How to Take Notes in Law School

How to Take Notes in Law School No matter how much material you think you can retain just by memory, note taking will be one of the most important skills to develop and perfect as you make your way through law school. Good notes will help you keep up during class discussions and will also become crucial when its time to outline and study for final exams. How to Take Notes in Law School: 5 Dos DO choose a method of note taking and stick with it. There are now lots of options for law school note taking from software programs to the good old paper and pen method. Try some out early on in the semester, but decide quickly which one suits your learning style best and then keep going with it. The link section below has some reviews of note taking software if you need a starting point.DO consider preparing your own notes before class. Whether you do the classic case brief or something more free-flowing and whether youre using computer software or handwritten notes, use a different color or entirely different pages to separate class notes from your personal notes. As the semester wears on, you should see the two increasingly converging; if not, youre probably not picking up important concepts and what your professors want  you to focus on, so get thee to office hours!DO write down important concepts, rules of law, and lines of reasoning. These things may be difficult to pinpoint at first, but youll get better at this as your law school years go on. DO take note of recurring themes in your professors lectures. Does he bring public policy into every discussion? Does he painstakingly parse words of statutes? When you find these themes, pay special attention and take particularly copious notes as to how the professors reasoning is flowing; this way you know what questions to prepare for both for lectures and exams.DO review your notes after class to make sure you understand what youve recorded. If something is unclear either conceptually or factually, now is the time to clear it up either with your classmates in a study group or with the professor. Dont Do This When Taking Law School Notes DONT write down everything the professor says verbatim. This holds especially true if youre using a laptop. It can be tempting to transcribe lectures if you have the typing ability, but youll be losing valuable time in which you should be engaging with the material and group discussion. This, after all, is where learning takes place in law school, not simply from memorizing and regurgitating rules and laws. DONT write down what your fellow law students say. Yes, theyre smart and some may even be right, but unless your professor puts her explicit seal of approval on a students contribution to the discussion, its most likely not worth a spot in your notes. You will not be tested on your fellow law students opinions, so theres no sense in recording them for posterity.DONT waste time writing down facts of the case. All the facts you need to discuss a case will be in your casebook. If particular facts are important, highlight, underline, or circle them in your textbook with a note in the margins to remind you why theyre important. DONT be afraid to go back through several days of notes at the same time to try to make connections and fill in gaps. This review process will help you at the time with class discussions and later when youre outlining and studying for exams.DONT forego taking notes because you can get the notes of a classmate. Everyone processes information differently, so you are always going to be the best person to record notes for your future study sessions. Its great to compare notes, but your own notes should always be your primary source for studying. This is why commercial outlines and those prepared by previous law students arent always the most helpful either. Throughout the semester, your professor gives you a map of what the exam will be like throughout the course; it is your job to record it and study it.