Dear Student,
Welcome to The Law School Playbook! I’m Halle Hara, a professor of academic success and personal skills coach to law students and attorneys. I’m glad you’re here! There is no question that time is the elephant in the room throughout the entire law school experience—there just isn’t enough of it. All law students struggle with time management, even those that are high achieving and well organized. The phrase “time matters” is not just relevant in law school. Indeed, LexisNexis aptly named its law practice management software “Time Matters,” which is a reminder that there typically isn’t much of it after you graduate either.
But before we get too depressed and start bemoaning the overload in law school and the billable hours in private practice, let’s focus on a strategy that will allow you to get some of your precious time back: speed reading. Speed reading, or power reading, is a reading strategy that emphasizes skimming and skipping certain parts of the text to get through it quickly. Think of it as a treasure hunt, allowing you to search for only what you need. A colleague of mine calls students who employ this strategy “hunters and gatherers.” Others refer to the process as “searching and selecting.”
I can hear what you are thinking: but we are soon-to-be attorneys, doesn’t every word matter? We have all been admonished to read carefully and have learned that a legal decision, a statute, or the validity of a contract sometimes turns on a single word. So now you’re telling me to skim and skip as I read cases? The answer is yes. And let me explain why.
Let’s first consider what’s known as Parkinson’s Law: the adage that “work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” This law of time management was named after a famous British historian and author who first discussed the idea in an article he wrote for The Economist. In practical terms, Parkinson’s Law means that if, for example, a law professor gives you a whole week to read just one case, that task will, from a psychological standpoint, increase in complexity to fill the entire week. Now, you might not necessarily spend the whole week reading the decision. Instead, the anxiety and dread you may have surrounding the task of reading it, in addition to the reading, will fill the week. My guess is that your mind just turned to your legal writing assignments when thinking about this concept. If, on the other hand, the professor gave you ten minutes to read the same case in class, you would finish it in ten minutes, think of it more simply, and approach it with a whole lot less stress.
So what’s the lesson here? The lesson is that you can do your reading more efficiently if you set a reasonable time limitation for the task. By allocating a limited, but reasonable, amount of time for your reading, it will be appropriately complex and less encumbered with anxiety and dread. The bottom line is that you should always be aware of the time when you read.
You might also consider that, as an attorney in practice, you likewise will be limited in how long you can spend reading a case. The clients, partners, supervising attorneys, or court deadlines will make it so. Thus, learning to be strategic with your reading now is a skill that will serve you for many years to come.
So how do read more efficiently? The best way to speed up your reading is to make a hypothesis about the case. To do so, consider asking yourself questions like:
Why am I reading this case now?
What can the table of contents or case notes tell me about this case?
Does the syllabus provide clues concerning why I am reading this case?
Most importantly, ask yourself “what is the main idea”?
Reading for the main idea makes logical sense if you take a step back. Consider a hypothetical case in the United States Court of Appeals assigned in your Business Associations class. The case involves an alleged breach of fiduciary duty by corporate directors. The hypothetical decision affirms the trial court’s dismissal based on its determination that the allegations were insufficient to overcome the business judgment rule.
In thinking about your thinking, consider how much time and attention you would devote to reading:
the portion of the decision explaining that the trial court’s decision is subject to de novo review
the portion of the decision setting forth standard for motions to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6)
Would you dedicate the same amount of time and attention to reading the part of the decision that sets forth the presumption in the business judgment rule? The answer should be no. Why? Because the context clues told you why the decision is important. For example, you know that you are reading the hypothetical case for your Business Associations class and not your Civil Procedure class. Additionally, your syllabus, the table of contents, and case notes will have identified the case as being focused on director liability. If you are reading for the main idea, you needn’t spend time on the standard of review when your attention is demanded elsewhere.
You can also speed your reading along by breaking the cardinal rule that applies to reading a mystery novel—read the end first. I quoted Professor Michael J. Motta on this topic in another episode, but his quote is worth repeating. He said, “when it comes to learning . . . beginning-to-end is the wrong way to read.” You can be more selective in your reading if you use the internal clues to guide you about what’s important.
You can discover the internal clues by engaging what’s known as pre-reading. I’ve also heard this referred to as mental priming. The idea behind pre-reading is that, if you have some knowledge of what the case is about before you start to read, you can move through the text faster without compromising your understanding or retention. Pre-reading strategies can be adapted to suit your own needs, but most adaptations include reading the first two paragraphs for an overview of the procedural posture, reading the topic sentence of each paragraph to get the main idea, and reading the last two paragraphs to identify the court’s ruling.
Before we move on, I want to say a quick word on a worst case scenario when it comes to reading cases in law school. If you simply do not have any meaningful time to actively read your cases for class, mitigate the damage. Use a supplement or canned brief to inform your knowledge and then use scanning and skimming to take in what you can. Scanning uses rapid eye movement in a zigzag pattern down the page to identify key words. Skimming is a form of light reading used to identify ideas, rather than words. After all, some reading is better than no reading.
Okay, moving on from worst case scenario. You’ve engaged in pre-reading, so what’s next? You can work through the text by skipping portions of the case that your pre-reading identified as unnecessary. In the hypothetical Business Associations case, for example, you would skip the paragraph or paragraphs of the decision discussing the Rule 12(b)(6) standard. Skipping over unnecessary material not only saves time, but it also keeps you interested. Your mind won’t wander off to consider your next meal while perusing a portion of the opinion that doesn’t matter for purposes of your task.
Sometimes text won’t fall neatly into the skip or read category, and that’s when you can skim. Skimming does not require focused attention on each word, but it is light reading focused on getting the gist of what the court is saying. You are looking for ideas from which you can construct knowledge and understanding.
As you use these strategies, you should always be mindful of your comprehension. Needless to say, it is of little value to you if you work through a case quickly but have no comprehension or retention. As Theodore Roosevelt said, “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” I believe you can make the most of your time being an expert reader, so I hope you’ll join me.
If would you like to read this episode, get suggestions for further reading, or to request individual coaching with me, please visit my website at www.lawschoolplaybook.com.
As always, do your best, and I’ll be rooting for you!
References and Further Reading
Nicco Capozi, Law School in Plain English Part 2: Reading, Medium (Feb. 3, 2018). https://medium.com/the-storm-fox/law-school-in-plain-english-part-2-reading-fbecdfa83461
Leah M. Christensen, Legal Reading and Success in Law School: The Reading Strategies of Law Students with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), 12 Scholar 173, 206-209 (2010).
Michael J. Motta, Reading to Learn: Why You Shouldn’t Read Beginning to End and What to do Instead, Medium (Sept. 11, 2017). https://medium.com/the-mission/reading-to-learn-why-you-shouldnt-read-beginning-to-end-and-what-to-do-instead-4ab613e9a41d.
Michael Hunter Schwartz, Expert Learning for Law Students 88–94 (2d ed. 2008).
Maryanne Wolf, Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World 76–78 (2018).