How I Take Notes (at Law School) - The SOAR Framework
Gareth Evans
I 've read literally every single study on note taking to help law students study
more effectively and efficiently and it turns out we 're all studying wrong. I want
to show you the science behind effective note-taking before taking a closer look at
exactly how we should be taking notes at law school. Taking loads of notes works
really well when we 're tested immediately after taking those notes but it 's far
less effective than quality notes when there 's a delay before we're tested. The
important point then is not that note-taking is bad but that we need to be using
note taking using particular techniques that are focused on our specific goals.
Cornwell method is a beautiful note-taking strategy designed to boost Focus capture
key insights and also allow us to think critically about the law as we begin taking
our notes. This is basically allitute through the structure of the page so on the
right hand side we 've got our key headings and under each of these headings we've
got like one to three bullet points which outline our key inside of those
particular headings then in the left hand side a small margin outlines kind of our
key questions some key words that were interested in exploring and also our own
critical thoughts so we 're actually analyzing the information as we learn it then
at the bottom of the pages we have a small section to
The first thing that we need to do is to summarize and the idea here is that we
take our notes that we took using the Cornwell method and turn them into a more
substantial fully fleshed out set of notes. The next step is to organize and
structure our notes into a logical and sensible format and then flesh out those
notes using things like textbooks cases and journal articles. If you 've got any
questions at all about any of it then please drop a question below or make sure you
check out my other videos on the channel too anyway that 's all for now and I shall
see you next time goodbye [ Music ] too so yeah.
Gareth Evans
I 've read literally every single study on note taking to help law students study
more effectively and efficiently and it turns out we 're all studying wrong. I want
to show you the science behind effective note-taking before taking a closer look at
exactly how we should be taking notes at law school. Taking loads of notes works
really well when we 're tested immediately after taking those notes but it 's far
less effective than quality notes when there 's a delay before we're tested. The
important point then is not that note-taking is bad but that we need to be using
note taking using particular techniques that are focused on our specific goals.
Cornwell method is a beautiful note-taking strategy designed to boost Focus capture
key insights and also allow us to think critically about the law as we begin taking
our notes. This is basically allitute through the structure of the page so on the
right hand side we 've got our key headings and under each of these headings we've
got like one to three bullet points which outline our key inside of those
particular headings then in the left hand side a small margin outlines kind of our
key questions some key words that were interested in exploring and also our own
critical thoughts so we 're actually analyzing the information as we learn it then
at the bottom of the pages we have a small section to
The first thing that we need to do is to summarize and the idea here is that we
take our notes that we took using the Cornwell method and turn them into a more
substantial fully fleshed out set of notes. The next step is to organize and
structure our notes into a logical and sensible format and then flesh out those
notes using things like textbooks cases and journal articles. If you 've got any
questions at all about any of it then please drop a question below or make sure you
check out my other videos on the channel too anyway that 's all for now and I shall
see you next time goodbye [ Music ] too so yeah.
