There is a particular disappointment in opening a notebook from October and finding a transcript. Twenty pages of a textbook, in your own handwriting, none of it answering the only question that matters in August: what did I not know, and do I know it now?
This article is about taking notes that answer that question. It is not about neatness.
What a note is for
Three jobs, and a note that does not do at least one of them is decoration:
- Restore context in ten seconds. You met this topic once, six months ago. The note tells you what it was.
- Record a gap. Something you got wrong, in a form you can re-test.
- Hold the thing you must produce. The elements, the test, the distinction — in the exact shape your answer needs.
Notice what is not on the list: a record of what the author said. The book already says it, better, and you own the book.
Write questions, not summaries
The single most effective change is to write the note as a question you must answer, with the answer beside it or on the back.
Q. When is a period presumed to be for the benefit of both parties, and what follows? A. When the obligation fixes a period without saying whose benefit it serves (Civil Code, art. 1196). Consequence: neither party may demand its change unilaterally; the debtor cannot be compelled before it, and the creditor cannot be paid after it against the debtor's will.
Compare that with the paragraph of prose most notes contain. The question form does three things at once: it is a retrieval prompt, it states the scope of what you must know, and it takes twenty seconds to re-test.
The same principle fixes the "notes" that are really copied provisions: turn each into a question whose answer is the provision.
One note per doctrine, in four fields
Standardise the shape so the notes stay comparable across eight subjects:
- Rule — one sentence.
- Elements / test — numbered if the text numbers them; else derived, and marked derived.
- Exception or limit — the fact that changes the answer.
- One application — a single clause of fact showing the rule in use.
That is the same structure a bar answer needs, which is the point: notes written this way can be read straight into an answer under time. For the answer format itself, see how a bar answer is scored.
Tag every note against the syllabus
If a note cannot be filed under a line of the published coverage, one of two things is true: it is outside the examination scope, or you have not understood where it belongs. Both are worth knowing.
Tag with the subject and the syllabus topic — not with the chapter name. In August you will be searching by topic, not by textbook order. If you keep notes digitally, the tag is a field; on paper, it is the top-right corner.
The margin system
Paper notes have one advantage over files: the margin, where you record what happened when you tested yourself. Three marks, and nothing else:
- a dot — retrieved cleanly, no help.
- an asterisk — retrieved with a prompt, or partly.
- a cross — could not produce it.
Date each mark. A page with three crosses and a date three weeks apart is telling you something specific: this is not a forgetting problem, it is a comprehension problem, and the fix is going back to the text rather than testing again. A page with dots that later becomes a cross is telling you the opposite: the interval was too long, and the material needs a maintenance touch.
What to write while reading, and what to defer
Reading is not the moment for a finished note. Underline and mark in the book; then, with the book closed, write the note.
That order matters. A note written with the text open is transcription with extra steps; a note written with it closed is retrieval, and it will expose the gaps immediately — which is the note's purpose. The corrections you then make are the valuable part, because they are the only lines you know you need.
The weekly compression
Once a week, take the five or six notes you wrote and compress them onto one page, from memory. This is not busywork: it is where structure forms, and it produces the artifact you will actually carry — see how to build a bar outline for the file this page goes into.
The compression is also the cheapest diagnostic available. If a week's notes compress to half a page and nothing is missing, the week worked. If they compress to nothing, the week produced transcription.
Digital or paper?
Both work; different failures.
Digital gives you search, editing and infinite space — and therefore infinite notes. Its failure mode is the file that grows all year and is never tested. Fight it with a rule: no note longer than a screen, and a dated "corrections" section at the top of each file rather than in the body.
Paper gives you slowness, which is a feature, and margins that make the testing history visible. Its failure mode is losing the pages, or carrying eight notebooks in September.
The hybrid most candidates land on: notes typed during the week (fast, searchable), one-pagers written by hand at compression time (slow, memorable, carryable).
What not to keep
- Verbatim quotations of long passages, unless the wording is the test.
- Facts from the decision beyond the ones the ruling used — the reading method covers this in how to read a Supreme Court decision.
- Cases cited without a proposition or a verified docket number.
- Notes on topics outside the syllabus, however interesting. Keep them in a separate file if you must; do not let them into the working set.
- Anyone else's notes. Borrow the structure, never the content: their gaps are not your gaps, and their confidence is not your knowledge.
The test of a note
Six weeks after writing it, with the book closed: can you answer the question at the top of the page? If yes, the note did its job and can be pruned. If no, you have found something worth more than the six weeks of reading that produced it — a specific thing to fix, before September rather than during it.