A note on notetaking

Now fully 6 weeks into law school, I've figured out a handy trick to taking notes in Torts. Our torts casebook presents tons of little note-cases, cases mentioned briefly in the notes following the "main" cases that get fuller treatment in the textbook. Since it's often difficult to say whether ProfTorts is going to think any of these note-cases is important, I'm always hesitant to spend much time outlining them. Yet, several times, either the prof or someone in class will throw out the name of a case and I'll vaguely recall reading it, but I'll have to frantically page through the book to find it (sometimes even resorting to the index of cases at the back of the book). The solution I've found to this little problem is this: I simply type the name and page number of every note-case into my notes following my brief of the "main" case. That way, I won't waste time briefing note-cases that don't turn out to be important to the class discussion, but at the same time, if someone mentions "River Wear Commissioners v. Adamson" in class, I can just do a quick find for "River" in my notes and that will point me straight to the page I need.

It's working well so far. YMMV.

Posted 09:16 AM | law school