Tips for First Year Law Students

3-min read

A few days ago, I received an email from a first year law student asking for some advice on how to go about all the reading and notetaking involved with a law degree. The email reminded me of my own experience of starting law school and being totally overwhelmed by the prospect of completing all the required reading and making adequate notes. As such, I thought my response to the email may be of use to other first year law students who are struggling to cope with all the reading, so I have placed both the original email and my response into this blog post! I hope it provides some reassurance, but if you still have further questions then please do feel free to get in touch or leave a comment below. 

HI CATHERINE,

I’VE JUST STARTED THE FIRST YEAR OF MY UNDERGRADUATE LAW DEGREE. THESE MAY BE SILLY QUESTIONS BUT I WANTED TO ASK HOW MANY PAGES SHOULD I MAKE FOR EACH LECTURE AS I FEEL I’M WRITING TOO MUCH AND THINK EVERYTHING IS IMPORTANT TO NOTE DOWN. ALSO, HOW MUCH/WHAT SHOULD I BE NOTING DOWN WHEN I’M COMPLETING MY ESSENTIAL/FURTHER READINGS?

THANK YOU.

Hi there,

Thanks for getting in touch! I truly think the hardest part of a law degree is the bit right at the start when you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing/how much reading to do/how many notes to be making/what the textbooks even mean! So you’re definitely not alone in feeling this way. Often, the urge to write down excessive notes comes from not understanding the topic. If you don’t have a good grasp of the topic, it can make it difficult to pick out the key points so you end up writing everything down. This is counter productive for two reasons: firstly, you are wasting a lot of time making notes you’re never going to read again and, secondly, you are just passively reading the content and reproducing it in note form without taking any of it in.

When you’re doing your reading throughout the year, I would concentrate mostly on understanding the content. The way I personally found to be the best way of achieving this is doing any reading after the lecture. And don’t bother making notes during the lecture unless you can’t stay focused without actively making notes during it. I would instead try to put 100% of your energy into processing what the lecturer is saying. Having gained an overview of all the points you need to know, you can then go look up further info in your textbooks to fill in any gaps in your understanding.

For notetaking, the most valuable resource you’ll have is the lectures. So I found the best method of general notetaking to be recording the lectures (if they weren’t already recorded) and playing them on 0.5x speed (after having already attended the lecture in real time and tried to understand it as it was going along). That way, I could write down everything the lecture said in red on the handout they gave us. If the lecturer refers to any cases or extra reading you need to do that they don’t fully cover in the lecture, it’s also worth just looking up those bits and noting them down on the handout as well.

As a final point, it’s literally impossible to read and make notes on all the reading that lecturers set while still having some sort of life outside your studies. You will benefit much more from processing and understanding the reading that you do do, rather than passively going through it all and making notes but taking none of it in. Also, the further you get through the year, the more familiar you will get with the legal concepts and jargon so it should all start to make more sense. You will then be able to get through your readings more quickly and take more of it in. You’ll also know which parts are important and which parts to skip.

I know it’s a long and frustrating process, especially when you will likely have never done anything remotely similar to a law degree. But I promise it does get easier and starts to make more sense over time!

Please do get in touch if there’s anything else I can help with.

Best wishes, and good luck for the new academic year,
Catherine