What should I be doing right now!? Forum

[PotLuck]

I have just about finished most of my outlines for each class (well except for the last few weeks of material that we haven't covered), except torts where I have finished making flashcards. Should I be doing hypos from here on out? Basically as many as I can get my hands on? Should I finish the reading for the next few weeks so I can focus primarily on hypos?

[Carlo Von Sexron]

Sounds like you're well-positioned going into exam week. Nothing is worse than scrambling to finish outlining in the last week. I would continue committing the material to memory and doing practice questions. Definitely do the remaining reading, but don't spend a lot of time on it.

[PotLuck]

Okay cool, had a mini panic attack! I'll focus on finishing this damn memo and finishing all the reading for the rest of the semester

[Carlo Von Sexron]

Get used to those mini panic attacks.

[EtherOne]

Also, make sure you know your outline well, in case you forget something, you can track it fast during exam.

[Carlo Von Sexron]

Also, make sure you know your outline well, in case you forget something, you can track it fast during exam.

Not wanting to give the OP still more work to do, but I found it helpful to make a detailed table of contents for my outlines, time allowing. Creating it helped me remember all the potential issues to spot, and on test day it served as a kind of check list to glance at to make sure I didn't miss anything with a given fact pattern.

[LSATNightmares]

Practice with E&E's or anything else to help you learn your outlines and apply them flexibly to new situations.

[alicrimson]

I like E&Es and practice exams, but found it was futile to do them until I pretty much knew my outline cold. At this phase in the semester as a 1L, I was basically memorizing my outlines and making sure that I understood how things "fit."

Then again, I use this same approach as a 3L. Maybe it's just me?

[brotherdarkness]

.

[kykiske]

I like E&Es and practice exams, but found it was futile to do them until I pretty much knew my outline cold. At this phase in the semester as a 1L, I was basically memorizing my outlines and making sure that I understood how things "fit."

Then again, I use this same approach as a 3L. Maybe it's just me?

That's interesting. I'm starting practice exams this weekend because applying the law forces me to learn my outline. Staring at the pages doesn't work for me. But, as we all know, there's more than one way to skin a cat (random aside: where did this saying come from?).

I like to blend approaches, a mix of analyzing practice problems, and condensing my outline.

When I first complete my outline for a class, it's usually 50+ pages. Then, I dedicate a lot of time to doing practice problems and cutting down my outline.

I made a mental note at the start of 1L year that although I'd bring my big outline to the final, my goal was to never use it. During the final itself, I'd only use my attack outline, which is 10-15 pages.

But hey, do what works best for you.

[PotLuck]

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

When doing hypos at first, should I not time myself? Or should I just start timing myself from the get go?

[LSATNightmares]

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

When doing hypos at first, should I not time myself? Or should I just start timing myself from the get go?

Don't time yourself. Focus on learning. If you learn the stuff well, speed will naturally come.

[Lockfast]

Try and get your outlines down into something memorizable (4-7 pages) and try and reproduce it from memory. And, of course, do some hypos/practice exams. I've found that I get the most use out of hypos/PEs when they are accompanied with a model answer or by getting together with other, smarter, students and going over the answers to the same exam together. (It absolutely pissed me off when they got something I didn't. The times that happened, I never forgot that legal issue/rule/line of reasoning.)

[boredtodeath]

Try and get your outlines down into something memorizable (4-7 pages) and try and reproduce it from memory.

Question about this. So I have two of my outlines up to date and they are checking in at around 20-30 pages. I've tried to only include the most important stuff on each topic. To reduce it to under 10 pages would literally be to include a sentence fragment on each issue. I could probably do that (and if I run through the cases/issues in my head quickly I can think of short little blurbs for each that equate to the main point) but is that honestly helpful in terms of learning the law?

[LSATNightmares]

Try and get your outlines down into something memorizable (4-7 pages) and try and reproduce it from memory.

Question about this. So I have two of my outlines up to date and they are checking in at around 20-30 pages. I've tried to only include the most important stuff on each topic. To reduce it to under 10 pages would literally be to include a sentence fragment on each issue. I could probably do that (and if I run through the cases/issues in my head quickly I can think of short little blurbs for each that equate to the main point) but is that honestly helpful in terms of learning the law?

I was successful my 1L year and never did that explicitly, but I do see value in trying to learn as much of your outline as possible from memory. You don't have to get it down to 4 pages -- I think the main point of that poster was condense and see the major issues/big picture for issue spotting.

[Lockfast]

Try and get your outlines down into something memorizable (4-7 pages) and try and reproduce it from memory.

Question about this. So I have two of my outlines up to date and they are checking in at around 20-30 pages. I've tried to only include the most important stuff on each topic. To reduce it to under 10 pages would literally be to include a sentence fragment on each issue. I could probably do that (and if I run through the cases/issues in my head quickly I can think of short little blurbs for each that equate to the main point) but is that honestly helpful in terms of learning the law?

I don't know where I read this statistic, but its said something like the human brain can memorize 7 things at a time (like a phone number is seven digits). But, the catch is that you can memorize things hierarchically easily. So, if you have one topic, and seven subtopics, and more subtopics under each of those, condensing all of those into easily memorizable phrases would help. So, in theory, knowing just the main topic heading "i.e., battery" should allow you to memorize each element of battery along with each "fork" or "issue" that comes up under each element of battery. This is the only reason I still remember my outlines from 1L year.