Memory techniques

Do you need memory boost?  Here are a few suggestions of memory techniques that you can use as you review for the finals and, for some of you, for the upcoming bar exam, with the links to my earlier posts.

• Create crossword puzzles to memorize legal terms and concepts.  Puzzle your brain tells you how to do it with the example of the crossword puzzle on the rights and duties of cotenants.   
• Create mnemonics to aid your memory.  Memorize this provides an illustration from Property, Rights of Founders Against the Owners of Land.  And here’s a mnemonic to help with the Rule Against Perpetuities.
• Branch out:  use mind-mapping to create additional study aids.
• Metaphors and associations are great tools to incorporate the new material into your existing knowledge base. Here’s an example from the landlord and tenant law.
• If you find it hard to remember how and when certain rules apply in a sequence, peg the application of those rules to a system that is more memorable and familiar to you.  Here’s an example of a memory peg to remember the interaction between the Rule in Shelley’s Case and the Doctrine of Merger.
• Visit the “memory palace”: 
  First, you choose your “memory palace”, which can be any place or route that you remember well.  Next, you place your thoughts or images that you want to remember next to distinctive points in the rooms of your palace or along your route. Those points serve as memory hooks.  When you need to recall the material, you mentally walk through the palace and “collect” the pieces of information that you left at each distinctive point. 

For more learning techniques, check out the Project Renaissance web site.   

Comments

[Tom MacMurray]

I disagree. Its not memory "devices" that are needed but rather Hard Wiring YourBrain. I prepared for took and passed (always on the first attempt) 3 wxams in 3 different jurisdictions.

I've interviewed hundreds of successful exam takers and they agree it is Hard Wiring Your Brain combined with Muscle Memory that leads to sucess. Pass the Freak'n Exam is the only PROPAEDEUTIC Program anywhere that can be combined with a good review program to produce the desired result....the abiltity to sit down ready to DO THIS THING...rather than having the feeling Oh My God Its Now or Never.