Are you actively reading your cases in law school?

Most law students think they’re “actively reading” when they’re really just staying busy.

Highlighting. Underlining. Rereading cases, outlines, or notes.

Those things feel productive because you’re doing something with the material. But they don’t require you to actually know it. You can highlight an entire case and still have no idea what the rule is or how to use it.

That’s the gap I see over and over again: exposure gets mistaken for learning.

If you want to know whether you’re actually learning when reading your cases, there’s a simple test. Close the book and try to explain what you just read. Not in your head—out loud or on paper.

• What facts did the court rely on when addressing the issue and reaching the outcome?

• What rule was applied?

• Did the lower and appellate courts agree, agree in part, disagree, or disagree in part—and why?

• What was the outcome?

If you can’t answer those questions, the issue isn’t that you haven’t spent enough time. It’s that you haven’t required your brain to retrieve anything yet.

Retrieval is where learning happens.

A good approach looks like this: read the case, answer the above questions, then close everything and force yourself to recall it. You’ll feel the difference immediately. It’s harder. Slower. A little uncomfortable.

That discomfort is the point.

And when you can’t recall something clearly, that’s not failure—it’s a signal. Now you know exactly what to go back and look for. You reread with a purpose, not just to “see it again,” but to fix a specific gap. Then you test yourself again.

Over time, that cycle—read, recall, refine, recall again—is what actually connects the learning neurons and makes the material stick.

If you’re not retrieving, you’re not learning. You’re just looking at the page.

Sending my best,