Study advice (1 Viewer)

[felix the cat11]

hey everyone, im a first year law student at newcastle uni and i was wondering about peoples study habits.

after the first week i was given alot of reading specifically for crim law and procedure. During the hsc i used to read a chapter and summarise as i was going, but when i approached my crim law text book to do the same i realised that it would be far too time consuming as the chapters are completely massive and written on bible paper. what do other people do with their readings? just simply "read" them and try to take it in or summarise as you go?

 

[wheredanton]

Re: Advice...

hey everyone, im a first year law student at newcastle uni and i was wondering about peoples study habits.

after the first week i was given alot of reading specifically for crim law and procedure. During the hsc i used to read a chapter and summarise as i was going, but when i approached my crim law text book to do the same i realised that it would be far too time consuming as the chapters are completely massive and written on bible paper. what do other people do with their readings? just simply "read" them and try to take it in or summarise as you go?

You learn to take less detailed notes. If it is just articles (I assume you are reading the Crim law book by Brown et al) then just try and grab the key theme from each one and put that into a few dot points. When it times for reviewing you can expand, in your head at least, on those core themes so that your understanding of the article gets deeper.

But for procedure, sometimes it is just necessary to do detailed long notes. Don't worry, you will get used to it.

 

[woebegone]

Most of my lecturers usually provide us with very good overheads/notes.

What I usually do is, go on the subject home page, download the various overheads from the various streams/lecturers (the ones that seem the most detailed) ... and compile them into one document.
Alternatively, I just add to the already notes that I have from my class...

alternatively, you can try digging the web or your library for case summaries (if what you're reading are cases) and print them out or something...

 

[MoonlightSonata]

hey everyone, im a first year law student at newcastle uni and i was wondering about peoples study habits.

after the first week i was given alot of reading specifically for crim law and procedure. During the hsc i used to read a chapter and summarise as i was going, but when i approached my crim law text book to do the same i realised that it would be far too time consuming as the chapters are completely massive and written on bible paper. what do other people do with their readings? just simply "read" them and try to take it in or summarise as you go?

As was said above, for articles simply summarise the theme and arguments of the article in ~4 dot points. You don't need to copy out huge summaries of articles. (I've seen people do this in making their exam notes and I always think, why bother? Just take the book in with you if you are that insecure. It's also highly inconvenient in an exam situation to read through an unnecessary thicket of notes.)

As for substantive law, such as authorities and principles, etc, I usually don't include case summaries in my final exam notes. I usually just have the principle followed by the case name, or statute section.

Substantive law notes should always be more detailed and extensive than policy notes like articles.

 

[woebegone]

Actually, I agree with moonlight on the case summaries issue.

I don't summarise the facts of the case either. By the end of the semester, I'm usually familiar with the case facts anyway. So unless you know your exam involves drawing analogies, facts of the case aren't too important. That's not to say you should totally ignore the facts. Certainly not. Perhaps you would like to use a few catch words next to the name of the case during semester.. but it comes to writing up exam summaries then you could just ommit them. For eg Donoghue v Stevenson (snail, duty, manufacturer) or something like that. Don't worry about the full case names unless they are from other jurisdictions outside where you live.

And as Moonlight said, avoid big chunks of sentences unless it's the ratio or something from a case.

Also, highlighting, italicising, and bolding important text etc really helps during exam time.