Wondering how you should study?
Curious if there's something better than what you are doing right now?
Today I will share with you my weekly study method, which takes into account our best
understanding of how adult brains retain knowledge and create strong neural connections.
These study methods are what some of the top students are already using to earn high grades.
Hello my lawlings, this is Professor Beau Baez.
Many students never achieve their full potential because they aren’t studying the right way.
While I wish that grit, determination, and hard work were the only criteria for success,
it’s just not.
Let me share with you the stories of John and Marie, two of my former students.
Both put in lots of time and effort into their education, but only John succeeded.
John changed the way he studied, based on the advice I am about to share with you.
To help you understand this method, I will use the analogy of building a house.
Step 1: Foundation.
This is the day before you have your first class of the week.
First, read a hornbook, a treatise, a study aid that explains the material you are going
to cover in class.
Next, read the assigned cases.
You want to read the study aid first to give you some context for understanding the cases.
Be careful to not spend too much time on the cases, which can take away from the next few
important steps.
Third, brief the cases using the FIRAC case briefing method, mentioned in another video.
Keep in mind that case briefs should be, well, brief.
Anything beyond, about half a page is usually too long.
And finally, take notes on what you’ve read.
What you are doing on this day is building the foundation of knowledge
for what will follow.
Step 2: Scaffolding.
During class take notes on the law and any hints the professor provides on what might
be on the exam.
Do not, I repeat, do not take a verbatim transcript, as this is a waste of time.
In a typical law school classroom, the professor is trying to demonstrate how to think through
the issue, so taking notes, about the discussion, is almost worthless.
What you should be doing is listening and then
answering your professor’s questions in your head,
not writing down what they are saying, let alone what other students are saying.
If you leave class with more than, about a page of notes you are probably taking too many notes.
What your professor has just done is created some scaffolding to the foundation you worked
on the day before.
Step 3: Walls.
Add the rules from your case briefs and what you learned in class into your rule outline.
It is critical that you do this sometime on the day of class because of something
called the forgetting curve.
You have the highest recall of class material just before and during class.
But within 48 hours, the vast majority of it is gone from your memory.
It's as if you hadn't studied it at all.
Without reinforcing that knowledge now, on class day, you will have to relearn it later for the exam.
That's a waste of your time.
To retain the most essential parts of the classroom material, you need to reinforce
that material on this day.
That is why adding the rules to your rule outline on this day is important.
Don't go back and correct your case briefs—that’s a waste of your time because case briefs are designed
to help you prepare for class and for no other reason.
Now, repeat the steps under Day one for your classes the next day.
By the way, if you have time in-between your classes, then work on your rule outline,
do a little bit of class prep for the next day during that time.
Don't waste your time during law school
What you are doing here is adding the walls to the foundation and the scaffolding.
Step 4: The roof.
This is the day at the end of the week when all your classes are over, which might be
Friday or Saturday.
First, review your rule outlines on your own, making changes where needed.
When you are satisfied that they are perfect, then, and only then, compare your rule outline
to either a commercial outline or maybe an outline of a student who aced the course in
a prior year.
But only review the rules that you have covered in class, not material you haven’t covered yet.
And with this step, you have added a roof to your house.
Step 5.
Assessment.
We now have to test how well you really built that house.
Without this step, you might only find out during the exam that your house was defective.
Too late by then.
There are different ways to test your understanding, but the two most common are multiple choice
questions and practice essays.
Find some multiple choice questions and answer a few, focusing on accuracy, not speed.
What you are doing here is testing your understanding, not exam preparation.
If you get many wrong, something is wrong with your house.
Stop, look at the questions that you got wrong, compare them with your notes, and
figure out why you got the questions wrong.
What you're trying to do is expose gaps in your knowledge.
This is, by far, the most important step in the process and the reason why many
students don’t improve.
Many, like Marie who I mentioned earlier, go into an exam believing they understand
the material.
Why?
Because Marie, ultimately had a superficial understanding of the material.
The problem is that she didn’t know what she didn’t know.
The only way to discover the hidden flaws in your home is to test it by throwing everything
you’ve got at it.
If it can weather multiple choice questions and essay questions,
it’s a sturdy little house.
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a better student and a better lawyer.