Tips for Reading in Law

The study of Law entails a great deal of reading. Indeed, first year Law subjects are designed to
be 'guided reading' courses where the seminars help to develop students' ability to read legal
materials (statutes, cases and scholarly articles) in an active and critical manner.
Because of the quantity and complexity of the reading in law, many students wonder how they
can improve their reading skills to read more efficiently and effectively. This guide outlines
some of the most effective practices and techniques for reading in law.
Some comments from lecturers about starting to read in law (Video 2.5Mb). This video clip
requires QuickTime to be installed on your computer. Download a free version of QuickTime
here.
Starting out
Students new to studying law talk about a range of concerns and challenges. For instance:
Quantity of reading: most subjects present a colossal stack of Printed Materials,
recommend a weighty textbook or casebook, as well as numerous cases and sections of
statutes, with an additional list of recommended supplementary reading sources
Unfamiliar text types: statutes, cases, casebooks and other forms of legal writing are
usually unfamiliar and sometimes impenetrable to new students
Unclear purpose: most of the material read is not written for the purpose of studying or
learning law, but rather with professional or institutional audiences in mind. Similarly,
many students are unclear about their purpose for reading these texts
Unclear focus: it can be difficult to know exactly what to remember from the readings,
and many beginning law students report that nothing sticks anyway. Some students talk
about being unsure what to do with the information and ideas they read
Language: new terminology, difficult concepts, dense and complex sentence structure
can add to the challenge and slow down the reading process
Complexity of legal arguments: within judicial decisions, textbooks or journal articles
doctrinal, policy or theoretical arguments are often very complex and nuanced.
Intertexuality: most of the reading is heavily footnoted, which means that there are
potentially many other sources to chase up and often a lot of assumed knowledge.
All of these challenges can be overcome with time and effort. However, flexible and efficient
reading practices and the development of new techniques are crucial in shifting from a novice to
an expert reader of law.
Background knowledge
One of the reasons for the complexity of law texts is the background knowledge they often
assume. You build on the background knowledge that you have by reading broadly, reading
newspapers, legal news websites and bulletins, blogs or magazines.
Recommended readings for a subject often contain some of the most important background
material and context. You may find it difficult to fit them into your reading load, but consider
skimming them to find out more about the topic, to contextualize the essential readings.
Purpose
Understanding what you are reading and why gives you a basis for deciding how to read. For
example are you reading:
A news report that might form the basis of class discussion about key concepts and issues
and provide a context for a topic?
Key cases or sections of statutes for one of the topics of the course which will be
discussed briefly in class, but central to exam problems later on?
Textbook material covering the principles and main sources of law for a topic area that
forms a major or minor part of the subject as a whole?
A scholarly research article useful for exploring an essay question, casenote or other
assessment task?
Text related to the subject but not part of the curriculum that has caught your interest
when trawling through the Internet?
The type of text and the purpose of your reading should dictate how you read your reading
technique.
How to improve your reading technique
You can improve your reading and develop a more directed and purposeful approach to reading
by applying a range of reading techniques:
Surveying, predicting and schematising
Skimming
Scanning
Asking questions
Reading dynamically
Applying close and critical reading
It may take some time and practice to employ these reading techniques successfully. It is initially
very difficult, for example, to skim read a case when you are unfamiliar with the typical structure
and elements of a judgment. Be assured, though, that persistence and practice will pay off in the
long term.
Surveying, predicting and schematising
Unlike a novel, you need to know where you are heading when reading law texts. After you have
considered your purpose for reading, a first step in reading anything in law is to survey the text,
to find out a bit about the text before getting stuck into the detail. Think about the big picture.
How does this fit into the material set for a subject? How important is it? Is it a source of law or
a critique, commentary or discussion of law?
Survey:
Get a sense of the length of the text and the type of material it covers, the level of detail
Notice the key terminology and phrases that indicate the conceptual material covered in
the text
Read the section headings to predict the content of the text as a whole
Predict:
Surveying a text provides the basis for one of the most important skills in efficient and effective
reading: predicting. The act of predicting establishes a strong connection between you and the
text. It helps to maintain focus, attention, concentration, and encourages a deeper understanding.
Schematise:
Once you have a sense of the topic and its scope, consider how it fits in with the knowledge you
already have, or within a field of law or scholarly debate. Develop schemas for reading the
different types of law text, especially cases and statutes. A schema is a framework that allows us
to organize and store new knowledge or information logically in relation to what we already
know.
When reading a case, for example, concentrate on who was involved, what happened, what
issues went before the court, what the court decided and the core reasons. A schematic table
would note:
The complete citation for the case
The parties and their relationship
Court hierarchy and case history
Facts of the case
Legal issues in question
Main lines of judicial reasoning
Result and court order
Skimming
At a minimum, you should skim all the required reading before each seminar. Skimming means
quickly looking through the material without reading every word. The purpose of this is to
acquire an overview of all the reading and to become aware of the main ideas and issues there.
