get the freeloader problem. The members of the group should have similar goals, be focused, and motivated. Remember, the study group is helping you prepare for the final exam and is NOT a therapy session. Also, look for a bit of intellectual diversity in the group. If you’re all progressives or you’re all conservatives, you are more likely going to develop group think. By mixing it up a bit, the group will be stronger as you bring your differences with you to the table.

 

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Exam Preparation law school academic success Study Technique

Learning Faster with the Feynman Technique

Confused student.

Have you ever left class wondering what your professor was even talking about? The Feynman Technique will help you learn material faster and at a level where you will remember the concept for years to come. Professor Richard Feynman was a Nobel prize winning physicist who had the nickname “the Great Explainer.” By following four steps, you will learn a topic well enough to remember it on the final exam and the bar exam.

Step 1

Step one: write the name of the concept you want to learn at the top of a page (try to handwrite as much as possible; see this video for why handwriting your notes during class is better).  As the semester progresses, come back to the document every time you need to add more knowledge related to that topic. For example, if you’re having problems understanding proximate cause, write that down. You might start off with the unforeseeable manner of injury, and then later in the semester come back to the unforeseeable intervening event.

Step 2

Person teaching another as in the Feynman TechniqueStep two: pretend you are teaching the topic to someone else, preferably a high school student. This means that you must make it simple enough for them to understand, including word choice and sentence structure. All too often, a law student will copy a rule verbatim from a case. While the rule statement may be accurate, how likely are you to remember antiquated language from the early 1900s or earlier? For example, when you take Business Associations you will likely read Benjamin Cardozo’s classic case Meinhard v. Salmon. Your professor will certainly focus on these words for establishing the standard of care:

Joint adventurers, like copartners, owe to one another, while the enterprise continues, the duty of the finest loyalty. Many forms of conduct permissible in a workaday world for those acting at arm’s length, are forbidden to those bound by fiduciary ties. A trustee is held to something stricter than the morals of the market place. Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior.

That is some of the best legal prose I’ve ever read, but do you really understand what Cardozo is saying? Let’s take that language and make it simpler. Teach it to that high school student by stating it in modern English: “Partners owe to each other the highest standard of behavior.” And there you have it folks, a long phrase converted into ten simple words. When you are working on this step, make sure to explain the rule as simply and briefly as possible. And for some cool information on why teaching a subject will help you learn it better—and why oldest children, on average, are smarter than younger siblings—see this article on the protege effect.

Step 3

Step three: When you get stuck or are shaky on one of the concepts, go back and study more. This means looking at your books, doing more research, and talking to your professor. If you have multiple choice questions, work through those as well. Remember, if you can’t teach the material to a high schooler, you don’t know it well enough.

Step 4

Step four: Go back to step 1 and repeat the process. In other words, the Feynman Technique is about the process, not the end product. This is because we all understand material better when we teach it. I understood torts at a much deeper level when I taught it, and you will understand something better when you teach it. If you see a technical term, try to simplify it. Will that high school student really understand, without additional explanation, the terms “consideration by estoppel” or “negligence per se?” As you simplify the concept, you will begin to understand the material in a much deeper way that will help you not only remember it on the exam, but will also help you with issue spotting and multiple-choice bar exam questions.

Ultimately, if you’ve tried everything you can but are still having problems, consider looking for a law school tutor. There is no shame in asking for help, especially for something as important as your education.

 

Categories
Essay Exam Exam Preparation Study Technique Time Management

Answer an Essay Question Before You See it!

Word test on chalk board.

Would you like to answer an essay question before you see it!  Want to have more time on exam day to think through your answer? You can have 60% of your essay exam complete before exam day with this preparation method.

Ideally, you should already have three sets of notes, as I mentioned in my episode called “Three Sets of Notes Method.”  In addition, you need to create a fourth set of notes, which I call your Exam Answer outline. This is an organizational tool that will allow you to move quickly during the final. Also, you will write a much stronger essay.

The Process

Here’s how it works. For each possible issue, you will write the ideal answer into your Exam Answer outline. Obviously you won’t know the names of the parties so simply use “Defendant” and “Plaintiff” for the parties involved. And while you do not know the parties’ names, you do know the law and how rules interact with each other.

