Monday, March 18, 2013

Active Reading

When working thought hypothetical problems, multiple choice questions and during exams, you should read the questions "actively" -- but, what does it mean to read actively? “Active reading” means that you search for and identify the following:

The sub-area of law: when you study for a specific class or walk into your exam, you know the subject matter, but there are still wide open categories and you must narrow it down specific sub-topics. A critical component of reading actively is reading in context -- on exams, it’s your job to provide the context.

The legal relationship between the parties: it is important to pay attention to the legal significance of parties’ relationships. The nature of the relationship is often of major significance to a resolution of the problem. Often, professors will use such relationships to test your ability to note distinctions in how the law treats such relationships (you may be dealing with fiduciary duties, different standards of care, and additional obligations imposed by law).

Amounts of money, dates, locations, quantities, and ages: be sure to pay attention to dollar amounts, dates and times, quantities of items, jurisdictional information, and any ages if they appear in the fact pattern. These details can be important for so many reasons: imagine skipping over a time sequence of events in a contractual relationship, then your analysis of the offer, acceptance, and requirements for performance may be way off. Dates also signal statute of limitations problems. Ages are generally tied to a statutory issue (consider statutory rape) or a standard of care (fiduciary duty) while money and location information tend to indicate jurisdictional thresholds. Reading carefully assures that you won’t miss critical signals.

The words “oral” and “written”: these words figure prominently in contract, property, and evidence questions. They signal potential issues with the Statute of Frauds, enforceability of promises, transactions with respect to land, and even admissibility of certain kinds of evidence. Also, note language that signals a writing or oral conversation i.e, a letter, a fax, or a telephone call.

“Active reading” does not include:
Adding facts to the problem: unless you are told to do so specifically by the call of the question, you are never to add your own facts. In most cases, you are given all the facts you need and should use only those facts.

Making assumptions: never make assumptions -- this will lead you astray and into dangerous exam territory. Remember, an assumption is not the same as a logical inference, which often must be made from the facts you’re given. (When working with a set of facts, you may need to draw factual inferences and connect these inferences to the dictates of the rule.)

Never confuse your parties: as you read and before you write, make absolutely certain that you are clear about who is doing what to whom. You don’t want to confuse the actors.

As always, you can refer to Mastering the Law School Exam for further tips on practicing your active reading skills.

Monday, March 11, 2013

Outlining

Several students have come into our offices in the past couple of weeks, and expressed concerns about either being behind with outlines or wanting to know where to begin.  Luckily, spring break is just around the corner, and can be a great time to catch up on your classes - and your outlines.

Your outlines are a great place to adequately make sense of the concepts from your respective classes and figure out the relationships between these concepts. It is important to know how to outline, as well as understand what your outline should include.  The purpose of your outline is two-fold:

1. Your outline is a vehicle for you to learn the law because it requires you to organize and record the information for your understanding and retrieval. In doing this, you must take apart the individual rules and connect them in a way that reflects how the rules interact as a whole - it is not enough to know the individual rule, but you must also know how the rules work together.

2. It helps you prepare for exams because while writing your outline you have worked through the analysis of issues you are likely to find on your exam. Your outline will contain all you need to know when studying for exams, and in the way you need to know it.

Where do you start?

There are many places to begin - your syllabus will provide a sequence and structure for your outline; likewise, the table of contents in your casebook will help you by dividing topics. These can both be places to start in determining how to sequence your outlines, and what topics need to be covered.

How do you format an outline?

We suggest a regular outline format with a bullet or numerical scheme - it doesn't matter which format you decide; the point is that you will want to rank concepts, and identify main topics and subtopics. Usually, there is a logical sequence to follow in analysing a problem based on the construction of the rule, and this hierarchy should be worked out in your outline (again, your syllabus or the table of contents from your textbook are great places to see the hierarchy; hornbooks may help with subheadings, too).
The real work of outlining comes from synthesizing the material so that you can differentiate between the main topics and the subtopics; and do not be afraid to go outside your casebook and notes for help - hornbooks are a great resource for explaining material.

Once you have your main topics and subtopics, then you can begin to fill in the pieces to provide substance and meaning by filling in the outline with definitions, cases and examples.

Monday, March 4, 2013

Studying with Multiple Choice Questions

Last week, we discussed the importance of using hypothetical questions as a study tool.  You can also study for your classes by using multiple choice questions.  Regardless of whether you are doing hypothetical questions or multiple choice questions, do you know what it means to study from the questions?

Merely going through the process of answering the questions isn't enough and "doing questions" may be a waste of your time. Instead, you should learn how to analyze the question and be able to reason through the problem to arrive at the correct answer.

What does this mean? If you can only partially answer the question, or if you are only getting multiple choice questions incorrect, ask yourself:

What does it mean to only know a portion of the material?

Are the correct answers "right" for the right reason or did you answer for the wrong reason or just get lucky, and do you know why the incorrect answers are wrong?

Did you know the law; were you able to identify the controlling law?

Did you correctly read the facts; did you add facts that threw you off course; did you correctly read the question; and did you apply the correct rule to the facts?

Make sure that you are not just going through the motions, but instead really learning the law as you go along by actively learning from the question. It is not cheating to look up a rule, consult your outline, or read a sample answer to help you build an analysis -- you will learn through the repetition and reinforcement of actively doing the work.