Some students—it’s a fact—are naturally gifted at law school (you know, that friend who never studies, goes out a lot, and always gets good grades?). But, believe me, this kind of annoying individual represents a tiny minority of students.
For the average student, studying law requires work but, above all, constant searching for good “tips.”
Perhaps the most important quality for success in law school is curiosity. You don’t need to be particularly intelligent. You need to be savvy and keep looking for every technique that can make your revision easier. Reading an article (like the one you’re about to read) for just 5 minutes can save you several hours of work!
In this article, we will look at 4 steps to learning and revising your law courses which will allow you to:
Save time;
Gain peace of mind;
Get good grades and pass your exams!
Of course, not being a memory expert myself , I speak under the supervision of our friend, memory specialist, Jean-Yves PONCE J
Raphaël BRIGUET-LAMARRE, a lawyer by training and university lecturer, is the founder of the website aideauxtd.com , a site where he offers numerous courses in legal methodology, law courses, and subject-specific law fact sheets for law students. Today, he shares with us his techniques for learning and reviewing his law courses!
Step One: Evaluate the workload required to review your law courses
- How many subjects do you have on the exam?
- Among these subjects, how many are tutorial subjects and how many are so-called “complementary” subjects?
- How many pages will you have to learn?
Let’s take for example a student who enters law school.
In the first semester of the first year of law, you generally have two tutorial subjects ( introduction to law or the Law of Persons as well as Constitutional Law ) and around four so-called “complementary” subjects, which gives you six subjects to memorize . If we count around 70 pages per subject and 100 pages for tutorial subjects, you therefore have, at this stage, 480 pages to assimilate !
Once this assessment has been carried out, we will see how to reduce your workload and learn your law courses effectively.
Step Two: Learn Your Course Outline by Heart
After completing this assessment, you will have to start the real work and learn your lessons. You must absolutely start by learning the “structure” of your course, namely the lesson plan .
Learning your lesson plan allows you to:
Understand the entirety of the subject;
Better retain any new information that you will be able to “store” inside this plan;
Find plans easily during the exam.
In my opinion, you have two techniques for learning your lesson plan by heart:
First method: The so-called “logical” association method
This method simply involves learning your lesson plan as it’s already written. Logical association involves associating two or more things using the logical relationships that already exist between them (“How to Develop an Amazing Memory” C. Godefroy). A teacher has already thought of a “logical” plan for you to help you learn the material. Take advantage of it!
For example, in Personal Law it is common to divide the course into three main parts:
- Determination of the natural person
- Identification of the natural person
III. Protection of the natural person
Knowing this plan by heart allows you to understand and learn Personal Law much more easily.
Second Method: The “Memory Palace” Method
If you struggle with the first method, you can use the memory palace method to better remember your lesson plan. I used this method to revise for the CRFPA and I can confirm that it’s a formidable memorization technique since the lesson plan remains “engraved” in your memory for several months!
Check out the remarkable guide written by Jean-Yves PONCE to learn more about the memory palace method .
A word of advice, however: for both methods, the plan should not be overly detailed. Never exceed 40 sections to learn by heart.
Step 3: Learn your law courses with revision sheets
As explained above, in the “assessment” section, you can potentially have over 400 pages to learn for your midterms. It is simply impossible for a normal human being to quickly and efficiently learn such a large amount of information.
So you need to reduce the amount of information to remember and learn your lessons with Revision Sheets .
In my opinion, good revision sheets must meet several criteria:
They must be concise (no more than one sheet for approximately 5 pages of lessons);
They must be clear and legible to facilitate memorization;
They should focus on important themes and certainly not go into detail about less important themes.
On my website, aideauxtd.com, I offer, in addition to law courses , revision sheets which meet these criteria to help you pass your exams.
I’m often asked if it’s not better to make your own notes. Obviously, making notes about your lessons allows you, to a certain extent, to better understand the material. However, assuming they have the time to write everything down, students too often make the mistake of writing their lessons poorly (important elements not transcribed, notes that are too short or too long, etc.).