Take Your Notes from Raw Materials to Useful Products

(Edited) excerpts from 1000 Days to the Bar—But the Practice of Law Begins Now: How to Achieve Your Personal Best in Law School

(Note: I have highlighted the areas that pertain directly to today’s posting on the Academic Support Blog. djt)

Nuts & Bolts: Taking Notes in Law School

Law students’ primary goal in taking notes in class is precisely the same as the lawyers’ goal: to create a personal record for later reference. In addition, law students and lawyers have other reasons for note-taking, including:

Vigilance. Taking notes keeps you focused. Recall. During class you discover what you forgot to read, what you need to look up, and questions you need answered. Noting these items keeps them from evaporating into the atmosphere. Retention. Writing notes, then working with them soon thereafter, dramatically increases the incidence of retention of the material. Exam preparation. The richest source of fundamental information for course summary preparation will be your class notes.

Do these match your objectives? If they are even close, the following method of note-taking will be ideal for you. * * * * * * * Students employ various note-taking strategies in law school— some are very effective, many less so. Consider using the Powerful Organized Integrated Note-Taking System (the POINTSystem) set out below. If you decide to use a laptop for note-taking, the POINTSystem You may find some white paper and pale green (easy is easily adaptable. Follow these steps: on the eyes) “law-ruled” paper at your bookstore. Gather essential materials. For each course, use a separate, sturdy, three-ring “Law-ruled” note paper has binder, with plastic end panels (those pieces of hard plastic designed to the red margin drawn several inches from the left keep papers from curling), and tabbed dividers (to separate syllabus, side of the page, providing handouts, briefs, class notes, and reading notes). Purchase a quality 3-hole a very useful bi-columnar punch and a set of highlighters. Find “law-ruled” paper. Make sure to setup. bring lots of paper to each class. Organize and label each page. Apply the following information to each note This organization and page: course name, date, page number. This information is essential for labeling is equally impor- tant after bar admission, for later referencing, when you use your notes to compile course summaries. cross-referencing during Record class notes. Write your notes on the right side of the red margin line, meetings, trials, and other with plenty of white space. Write neatly. Use abbreviations as much as situations during which possible. quick information retrieval Write only the essentials. What occurs in class is a “process.” You can’t is essential. adequately record a “process” in class notes. What you need to write This is the process I refer to as “Transformin1 g Notes.” (djt) down, to accomplish the four objectives, turns out to be not very much. Therefore, the first rule of what to write is this: not everything. On a more positive note, here’s what you should write in your notes: (etc.) …

* * * * * * * Take your notes from raw materials to useful products. As soon as possible after class—within minutes if you have a break—highlight “It is imperative that you and summarize your notes. To highlight, use a highlighter, marking review your notes the same only those words and phrases you believe to be the outstanding day as class, while the mater- “highlights” of the class. With the perspective you have at the end of ial is fresh in your mind.” Stropus & Taylor, 51. the class, you are in a much better position to make this determination than you were during the class—and the information is still fresh in your mind, so its significance remains apparent. Then summarize or headline the notes by neatly writing or printing the topic word or phrase, or a brief descriptor, on the left side of the red margin line. Within several hours, complete the transformation of your notes by These are the pages over recasting them—mold them into what will be most useful for you in which students toil and sweat. Accordingly, the terms of achieving your objective. learning experts at Land- As your notebook (binder) is open, the page on the right side will mark College (Putney, include the notes taken in class and the summary/headline words added Vermont) have aptly nicknamed these “sweat after class. The page on the left side—that is, the back side of the pages.” classroom notes—is blank. Fill that. What goes there? Generate three categories of information:

Summary of what you covered in class. Succinctly state the principles, rules and exceptions discussed in class. Include every “term of art” or word or phrase with a special definition. Visuals. Whether by way of cartoons, stick figures, diagrams or mini flow charts, try to express the principles with visuals, if you have the talent. Questions. Shortly after class, develop questions of three types: What remains unclear? How does this information relate to other material in this course, material in another course, and/or personal experience? How might this appear on an exam?

At that point, your notes have been “transformed”—the next step is to begin employing them. These notes will constitute the primary source material for your course summary. But before you get to that stage, you need to answer the questions you wrote on the “sweat page.”

* * * * * * * (… and so on … (djt))