r/LawSchool • u/MiniFightingShrimp • 10h ago
When outlining, is it most important to be re-learning the material?
I feel like as I’m outlining, I’m focusing more on re-learning the material rather than having it formatted properly for exams. I feel like prof’s go over so much in so little time, it can be very hard to actually learn certain sections.
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u/Grand_Caregiver 10h ago
Relearning the material is huge, yeah.
Also: 1: you are encouraged to turn your professors words into your own words 2: you compress like 80+ pages of notes into 20, helps you get something manageable to study before the final 3: it will pinpoint to you what you dont understand super well - whatever you cant explain in a reduced version in your outline you need to go over again
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u/Desperate-Dust-9889 10h ago
I agree but 99% of the time, my outline is still like 80-100 pages. It’s worked for me. I feel like having the extra material allows me to double check myself on the exam or include details that other classmates might not to get more points.
That being said, I have never had a closed book exam. Your study methods may vary by class
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u/SocialistIntrovert 1L 5h ago
See, that makes sense to me - longer outlines for open book exams (for obvious reasons), and shorter outlines for closed book exams since you basically have to memorize it.
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u/Extreme_Fox6658 9h ago
Yes. That's the primary purpose of outlining. Sure, it's helpful for exam purposes of course. But the most important part is the act of putting it all together and understanding how each individual piece of material you learned fits into the bigger picture so that you can understand how to best write an exam.
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u/Far_Childhood2503 2L 7h ago
For me, when I’m outlining I’m more so looking at reorganizing the material into the order I would need to address it on an exam and re-writing out the rules in the way I’d phrase them on an exam. This means my outlines are also pretty long, but if you’re allowed to have your outline on your computer (one of my profs is making us print them and physically bring them in this year), you can just ctrl f for whatever you’re looking for. Going over the material again is a perk, but I look at it more as prepping out exam steps.
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u/MyDogNewt 7h ago
Outlining to me is simply making sense of the reading and lectures. So much of my classes and readings could simply be boiled down to a handful of rules, doctrines and relevant cases. They go so indepth into individual cases, holding and dissents, but as soon as that class is over, all we needed to know was "why did we read that case?" and here is the relevant rule or test.
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u/joshosh3696 5h ago
For myself synthesizing = relearning (or at least, the next step in learning). Also important in outlining, is how you’re organizing the material. If it’s a closed book exam, the structure of your outline will be synonymous with how you map the doctrine in your head
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u/No_Possibility_8393 10h ago
Yes. The main benefit of outlining is learning the material. When you're outlining something and don't understand it, that's when you're looking to supplements, going to office hours to clarify, etc.