How to Master the Law for the Bar Exam or Law School, Not Just Throw Buzz Words Around

Why do bar candidates study intensively and then draw a blank when they sit down to take the bar exam? One explanation is that they think they "know" material when they simply recognize it, instead. They are coasting along on word-spotting instead of working through the law and mastering it.

How to prevent this potentially catastrophic mistake? The story is that a colleague once asked Nobel-Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman to explain a

basic theory to a freshman class. Feynman came back and told his colleague that he had tried to find a good explanation and failed. Feynman's conclusion was that physicists must be wrong about that theory. If you can't explain something, in other words, you don't understand it yourself.

I taught the Feynman method in a teleseminar for bar candidates this fall. I said that if students apply the Feynman method when they learn the key law of contracts and negligence, they will raise their scores on the bar exam. When I asked participants what they had learned, Deveren Fogle said that he had learned the Feynman method. In law school he had never held himself accountable for mastering the law. He wrote:

The most helpful tip from last night's teleseminar, at least for me, was hearing about the Feynman method of studying. I'm sure it's something quite pedestrian for some, but holding myself accountable while studying is something that's plagued me when preparing for exams. Forcing myself to review, recite, test, over and over again has already helped me with relearning the basic aspects of contracts law. It doesn't allow me to just read it and say oh I know it, then move on. If I can't say it out loud or write it down completely, then I don't really have a grasp of that particular area, and those to which it's attached.

Law students should be learning to apply the Feynman method. The Feynman method helps students make sure they are mastering the material, not just recognizing the vocabulary. If they master the basic law in law school, they won't have so much to learn for the bar exam.

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