Welcome to LearnLawBetter, where today Sherlock Holmes will help you master rule statements,
so that you can do better in law school and on the bar exam.
Stay to the end and learn how to use the Method of Loci technique.
Hi, this is Beau Baez, and today we are going to discuss the Method of Loci technique, which
goes back to Roman times.
The method also goes by the names memory journey and mind palace.
In the BBC series Sherlock--a great series by the way--the great detective uses this technique to recall vast amounts
of information.
I was in college when I first saw the technique in action.
There were about 20 of us in the room, when our new debate coach walked in to meet us.
He came to me, asked me for my name, and then walked to the next student, and then the next,
asked each of us for our names until he found all our names.
He then went to the front of the room and repeated all of our names without any difficulty.
He then taught us how to use this technique.
In the professor’s case, his loci, which means place in Latin, was a house that he
knew well.
In his mind he visualized going into the house, where he had many rooms with doors.
He placed each memory in a different room, and left it there for later use.
Now, a loci can be anything that you want to visualize.
Some people visualize a route that they are very familiar with, and then leave each memory
somewhere along the route.
For example, suppose that you need to pick up some milk on the way home.
You can go into your mind, place that memory of picking up the milk at the grocery store.
Whatever you pick as your loci, it needs to be something you can visualize easily.
And for complex memories, you can also add music to the memory to help you remember
it.
Now, you try it.
Maybe you will pick your parent’s home, and visualize a room where you have placed
a number of file cabinets.
You enter the room, and on the left side of the wall you see that the second filing cabinet with the
word Contract on it.
You then open the filing cabinet and pull out a hanging file.
You then see yourself take out a pen and write Contract Formation on the file folder.
Next, visualize a piece of paper and the rule statement on that piece of paper: A valid contract requires an
offer, acceptance, and consideration.
You take that paper, put it in your file folder, you file it away in the cabinet, close the cabinet,
and then leave the room.
Interestingly, there is no correlation between intelligence and the use of this memory technique.
In one study, researchers randomly selected people off the street and asked them to memorize
a list of 72 words.
Without this technique, on average they memorized 26 words.
But once they were taught the technique, the average jumped to 62 out of 72 words.
So now you have a method which you can use to improve your grades.
By the way, this technique will help you on open-book as well as closed-book exams.
As I’ve mentioned in other episodes, failing to memorize rule statements on an open book exam will hurt you
on your open-book exams because you will be lulled into complacency.
So always treat an open-book exam as if is a closed-book exam.
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