Season 1: Reading

0.1 Welcome to Read Law Right

Everyone who starts studying law finds out very quickly there is an overwhelming amount of reading to do. There’s a reason people used to refer to “reading law” – reading and writing about it is pretty much all you do!
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0.2 Don’t start with the textbook: get some ‘skin in the game’

Much of the reading you are assigned will be textbook chapters, and there isn’t much you can do to avoid this. In upcoming posts I will explain how to avoid this become drudgery to get through or avoid. But I don’t recommend starting with textbook reading.
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1.1 The thirty-minute reading challenge

So many of the documents you are assigned to read are very long. You need to break the reading down or it will overwhelm you.
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1.2 Lean into your learning objectives

Know what you are looking for, before you even start reading.
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1.3 How to read individual textbook sections

Break down the reading in each section to make it more manageable.
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1.4 How to read case law

Having started with an encouragement to read case law, we now return to explore some tactics for efficient reading of law reports.
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1.5 How to read journal articles

The principle for reading journal articles builds on what we’ve learned in recent posts on textbooks and case law. Aim first to establish the purpose of reading this article. Then within the article establish that it is indeed relevant for you right now. Then establish its structure so that you can identify the most important…
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1.6 How to read reports and other lengthy documents

We’re coming to the end of this series of blog posts and the general principles should be clearer now. The typical sort of documents you’ll be asked to read include Law Commission reports, government department reports and Select Committee reports. Applying the principles then, we start with why. What is the reason for assigning you…
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1.7 An example of what your notes might look like

Aim to spend the final few minutes of a reading session making notes. Mere reading only gives you a basic familiarity with a topic. To understand and retain you need to interact with it. This is one of the objectives of your assignments, but you don’t have to wait for an assignment to take advantage…
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1.8 Building on your initial reading notes

In the previous article, I gave you an example of initial notes following a first reading session with a new textbook chapter. The first reading session is always going to be less detailed because we focus on structure and themes, introduction and conclusion. We use these subsequent sessions to get into the detail. We will…
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1.9 An example of notes from reading a law report

Your case notes will evolve over the number of sessions you are able to devote to reading a case. These sample notes follow the structure suggested in post 1.4 in this series, bearing in mind the example case has no dissents. First reading session Case note on R v Chipunza [2021] EWCA Crim 597. Case…
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1.10 Summary – the 30 minute reading challenge

Here’s the main points from this series of posts. What additional points did you pick up on? Tell me in the comments. Break the reading down into bite-sized chunks. 30 minutes is a good metric to aim for, but you can be flexible about this. Make sure you know the purpose for reading this particular…
Read more: 1.10 Summary – the 30 minute reading challenge