Secrets to Law School Success #7

The more notes you take in class the worse you will do in law school.

The typical student comes to class without having learned any law. That student spends an inordinate amount of time reading cases thinking that he will learn law from those cases. When that student enters class she generally does not know the law from memory or has not even studied the law. Then the student proceeds to write down enormous amounts of notes that have little or no meaning when they are reviewed for an exam. That student and many of her compatriots may even try to reason about the law and make logical conclusions about the law even when they know nothing about that law. All we can say is good luck; you'll need it.

You cannot take notes on how to think and that is what applying the law is all about. If most students knew the law before they walked into class, they would simply say to themselves that this case is applying the transferred intent doctrine under tort law or this case is showing us how the reasonable person standard for a manifestation of contractual intent is analyzed under offer under contract law. In class, you are merely learning the application of the law and making sure that you understand the underlying principle that the application is based upon. If you already know the law or are well underway to memorizing it, you go to class to learn how to apply the law and make sure you understand the principle behind the application of that law. It is virtually impossible to take notes on how to think about something. When most students start to memorize the law their understanding of what is being discussed in class increases by orders of magnitude and the amount of note-taking drops to virtually nothing.

You are in class to make sure that you can apply the law and understand the principles behind the application of the law. You cannot learn the law in class nor can you ever understand the law if you do not take the time to memorize it and know all of its important aspects. Stop writing and listen and learn when you are in class.

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