Effective Note Taking

Making the grade: How to do effective note taking? Anjalie Athukorale

"a mixture of sheer luck and repetitiveness" (quote from mrcivlib)

Thanks to labguest via CC licence on Flickr

There are many factors that contribute to the successful study of law effective note taking is one such factor. Effective note taking is important as many students struggle to find an effective study method, as a result finding the study of law overwhelming sometimes. This need not be the case. Hopefully this article will help you to organise yourself and enjoy the study of law.

So, how do you take effective notes? This article focuses on the technique I developed while studying in the Graduate Entry LLB programme. However, a word of caution is that every law student will develop a personal style that enable them to best understand, retain and recall material. Therefore, this is best used as a guideline to develop your own methodology.

I developed a two-step note taking process:

(i) step one is the structuring of a detailed set of notes from relevant textbooks, articles, case summaries and analysis; (ii) step two involves structuring a set of revision notes. The alternative would be to have completed all of the required reading from the various sources and then compose one set of revision notes. This largely depends on what works best for each individual. Note taking: summarising information

Use the subject handout as a guideline to structure the notes according to the topic headings. Summarise the key points in recommended readings for each topic using, for example, bullet points, underline key words, or bold case names. Example 1 – general summary of material: ➢ Test for the exercise of the principle of subsidiarity: (a) that no Community action should be taken unless the action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States (b) that because of the proposed scale or effects of the measure, the Community could better achieve the end result desired.