Class Prep - Before, During, After

This lesson gives best practices on whether and how to form a law school study group.

Learning Outcomes

On completion of the lesson, the student will be able to:
1. Describe the importance of collaboration as a tool for success in law school.
2. Explain whether, when, and how to best collaborate through a study group.
3. Assess the value of the study group to ensure that the student maximizes the benefit of the study group.
4. Draft a study group contract that outlines the parameters of the group.

This lesson is designed to provide students with data about why their attention levels may dip during class or studying, including recent research regarding the effects of digital distractions on concentration. The lesson invites students to reflect upon the reasons they may lose focus and/or concentration while in class or while studying, and provides a robust set of strategies students can use to anticipate and control for that loss of focus, incorporating several free-writes.

Final exams require recalling information from over 14 weeks of the semester. This lesson provides insight on how to remember the vast information from class to apply on final exams.

Learning Outcomes

On completion of the lesson, the student will be able to:
1. Describe chunking, spaced repetition, and the testing effect.
2. Employ chunking, spaced repetition, and the testing effect while studying.
3. Develop long-term learning strategies incorporating chunking, spaced repetition, and the testing effect.

This lesson, intended for incoming and current 1L law students, guides participants through the process of note-taking in law school classes with a focus on case-based information. Using a series of cross-doctrinal audio lecture examples and integrating periodic checks for understanding, students have the opportunity to develop their note-taking skills and practice categorizing the pieces of case-based information. This lesson is equally suitable for full-time, part-time, evening, or remote law students.

This lesson will walk you through things to consider before setting "foot" (physically or virtually!) in a law school doctrinal classroom. You'll learn about how to listen for and capture the most important information, how to maximize your note-taking efficiency by using symbols and shorthand, and the various software options available for taking notes. It is recommended by the author that this lesson be completed before Note-Taking 101: Case-Based Content, which tests your note-taking skills in practice.

In law school, students are expected to read multiple cases to identify rules that will be applied on exams. Using non-law sources, students will learn how to extract individual rules from multiple articles to create one synthesized rule that can be used to solve new problems.

The lesson introduces several common rule structures and tests recognition of each. The lesson challenges the student to recognize the rule of law as it appears in several cases.

This lesson will discuss ways to identify the legally significant facts within cases using pre-reading strategies.

Learning Outcomes

On completion of the lesson, the student will be able to:
1. Define legally significant facts.
2. Create context for cases using the textbook's table of contents and previous class discussions.
3. Identify legally significant facts in a court opinion.

This lesson focuses on case briefing. The lesson will guide students through cases identifying the most important part of cases to prepare for classes.

Learning Outcomes

On completion of the lesson, the student will be able to:
1. Identify different parts of a case brief.
2. Categorize different parts of a judicial opinion into a case brief.
3. Restate the legally significant facts from a case.
4. Restate the legal rules in a case.
5. Identify or construct the holding of the opinion.

This lesson will run through critical considerations to think about before stepping into the law school classroom, or the "theater of learning" for the first time! Through a series of interactive diagnostic questions and teaching pages, the lesson explores many themes of first semester, including choosing your seat, class participation and how to handle the Socratic method, pre- and post-class prep, time management, using professors' office hours, and how the basics of the court system and functions of each level of court generate the "case method" of law school teaching and learning.