Negligence Example

Let’s go through a negligence example. Ask yourself what the ideal first sentence of a negligence answer looks like. Then write out something like: “The issue is whether D was negligent when he committed the act against P.” On exam day, you will replace “D,” “P,” and “committed the act” with the facts from the exam.

The next sentence is your ideal rule statement, which you will pull directly from your rule outline. “Negligence occurs when a defendant owes a duty of care, breaches that duty, is the actual and proximate cause, and there are damages to the plaintiff.”   Then wrap up the first paragraph with a brief conclusion. Because all the elements are met, D is liable to P for negligence. By the way, if you haven’t noticed, I am using the IRAC method, which I covered in an earlier blog post.

Now, write the second ideal paragraph, which in this case involves duty of care. “The first issue is whether D owed P a duty of care. Duty of care is a legally recognized relationship between the parties, and is measured by the reasonably prudent person standard. In this case D owed P a duty of care because….” At this point you’ll have a blank, which you will fill in on exam day. Then the last sentence will read: “This element is met (or not met) because D owed (or did not owe) P a duty of care.”

Negligence Per Se

You will do this for each element, but don’t stop there. You also need to create alternative paragraphs, depending on the issues that might appear on your exam. For example, before you get to the final exam, have you thought through how to deal with negligence per se? I ask this because when you have a negligence per se question, you need to discuss the negligence per se AND the reasonably prudent person standard. And you need to do this because it is always possible that the court will deny the negligence per se instruction, leaving you with having to argue the reasonably prudent person standard. This means you need to have an ideal paragraph for this possibility.

So work through negligence per se, using this approach, and end the negligence per se paragraph with something like this: “Plaintiff should be able to establish duty through negligence per se. However, if the court finds that negligence per se cannot be used, then Plaintiff can still prevail under the reasonably prudent person standard.”

There are other areas that you also need to think about. Where does res ipsa loquitur fit into an exam? On a criminal law exam, where do you discuss premeditation? On a contracts exam, where do you discuss a UCC distinctive?

Final Advice

Word plan on a puzzle. Answer an essay question before you see it.

You can wait till exam day to think about all this, but if you plan it all out in advance, now when
you have time, you will know exactly how to structure your essay answer and understand the connections between the different rules. This approach will also give you more time to focus on the analysis portion of the exam, which is where most professors award points. For some additional ideas on how to structure a pre-planned essay, see this guide on how to structure an essay.

By the way, if you have an open book exam, you will truly have a huge advantage over your colleagues that haven’t done this.

 

Categories
law school academic success Study Technique

Deep Learning with Elaborative Interrogation

Elaborative Interrogation Exemplified with question mark in maze

The elaborative interrogation technique may sound like a spy how-to manual, but it is used to go beyond simply memorizing difficult concepts to understanding them. For example, you may be able to recite the three elements for res ipsa loquitur, but have no idea what they mean or how to apply them in a fact pattern. This method helps you remember and understand by having you ask how and why questions, thereby allowing you to see connections between the various concepts.

Compare and Contrast

As you use this technique you will compare and contrast ideas by asking how two concepts are similar and how they are different.

Let’s go back to our res ipsa loquitur example. You’ve memorized the three-part test for this concept and that is where most students stop. So when they get to the exam, they don’t do well because they really don’t understand how to apply res ipsa loquitur to get the maximum number of points.

In reality, these students learned how to recite a test that they did not truly understand.

Res Ipsa Loquitur Example

So step one is to connect res ipsa loquitur to what we do know. You might ask yourself, how does it connect to negligence? You then answer: it is connected to breach of duty.

Now go deeper. Ask yourself, how does res ipsa loquitur connect to breach of duty? It helps us determine if somebody breached their duty of care.

Go even deeper. Why do we need res ipsa loquitur? When the evidence against the defendant is circumstantial and not direct.

Don’t stop there; go deeper. What is circumstantial evidence? It is evidence that can be inferred from a fact that I know to be true. What is the effect of using res ipsa loquitur at trial?

Keep interrogating yourself and you will establish connections between interrelated concepts. Soon you will understand the concept better and expose gaps in your knowledge that will encourage you to do more research.

By the way, I strongly recommend that you go through this process in writing. It’s just too easy to skip steps or not see the gaps without writing it down or typing it out on your computer.

