Read, read, read

In college, it was not uncommon for me to have 50, or even close to 100 page reading assignments. While the numbers may seem daunting, I got used to the workload after 4 years, and I also had the advantage of being a fast reader. But I was a bit anxious when I heard about all the reading I had to do in law school. How much reading could professors assign and seriously expect students to complete?

It turns out, the amount of reading, in terms of pages, is significantly less than what I had in college. A typical assignment might be 15-20 pages in a casebook. In fact, my Contracts class, which only meets twice a week, assigned only 34 pages for next week.

During my first few days in law school, I approached my reading assignments like I did in undergrad - read the entire assignment all the way through, underline whatever was important and then show up to class.

That didn't work.

Because professors employ the Socratic Method, they expect students to be engaged and ready to participate. For those who become targeted by the Socratic Method, participation is mandatory.

Unfortunately, the undergraduate method of just reading and underlining was insufficient. I remembered the material, but I felt I didn't have a good grasp of it. If I had been called on, that would have been the end.

I quickly adopted a new practice of actively reading, taking notes as I go, and writing a brief as soon as I read a case. I got a better sense of the material and even held on to more information the next day.

The problem is this process can be immensely time consuming. For instance, 17 pages took me 2 hours to get through, as I would have to stop and take notes constantly. When I decided to tackle a week's worth of contracts reading (34 pages), it took me close to 6 hours! Luckily, I've been working ahead of schedule, so at least I wasn't stressed out about getting tomorrow's homework done. As the year progresses, I'll share any tips I have on how to be more efficient at reading or taking notes.

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One of the reasons the process can take so long is if there are a lot of cases to read. Depending on how fast a reader you are, a case may take only a few minutes to get through, or may be much, much longer (especially if they are from the 19th century or earlier!)

My friend Beagle has described how to create case briefs using the FIRAC formula. One way to speed up the briefing process is to identify each element of FIRAC in the case as you read and mark their location in the margins. This process is called "Book Briefing," and allows you to quickly put together your brief without skimming through huge paragraphs of legalese.

While Book Briefing can be a useful tool for constructing your briefs it can be an excuse for lazy students not to do regular briefs at all. Why brief when you can just scan the case and identify each element when the professor asks for it?

While this works in theory, it's much more obvious to the professor and your classmates that you book briefed. If a case is several pages long, you will have to hurriedly flip through your casebook trying to identify the elements you listed, all the while trying to answer the professor's questions. If you had a brief prepared, you could have saved yourself the stress and simply read from your brief.

I've heard rumors that many 2Ls and 3Ls rely on book briefing a lot. Perhaps this works well if the professor mostly lectures. But if a professor goes for the full-Socratic experience, its better to be safe than sorry.