With midterms around the corner, I thought the following outline FAQs might be helpful tips for 1Ls and reminders for 2Ls! Have an enjoyable and productive weekend!
What is the best way to use an outline other than making it and reading it? How to use your outline is an important topic because even law students who have strong outlines can write weak exam answers. Research shows that the least effective way to use your outline is reading and re-reading it. Doing so will merely familiarize you with its contents (not commit the contents to memory) and will give you a false sense that you know and understand the material when you may not. There are a variety of ways to use an outline and they all involve one common theme—actively engaging with the material (rather than passively reading it). In practical terms, that means you need to engage in retrieval practice or “the testing effect” by undertaking activities that force you to generate an answer to a question without using your outline as an initial matter. Here are some examples:
Test yourself by covering up a portion of your outline on a topic (e.g., adverse possession) and write down everything you remember about it. Uncover your outline and use it to correct your writing.
Take practice exams and then use your outline to evaluate your answers.
It is also helpful to outline your outline; that is, to create a condensed outline from your original outline by further reducing its concepts. The result should be a concrete set of words or phrases in hierarchical form that you can quiz yourself on by referring back to the original outline.
Where do I find practice problems? Start by asking your professor. Many professors make them available. Feel free to rewrite the ones you completed for class. Otherwise, there are many free study aids available in the library that have practice questions. Ask the reference librarian to point you in the right direction. Finally, hypotheticals used in class also serve as practice questions.
Should my outline cause me to have questions? Sometimes students have a cursory understanding of a concept during class but realize when inputting the information into the outline that they “don’t really get it.” This is an example of when an outline is a useful tool—working on it highlights weaknesses in knowledge. A student can then take steps to remedy that weakness, such as going back to the source material, consulting an outside source, or asking the professor.
Why should I refrain from putting information in the outline that I don’t understand? Is it okay to just clarify it later? This is just a different side of the same coin. If you realize you don’t really understand a particular point of law, you don’t just want to include it in your outline and move on. Instead, you want to take steps to remedy that weakness in your knowledge, as I mentioned in the answer above.
How long are typical outlines? This is a good question that does not have an easy answer. Technology has made it easy to simply copy information (case briefs, PowerPoints, etc.) into the outlines. The result is a long document that is not a particularly useful study tool. The whole point of an outline is to select, organize, and integrate the information. Consequently, more is required than simply putting all the information you need in one place. It should contain the black letter law, exam taking tips (see my prior roundup post on outlining), case references, and hypotheticals from class. In terms of an exact page number, it will depend on the class. 100 pages is way too long. As I mentioned, you may also eventually want to create a condensed outline from your outline—which will help you see the big picture and hierarchy of information in an easily discernable way.
How did you setup your outlines when you were in law school? To be honest, I set up my outlines in a very basic way using a traditional outlining form to show hierarchical distinction. Significantly, I was sure to use examples such as hypotheticals and cases to demonstrate how the rules work. You will not have time to revisit the “ingredients” you put into your outline (such as class notes, briefs, case notes, PowerPoints, etc.) when you are studying for exams, so it is important to include all the information you need in a condensed way. Policy helped me understand the reason for a given rule, so I generally included that too.
When do you think the appropriate time is to be completely done with the product? It is worthwhile to determine your exam dates for each class and then work backward to create a target completion date for each of your outlines. You want to be using them and not creating them when studying for exams. As a rule of thumb, you should strive to have all of your outlines completed by the week prior to exams.
Are legacy outlines helpful? I think it is fine to compare your outline to a legacy outline or a classmate’s outline, but what you don’t want to do is to copy information from those documents (which may or may not be correct) into your outline without much thought (or use those documents in lieu of making your own). As I have mentioned, generative (rather than rote) learning happens when you (1) select from the information (2) organize it into a coherent structure, and (3) integrate the information with your prior knowledge. This is the benefit of creating your own outline.
When is the best time to work on my outline? Ideally, the best time to outline is when you have completed a topic in given a course. It might make sense, for example, to add information to an outline every other weekend. Try to avoid leaving a large amount of outlining until the very end of the semester. Your outline should be very close to completed or completed by the end of classes.
Is the goal of an outline to never look at your notes, case briefs, etc. while studying for an exam? The short answer is yes. You have too many classes covering too much information for you to be able to track down information from various sources. Those sources—case briefs, class notes, handouts, PowerPoints, etc.—therefore go into your outline. If you realize down the road that you need to consult a secondary source on something because you need to understand it more, that is fine. Just don’t assume that you will be able to do that with all of the information for all of your classes.
Should I include policy in my outline and what exactly does that mean? To clarify, the policy is the reason for the rule. So, for example, the rule regarding capture in Pierson v. Post might be derived from the policy that capturing wild animals benefits society by making humans safer, etc. It is sometimes helpful to include policy to help you remember the rule and why it is in place.