ambivalent comment

Good question, and I agree w/both Dave and Jennifer. I'd bet you could make your reading more efficient b/c you probably won't really need to know most of the minute details you're struggling to digest each evening -- at least not for an exam. You may need to know those details someday in practice, but that's what research is for. So I'd say your goal w/your reading should be big picture. The details only matter insofar as they're crucial to the reasoning of a case so that you can do what Jennifer mentions -- apply what you learn in that case to new facts. So instead of reading for every detail, you can try to read for the big payoff: What did the court find most persuasive/important about this case and on what did it base its decision? How does it distinguish this case from others with similar facts? If you're reading restatements it's different. If I recall correctly, in Contracts the restatement *is* the law so you might be expected to understand what the restatement says so you can see how courts apply that to facts in the cases you're reading. Still, you probably don't need to know most of the little details -- only those that really determine the outcome of the cases you're reading. Of course, it took me at least a semester to figure out how to filter the outcome-determinative stuff from the rest, so that's why everyone tells you to brief every case and try to understand it all in the beginning -- that way you're more likely to get what's important. However, if you find you're missing what's important b/c you don't have time to cover all the material, you can start skimming a little more and see if you can find a better balance between retaining older stuff and breezing by extraneouus detail. And, of course, all of this could be completely wrong. I do go on, don't I?