The Law Teacher - Institute for Law Teaching and Learning

Helping First-Year Law Students–A Plan for Better Retroactive Review
— continued from page 12
will require further study with an aim
of mastering a major topic in a course.
Students must strive to master each
major topic as they complete it. They will
not have time to learn the topic later in
the semester.
Mastery requires that the students
first complete the outline of that topic
and then test themselves through
hypothetical questions. hypotheticals
not only test the students’ knowledge
of the law, but they also mimic what
students must do on exams—apply
the law to a new fact pattern. The
students should not rush through the
hypotheticals. They
need not write
a formal essay
answer, but they
should write enough
to commit their logic
to paper. Students
should check their
analysis by going
back to the original source material—the
case, the rule or the statute at issue.
Law students have relatively easy access
to good hypothetical questions. every
time a professor in class varies a fact
pattern of a case, it is a hypothetical. I
recommend that students mark these
fact variations in their class notes and,
in their daily or weekly review, copy
them into a separate “hypothetical”
file for each course. Students also can
get hypotheticals from their classmates
and commercial study aids. Students,
however, should not take the answers
from any source without critical
thinking. The point of a hypothetical is
that the question prompts the student to
consider the law in a new way.
Semester review is the last stage
of retroactive review—final exam
preparation. Students must master the
course, by synthesizing all of the topics
together. Law students know that exam
study is crucial, but many do not know
how to best use this valuable time.
Students should not use the exam study
period to learn a topic for the first time.
They should not spend the exam period
working on or reading their outlines.
Students should spend most of their
exam period on higher intensity learning
—“hyper-learning.”
hyper-learning is very active learning. It
involves manipulation of legal principles
through creation of single-page charts,
decision-trees, flowcharts, checklists and
summaries. Effective hyper-learning
also requires work on hypothetical
problems. The best hyper-learning layers
Students should spend most
of their exam period on
higher intensity learning—
‘hyper-learning.’
the different forms of study. Students
should start with some form of summary
charts. Students next should test their
knowledge through hypothetical
questions. They then should go back to
check the charts’ accuracy and consider
new ideas and charts. They should
return to the hypotheticals, and so on.
Summary charts should not be merely
shrunken versions of the students’
outlines. A good form of final summary
chart is one that compares related
concepts across multiple topics. For
example, I encourage my civil Procedure
students to make a single chart of the
different circumstances in which a court
must decide whether to permit a party
to rectify a procedural mistake. These
decisions occur throughout litigation, but
they have common themes and elements.
composition of a chart that collects and
compares these decisions, along with the
applicable legal factors, gives students
valuable insights. It forces students to
look at the law of procedure in ways
that are not apparent from reading the
material in the linear pattern of the
semester.
Hyper-learning during the final exam
period also includes broad hypotheticals
that cover many topics. The ultimate
hypothetical is an old actual exam from
the professor. Students should write
the full answer in essay format under
the time limits of an actual exam. This
provides an opportunity for the crucial
self-assessment: are they ready for
the actual exam? Some students take
practice exams too early or too late.
Practice exams are best
used during the exam
period, after the student
has done sufficient hyperlearning
to approach the
mastery level, but early
enough to give them
sufficient time to go back
and re-study as necessary.
In sum, this plan should help most
students. In another article, I identified
four key needs of beginning law
students. This plan meets all four. It
gives specific advice but is flexible
enough for students to adapt to their
own needs. The plan explains the
concept of mastery and gives concrete
suggestions for achieving the mastery
level. It incorporates methods for critical
self-assessment. Most importantly,
the plan focuses on the key missing
ingredient of most study advice—
effective retroactive review and
synthesis.
____________
Carol Andrews is the Douglas Arant
Professor of Law at The University of
Alabama School of Law. She can be reached
at candrews@law.ua.edu.
The Law Teacher | FaLL 2012 | 13