Making the Most of Your Legal Education – Reading legal texts

by Prof. Sophie Sparrow

This is the second in a multi-part series suggesting concrete ways that law students can maximize their learning in law school. Based on the current research on teaching and learning, almost all of us can learn how to improve our approach to reading, listening, discussing, and note-taking. 

These skills can be learned, and mastering more effective learning skills will enhance our higher-level thinking, like making the kinds of complex judgments required of legal professionals. Because working in the legal profession requires professionals to consistently teach themselves new principles, and apply them to increasingly complex situations, maximizing learning during law school can help all law students’ potential career growth. These columns seek to provide students with efficient and effective ways to maximize their learning in law school and develop skills that they can use throughout their careers. Each column will contain concrete suggestions as well as the reasons for them.

Many of us read legal texts the way we read novels. Open book. Start reading. Close book. Hope material sticks. This passive approach to reading, where you let your eyes pass over the words, works fine for reading entertaining novels. For more detailed and information-based material, however, you benefit from using an active approach to reading. (For more specifics, I recommend two books, Michael Hunter Schwartz, Expert Learning for Law Students (2d Edition, 2008) and Ruth Ann McKinney, Reading Like A Lawyer: Time-Saving Strategies For Reading Law Like An Expert (2005).)

Step 1: Figure out what and why you are reading 

Studies of efficient and effective legal readers show that they first try to understand the context of what they are reading. They don’t just jump into reading at the beginning; they try to understand the bigger picture. For example, they may page or scroll through a document to see if there is a summary section at the beginning or end. They may also skim through the material looking at different headings and subheadings. They may glance at the introduction to a case to determine how many issues there are and which ones are relevant to what they are trying to learn. In a larger text, they may look at a book’s Table of Contents to see how the portion they are reading fits into the topic as a whole. This can be quick – expert legal readers generally only spend a couple of minutes doing this.

Effective legal readers also consider the authority they are reading. If they are reading a secondary source, how current is it? Who are the authors, and what are their qualifications for writing about the topic? Are they reading the material to get a basic understanding or to cite as an authority for an important principle? Which court decided the case? When was the treaty signed and who were the signatories?

Step 2: Identify questions you want to learn from the material

Studies show that when you read to find the answer to a question, you read with greater focus and efficiency. Experienced legal readers always have questions when they read texts. They may be trying to find out what kinds of remedies they can get for their client whose rights have been violated, understand the background of a commercial dispute, or familiarize themselves with environmental regulations. Having a question allows them to prioritize the material they read. If the material helps answer their questions, experienced readers will slow down, take notes, or highlight the material. If, however, experienced readers read extraneous details that do not answer their questions, they know they can skim those details.

While a practicing lawyer usually has questions generated by supervisors and clients, you can generate questions based on the material discussed in class and the course syllabus. If one of the course topics is the history of how the World Trade Organization developed, for example, you can read material looking specifically for when the WTO started, how it formed, which countries were involved, and what significant changes have happened from its origins to the present.

Step 3: Vary the pace of your reading

This step is closely related to the previous step, looking for answers when you read. Experienced legal readers significantly vary the speed with which they read. When they are glancing over text to get the context, they usually go fairly quickly. The same is true when they are reading material that is less relevant, or doesn’t answer the questions they have. When, however, they find words that help answer their questions, they slow way down. They may stop and think, read the same passages multiple times, take notes, and try to summarize the material in their own words. Reading everything at that slow pace is highly inefficient – it would take you hours to get through two pages! But reading everything quickly also doesn’t work; it means that you are likely to miss important points.

It is important to realize that reading some material slowly is wise. You may pride yourself on your ability to read quickly, and that skill may have worked extremely well in other settings. In law school, though, many students find that they have to work harder to understand the same number of pages of new information. If you are reading about specific legal principles and how they apply, it is smart to slow down, pay attention, and reread as often as necessary to understand the material.

Step 4: Use your hands

People who do something with the material they read – people who actively engage with the text – are more likely to retain it for a longer period. They are also more likely to develop a deeper understanding of the material, meaning that they can apply, analyze, compare, contrast, and synthesize the material, rather than just memorizing and repeating it. Doing something while you read means more than underlining words, or using a highlighter. It also means more than copying the same words in the text. Capturing important points in your own words in a separate document, or writing notes in the margin of a text, helps you absorb the material at a higher cognitive level.

One effective approach is to read information, look away from the text and summarize what you read in your own words. If you are new to this, you might find that you can summarize only a little information at a time. With practice, however, you can develop the ability to absorb and summarize larger chunks of material. Reading with the idea of summarizing helps you think about and organize concepts and their respective relationships as you read. This allows you to fit new material into your existing understanding more efficiently. Another bonus of learning to summarize is that it helps you when later learning new material in text or oral contexts; trying to organize information as you attend a lecture or listen to your supervisor will help you gain a better understanding of the information and your job.

Step 5: Admit confusion and get help

Not all legal texts are well written. Some contain confusing organization, sentence structure, and language. When complex legal materials are combined with confusing writing, it takes a lot of time to decipher the content. And some topics are intellectually harder to understand. Recognize that people who understand and fluently apply these principles have probably been working with them for a while. There is nothing wrong with not understanding something; chances are that if you don’t understand something, others don’t either. But don’t stop there. Legal professionals need to know what they know and what they don’t know.

If you don’t understand an important point in a legal text, pay attention to that misunderstanding. Put a question mark in the margin of the text, or write a note to yourself along the lines of, “confusing- follow up with this.” Then, get help. Look at another source to see if other writers explain the material more clearly. Talk to your classmates, other students who are further along in their legal education, and teachers. Keep looking, reading, and discussing the material until you are sure you understand it. It may be that there is no “one right answer” to a point you don’t understand, such as a single precise definition of a “reasonable person.” But you can learn about the principles and arguments that are used to show when a person is acting reasonably under particular circumstances.

Sophie M. Sparrow, Professor of Law, University of New Hampshire School of Law, Visiting Fulbright Scholar, National Law University, Jodhpur, Rajasthan. Professor Sparrow is a nationally recognized expert on teaching and learning law in the USA, has conducted over 75 presentations on teaching and learning, and has authored and co-authored books and articles on the topic.