Classroom Experience in Law School

The hours you spend in law school classes will be among the most intense learning experiences of your life. You will feel the full gamut of emotions-from exhilaration to frustration. You will be actively engaged in a learning process that requires you to deal with society's most profound issues, as well as with its most mundane. Unlike many college courses that you may have taken in the past, you will not be given a predigested diet of textbooks and lectures. You must make your own way through the thicket of the law. In this way, you will be best prepared for the practice of law.

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A few law students have such excellent memories that they do not need to take class notes. They can listen to the class discussions and think about them without the interruption of writing. For the great majority of students, however, class notes are essential. Normally, the final exam will cover fourteen or more weeks of classes, and you probably will take four or more courses each semester. As you prepare for exams, class notes can be very helpful for refreshing your memory.

Your notes will be most helpful if they are not just literal transcriptions of class discussions. Unless you are proficient at shorthand, you cannot write everything that is said. Even if you could, your time is better spent listening closely to the class discussion and thinking about it. Moreover, if you copy everything that is said in class, the enormous quantity of notes for each course will make exam preparation even more burdensome.

Rather than writing down as much as you can, focus on identifying the most important parts of the class discussion and include only those parts in your notes. You should include your professor's questions and hypos, as well as the main discussion points about them. Your professor obviously thinks that the questions and hypos raise important issues. If your professor thinks they are important, you normally should too.

Pay particular attention to information that is not in the casebook. For example, if your professor describes other jurisdictions' laws on an issue that is raised in the assigned reading, make a note of those laws. If that issue appears on the exam, analyze it under each type of law. If a lucid explanation is given in class of a concept with which you have been struggling, include that explanation. Also include the insights you have had as a result of the class discussion. In this way, your class notes will supplement your casebook and case briefs, rather than replicating them.

Well prepared case briefs can reduce the time you spend taking notes. If you already have written a description of the case, you need not repeat it in your class notes. Instead, you can think about the case presentation, absorb the additional insights it offers, and determine whether you agree with the presenter's analysis. Leave room on your case brief for notes so that all your information about the case will be in one place.

Do not become consumed by note-taking when you are in class. By intently focusing on your notes, you may stop listening critically to the class discussion with sometimes disastrous results. For example, when a speaker states the elements of a legal doctrine, a student who is overly absorbed in note-taking sometimes grafts the first part of one element onto the last part of the next element because note-taking impairs one's ability to listen. The student does not realize that the resulting notes are nonsensical because s/he is not thinking about the material. Such notes are worse than useless, and the student has lost the benefit of the class discussion.

People taking notes on a lap-top computer seem to be more prone to this problem. At times, a laptop user may become so engrossed in the screen's glow or in editing and organizing the notes that s/he does not respond when called on by the professor. This lack of response does not seem to be attributable to the age-old gambit of studiously taking notes to avoid being questioned by the professor. Instead, the student seems to be concentrating more intently on the computer than on the class discussion. This is not progress.

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Read your notes immediately after class to find any holes or unclear statements. You also should edit your notes and include your more fully formed thoughts about the materials based on the class discussion. This process will be much easier when the topic is fresh in your mind, rather than weeks or months later. Your colleagues and a good study aid can help clear up any errors or omissions.

Alternatively, your professor might ask whether the case is consistent with other cases you have read or how the case fits within the subject you have been studying. These types of questions require you to synthesize the cases. Rather than viewing each case as an independent entity, you must learn to weave the cases together to get a comprehensive picture of that body of law. Your professor could tell you how the cases fit together, but you must learn that skill for yourself. Your professors will not be available to help you when you are a lawyer. Besides, how would you know whether you agree with their interpretations of the law?

At the next level of inquiry, your professor may ask you to explain how you reached your answer. Here, your analysis all gets laid bare. You may have been lucky and hit on an appropriate answer to the previous questions without really knowing why, but now you must explain your chain of reasoning. This exercise serves two purposes. It forces you to think through a problem step-by-step, and it enables your professor and colleagues to evaluate the soundness of each step.

If this process sounds intimidating, it can be, at least at first. Professors do not use the Socratic Method because they hope to embarrass or to intimidate you, but because it serves important educational functions. As a beginner, you probably have not had any experience with legal analysis. Legal analysis is exactly what the Socratic Method is designed to teach you. When you practice law, clients will not present you with factual situations that exactly replicate a case you studied in law school. Instead, you will be required to deal with many varying sets of circumstances.

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