By Lila McRae-Palmer

Memorise the formula, not the variables.

A Hypothetical Case

Facts: Lila is a first-year JD student. She has never learned how to study for subjects that required application rather than memorisation. Lila could recall which year each ruler died in Ancient Egypt but in Mathematical Methods, Lila struggled to apply the rules for solving a function if it was (-3/2) rather than (-2/3) because Lila had only ever seen (-2/3) and therefore every method of solving the function went out the window and this new, scary problem meant she could no longer solve it. Lila has realised that she is facing the same problem with her law subjects: in a take-home exercise where Jenny had given 20k to Bob Parker for a house that Bob Parker refused to hand over to her and Jenny was awarded 20k in an equitable remedy, the new hypothetical on the exam where Lisa gave Bill 30k meant that Lila no longer knew what a ‘reasonable’ remedy would be because she had only ever dealt with 20k not 30k.

Question: Advise Lila on what she should do to better tackle law subjects that require adaptable application techniques rather than memorisation.

Issue:

Lila has only ever learned how to rote learn and memorise facts. Lila must now learn how to apply rules that were learned to a new set of facts.

Rule: e.g. ƒ(issue) = 3(rule + application)² + conclusion

The key to doing well in law subjects is learning legal rules and citing authority for these rules. It is not to memorise how much money Jenny paid to Bob in a past hypothetical, because the new hypothetical facts must sub into the place of the function (rules) – the function does not change, meaning the framework (or checklist) does not change. You must apply the rules for the given topic and the content (new facts) will only indicate to you what you must discuss: what rules to apply.

Application

To apply this rule, Lila must learn how to focus on solving the problem through applying a rule, not drawing on Red Herrings from a hypothetical case.

Conclusion

I would advise Lila to stop trying to memorise 600 pages of a case with all its tiny details and 2000 pages of a textbook and instead focus on the key questions/discussion points of each class and what the cases/readings are trying to tell you. I would remind Lila that she is not the key litigator in this 1852 case so it is not necessary to remember that Johnny worked at a bank in England over his Summer break on a 2018 practice exam, but it is necessary to remember that this fact should trigger the application of a rule that will frame the analysis of the problem and guide her to the solution.

Commentary

Starting the Juris Doctor led me to a stumbling realisation: I had never learned how to learn.

My experience in school was focussed on how to study, i.e. using ‘The Pomodoro Technique’ where one studies 20 mins on, 10 mins off and repeats.[1] We were taught to use flash cards and then attempt as many practice exams as we could. I knew many of my peers who somehow memorised full-length draft essays for the English exam to apply if given that topic (very impressive might I say).

[1] Francesco Cirillo, ‘The Pomodoro Technique (The Pomodoro)’ [2006] Creative Commons.

We would write the notes, memorise the notes. Rinse and repeat.

I realised I had only ever been taught about time allocation, rather than what it was I was actually trying to achieve by allocating such time. I would read the textbooks and memorise parts of it expecting it to magically make some connection in my brain as to how to actually solve a problem or respond to a prompt.

I have relied on my memory for as long as I could remember as my main form of ‘study’, rather than my comprehension. Flashcards and memorising content by writing it out over and over meant I developed a strong visual memory, allowing me to recall pages I had read, but never truly understanding any of what I remembered.

As you likely suspect, this technique (or lack thereof) only gets one so far, really only works for subjects that allow you to rely on recalling facts, like history (key dates; key people), or biology (ecalling names of cells), etc.

The subject I struggled the most with in school was Mathematical Methods. The method of study I had used throughout my education had always been mere flashcard memorisation or physically writing sentences that would help me memorise content we had been taught. I had never learned how to learn a formula and apply it to a new set of facts of which had not been covered. I realised halfway through my first semester at MLS that this is what my law subjects were expecting of me: to learn a rule and apply it to new facts, just as I was expected to do in methods.

I could tell you textbook-verbatim what the mitochondria does, but I could not have told you how to solve a function if they put a negative fraction in there that happened to have a 3 as the denominator instead of a 2 if I’d never dealt with -3’s before.

In order to know the rule, you must understand when to apply it. Not all rules will be applied to all problems, and the exact numerical problems you had seen in a practice exam for methods, or in problems in class, were not going to be on the test in front of you. You are presented with new combinations of numbers (facts) in the place of the ones you had studied, and you are expected to apply formulas and pathways of analysis in order to solve the problem.

I realised the part I was focussing on was the specific facts (numbers/symbols) involved in the problems I was practising, not the pathway for solving it. I had narrowed the salient information all wrong. This led me to some unfortunate grades, but, worse, it had led to me not learning the required content properly.

When I first started writing hypotheticals in the JD, I found it painfully hard to know where to look to analyse the facts and knowing what rule to apply and when; with so much information comes the expectation that you will reduce down to what is necessary. Put simply, for maths: if your problem is 1+1=? you should not try to divide the answer you have arrived at because that is not what you are being asked to do: you are being asked to add it. Additionally, learning to add 7+7 should not change the way you add 1+1 because it is the same method of solving the problem.

A new set of facts does not actually mean I was being expected to know something new, it meant applying rules I had already learnt with a few different words in there (like the different numbers for maths).

I acknowledge that perhaps this may be common sense for many, but for some reason, relying on my memory of things I had been taught in class, rather than applying a method for solving a problem and adapting the method to new questions, was just the way I had learnt to learn; or more so, to study.

It’s important to discuss the differences between what we constitute as learning and what we constitute as studying, because such vastly different activities are too often being treated so similarily in education.

Closing testimony: memorise the structure, not the variables.