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Studying for the bar exam is not a one-size-fits-all strategy. It’s important to not to take a passive approach to your studies. Although commercial bar prep materials are helpful when you are studying for the bar, you should go beyond the pre-packaged outlines and videos. Don’t forget what you have discovered about your learning preferences as a student in law school. Using different approaches to attack your study materials can have a significant effect on what you remember for the exam.
I have already discussed one way that you can change up your bar studies approach: flashcards. Today, I want to talk about another technique that can help you remember more of what you study: the creation of diagrams, flow charts, and other visual materials. If you are a visual learner, diagrams and flow charts can help you to remember the steps required for legal analysis of complex legal issues or how various sub-issues are related to each other. The process of creating the diagram or flow chart helps you to synthesize important legal principles, and, having studied the diagram or flow chart, you should be able to recall it more easily in the midst of the exam.
Here’s a simple example of how such a diagram or flow cart could be constructed. Let’s say you are reviewing Contracts, and you want to make sure that you remember the key steps for determining whether an enforceable contract has been created. Here’s what a simple version of that diagram might look like:
Keep in mind, this would only be the starting point. As you continued to study, you might decide you want to incorporate more concepts into the flow chart, such as: (1) Mistake; (2) whether terms were definite; (3) whether promissory estoppel should apply; etc. You may make several versions of the flow chart before you have incorporated everything you want into it. The process of thinking through where all of the legal principles should fit will help you to remember them better, and in the end you will have a study aid that you can reference over the next several weeks as you study for the bar.
The key is to not get stuck studying your bar materials in a passive way—figure out a way to make it yours, and you will know it even better!
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