To skim read a scholarly article:
read the introduction and conclusion to identify the author's main argument
look at the different section headings to get a sense of the scope and logic of the article
glance quickly through the text, perhaps reading the first sentence of each paragraph, to
locate the important ideas and issues.
To skim read a legal case:
read the headnote to get a summary of the facts and the judgment
skim the judgments to find the main reasons why the case was decided in the way that it
was
if there are dissenting opinions, skim through these to get a sense of the opposing
arguments.
Skimming all of the reading before seminar will make you familiar with the main ideas and
arguments related to the topic. This will ensure you can follow the class discussion. You will
also know where to find the passages that are relevant to the issues and arguments raised in class.
You can go back to read these passages more closely, and in a way that is informed by the
seminar discussion.
Eye movement and attention: effective skimming involves a change in the level of attention
and the speed and focus of eye movements. For both, you need to look at and take in chunks of
information, groups of words and phrases that can be understood together meaningfully.
When skimming a paragraph you should be looking for the main topic or point, and deliberately
passing over the detail. This takes a lot of concentration, particularly with unfamiliar or complex
text. When done well you can take in a lot of text very quickly, and often at a higher level of
comprehension than reading more slowly.
Scanning
Scanning is a reading technique to use when you are looking for a particular piece of
information. For instance, you might scan a case to find the legal principle on which the decision
was made. Or you might scan an article to see if it contains information relevant to a particular
topic.
You scan through a text by looking for the key words of your topic or question. You also
need to consider any synonyms and related words, phrases or headings. When you find
relevant words or phrases, read these sections of text more closely.
Scanning can be useful to identify connections between assigned readings. For instance, if you
are assigned a legal case in which the issues are 'duty of care' and 'foreseeability', scan the other
readings for the week to see if, and where, these terms appear.
Scanning can be done both before and after a seminar. If your seminar provides discussion
questions or topics, use these as a guide for scanning the reading by trying to find the material
most relevant for answering those questions. If your seminar does not provide discussion
questions, try to formulate your own questions in terms of the course themes.
You should also scan the readings after class in order to locate the passages that relate to the
topics of discussion. Seminar discussions will enhance and inform your understanding and
appreciation of the important issues. If you return to the readings after class in a focused way,
you will be able to consolidate your understanding of both the readings and the material
discussed in class.
Asking questions
Most subjects provide Reading Guides which offer direction and focus for your reading of the
assigned material. In these, there are three basic types of questions that may be asked in order to
guide your reading effectively.
1. Questions that ask you to explain a concept or an argument. This kind of question
requires finding the relevant passages in the reading (scanning) and then mastering the
idea or argument well enough to be able to summarize it. If you feel that you don't really
understand the idea or argument, be sure to ask a question about it in class.
2. Questions that ask you to relate one reading to other readings from the course or to
broader issues that have been raised. This requires reviewing other texts and issues and
considering how the current reading relates to them. Typically, what you are reading will
either establish a position that opposes some other reading, or it will add further support
to an idea, or it will expand on and develop an issue that has already been raised in the
seminar.
3. Questions that ask you to evaluate an argument or an issue. Here again, you have to
locate the relevant passages in the reading and understand them well enough to
summarize the position. But you also have to consider whether you agree or disagree
with the argument, or how you think about the issue being raised. Here you can draw on
other readings, personal experience and your own values and ideas. For these kinds of
questions, it is important not only to state a position, but also to explain why you support
that position.
In general, these three categories of question provide a good framework for effective reading.
When you read for seminars, you should be trying to:
understand the main ideas of the reading
relate those ideas to broader issues of the course
evaluate the ideas and the issues.
Reading dynamically
Some of the difficulties raised by the large quantity of reading and time constraints can be
overcome by reading dynamically, or resisting reading the material linearly (from the first page
through to the last).
Using seminar questions or from your reading guide, or your own questions, look for answers
across the various readings, or even within the recommended readings.
Rather than starting with the first page, scan the material to find sections that appear directly
relevant to the questions, read those sections more carefully, and make notes. If you are pressed
for time this will at least direct you to the most important parts of the reading material, and give
you a focus for notes, comments and your own thoughts. It will also help to improve your level
of concentration. Reading across all of the material in this way is far better than getting bogged
down in reading only one or two articles closely and running out of time or energy for the rest.
This strategy will allow you to read selectively, but be sure to engage with all the set reading
material.
Close and critical reading
Deep learning begins when you are able to personally respond to a text, when you make
connections, comparisons or contrasts with what you know or have already read.
Close reading usually involves reading an important text (a case, key article, report etc) more
than once. It requires an analytical reading process, breaking the text down into its parts,
exploring the details and even the footnotes, and evaluating the text as a whole in light of those
details.
Critical reading means engaging with the author and the text, questioning the argument, its
premises, its evidence and sources of support. Reading a scholarly article critically may also
entail questioning the underlying assumptions and the implied positions (theoretical, political,
ethical or moral) taken by the author. For a case, critical reading involves an evaluation of the
lines of reasoning, the authority applied and distinguished, the weighting or strengths and
weaknesses of certain arguments. Dissenting judgments often provide a rich source of inspiration
for reading a case critically