1. Introduction to Reading in Law School
Ante-Law School Camp session 4: Purposeful Ownership

2. Recap of Week 3: Reading in the Legal Domain Reading Strategies
Experts v. Novices
Reading Strategies
EMpower
Engage w/ Energy
Energy Expenditure of Experts v. Novices
Cultivating Energy
Preflight Assessment
Monitoring

3. Preflight Assessment Energy Assessment (see p. 66)
If you don’t have enough energy to read well, spend your time on a less demanding study task and come back when you have the right amount of energy
Emotional Assessment
Am I dealing with anything that is likely to interfere with my reading?
Mechanical Assessment
Do I have everything I need to complete my reading?

4. Today: emPOwer Always (Always!) Read with a Purpose
Engage with Energy
Monitor Your Reading and Read for the Main Idea
Always (Always!) Read with a Purpose
Get Oriented and Own Your Prior Knowledge and Experience
There’s More to the “Five Ws” (Who, What, When, Where and Why) Than Meets the Eye
Evaluate What You’re Reading: Your Ideas Matter
Review, Rephrase, Record

5. Read with a Purpose
Designating a purpose before you read increases you efficacy at pulling information from the text, even more so if you select the “right” purpose
Intrinsic v. Extrinsic motivation
Motivation is the activation of goal- orientated behavior.

6. 3 Reasons Successful Students Read
To get an accurate picture of what happened in the case
To gather information about the legal discourse community and the way it reasons through problems
To understand the “big picture”
Active use of inductive reasoning skills (from many specific instances to a general proposition)

7. Extrapolating from the Practice Exercises
Assigned purposes
fact intensive
“identifying how many rose cultivars (specific types, not classes) the author names”
Information intensive
“information to help begin gardening as a hobby”
So, you can read for
Facts
Information (several facts in relationship to each other)
Ideas
Discussions (when trying to understand multiple sources on a topic)

8. Take a Bead on your Text Inherent cues to get oriented to a text
Casebook cues
Table of contents
Topical headings
Background/summary passages
Case clusters
Points of tension
Review questions
Case cues
Place and date of decision
Disposition of the case
Length of whole and “parts,” e.g., fact recitation & law explanation & analysis

9. Take a Bead on your Text (Cont’d)
External Cues available
Privately Published Study Aids (aka supplements)
Outlines from prior students
Treatises and Hornbooks
Course Syllabus
Peer discussion

10. Owning What You Know Prior knowledge
Historical or geographic context of a case
Legal issues raised
Understanding of deciding judge’s values
Assumptions about vocabulary words
Ex: “competence”
“Business realities”
Legal reality
Empirically verifiable reality

11. Chapter 8 Exercises TOC Preview of gifts of personal property
In re Estate of Evans

12. Resources
Ruth Ann McKinney, Reading Like a Lawyer: Time-Saving Strategies for Reading Law Like an Expert
Mortimer J. Adler & Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading.
“Motivation” wikepedia.org accessed July 1, 2010