This technique will work very nicely with the Feynman technique, which I discussed in the episode “Learn Law Faster: The Feynman Technique.”

International Shoe v. Washington Example

Let’s try another example, this time using everybody’s favorite topic, civil procedure. You just read International Shoe v. Washington.

First questions: what is this case even about? How is it similar to Pennoyer v. Neff? How is it different from Pennoyer v. Neff?

Next questions: in real life, how does this case affect people? Do I still need personal jurisdiction after International Shoe?

More questions you could ask: what is personal jurisdiction? How does this case change personal jurisdiction?

See what we’re doing? We’re making multiple connections that will help you understand all the various aspects of the case.

Puzzle pieces held by hands demonstrating elaborative interrogation

Rationale

So why do you even need to use this technique? The reason you need it is because you don’t know what you don’t know. You need a process to move beyond knowledge to comprehension. By creating those connections between different concepts, you won’t be fooled by some strange fact pattern on exam day. Your professor sees those connections and will test you on your ability to see those connections, not on your ability to memorize a rule statement.

Don’t misunderstand me; you still need to memorize the rules–I recommend the Leitner box flashcard method. But law school exams require you to move beyond memorization into analysis—the kind of analysis that is only possible if you truly understand the material. For an interesting article on how students learn, check out this article on how students learn. Also, if you need help, you may want to look into working with a law school tutor.

 

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Essay Exam Exam Preparation Study Technique

How to Make a Law School Outline

Coffee and notepad for making a law school outline

Do you need to learn how to make a law school outline? Your outline is, nothing more and nothing less, than your blueprint for doing well on the exam. This means understanding law school exam grading, which I cover in detail in the episode called Law School Exam Grading.

First, let’s discuss what you should NOT do when creating a law school outline. A mistake that many law students make is to take their class notes, rearrange them a bit, and then place them into their outline. That is not an outline, but rather a rearranged set of notes.

Also, do NOT include facts from cases discussed in class. The only thing you need from cases discussed in class are the rules from those cases.

So now let’s talk about what should go into an outline. The first thing you need is a framework for the course. I recommend that you take the table of contents from your assigned book, or the course syllabus, and use that as a starting point. You might change the format as you go along, but you need to have something to get you going.

The Rules

Second, place the rules that you learned into the outline. The rules and exceptions to the rules need to be as concise as possible, and written in your own words. For example, suppose you have a case from 1894 and the case states the rule as follows: the wrong inflicted, when the defendant so did with intent, and with force that contacted the victim’s person, must result in adequate compensation for that injury. Now let’s take that archaic language and write something like this: A defendant’s intentional action will result in the defendant paying for all damages. So see what I did there? I took that old language, rearranged it, and turned it into something that we can understand today. Generally, law school exams will only test you on the black letter law.

Third, if the professor tells you, or strongly hints that something is going to be on the exam, then make a note of that in your law school outline.

Fourth, if you know your professor will test you on policy, place the policy arguments in the outline. More on what to transfer from your class notes in the episode “Taking Notes in Law School: The Content.”

Fifth, think about the size of your outline. Since the outline is the primary tool you’ll be using to crush your final, it must be useable. This means short and to the point rule statements that you can use on the exam. Think about it. You will remember a 15-word rule statement a lot better than a 22-word rule statement. This article provides a good example of what an outline could look like.

When to Look at Another Outline

Finally, when you have worked as hard as you can and you believe you have the perfect law school outline, then, and only then, look at an outline that someone else created. As I noted in my last episode, “Why Create Your Own Law School Outlines,” it is critically important that you first work on the outline by yourself because that will help you learn the law better. When you see the differences in the two outlines, don’t just make the changes. Think about the differences. Ask yourself, why is there a difference? You may find that your outline that you wrote is better in a particular area, or, you may find that you missed something. Once you’ve discovered your errors, go back and find out why you made those errors as that will reveal gaps in your knowledge, and potentially in your understanding of the law. If you stop and reflect, you will learn the law in a way that will help you get a higher score on the exam.

Those who rely solely, or heavily, on commercial outlines created by others create the illusion that they know the law. But they are failing to make the connections that are necessary to get high grades.

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