Note Taking

Hello,

Just a quick question, how do you go about making revision notes for yourself? With contract law we need 2 books; a casebook and a standard textbook, this is what is throwing me. I am fine taking notes in all the other modules, just not contract.

My problem is how do I extract the relevent bits. Both the books have cases that aren't in the other. Shall I assume that if they only appear in 1 they are not that important or should I make notes of everything? Do I need to take extra points from the casebook or does that just give me a more indepth look at major points of the law?

Reply 1

superdillon

Malboro

Re: the bit in bold
If you are referring to your textbook and casebook for Contract law then I find that highly unlikely.
Basically, for Contract law, you need to concentrate on learning the important doctrines and principles. E.g. the Doctrine of Consideration, the principles of Mistake and Frustration etc..
Look up these principles and doctrines in your textbook (pay close attention to the requirements of yours syllabus), try and understand it as best you can. Make notes on this, that you think that you will be able to learn/revise from (no point in making them if you are never going to look at them again).
When doing your textbook reading look out for the higher court decisions (i.e. House of Lords/ Privy Council and Court of Appeal), these are the main cases that should be extracted in your casebook. Often just reading these cases in the casebook should be enough, but if the extract is (a) small (b) not there then you should consult the law reports and read it there.
When reading cases look out for any interesting dicta/ good reasoning of the issues involved/ reference to other cases i.e. how the law stands (thats a non-exhaustive list). Make a note of much of this as possible.

Finally, as you mentioned that your note-taking is fine for other modules, that in my opinion does not seem to add up. Surely you have a textbook and casebook for these modules as well and you are making notes, why then are you having problems with contract law?
If there is a bigger problem here then look at books like G.Williams 'Learning the law' and the tips he has.

Reply 2

Malboro

What I meant for the other modules is that we have a sort of "plan" with the main points to learn and gives us all the cases that we need to know. Whereas contract doesn't.

Reply 3

superdillon

Malboro

What I meant for the other modules is that we have a sort of "plan" with the main points to learn and gives us all the cases that we need to know. Whereas contract doesn't.

Ah, I see. Well like I stated before the important cases for Contract law are quite distinct and are referred to in quite a bit of detail in textbooks and so you should easily be able to spot them and concentrate your fire on them.
I would still try to find out if there is a set syllabus that you are being taught to save you from studying parts of the course that aren't going to be examined. The contract law syllabus is very big and so invariably your syllabus is going to have to contain a much edited amount of material.

Reply 4

Fireman John

I've worked with a HUGE number of contract TEXT books over the last 2-3 weeks and virtually ALL refer to the same "key" cases. I've only used Jill Poole's casebook and that contains ALL the cases referred to in ALL the textbooks I've read PLUS SOME ADDITIONAL CASES.

I've only done OFFER and the first part of ACCEPTANCE so far. In actual fact, I've found the requirement for note-taking in Contract to be somewhat LESS than that required for Constitutional and Comparative... Contract seems more about understanding and recognising "rules" and the subsequent application of case-law - the "note" side of it being relatively minimal in comparison to the other "text heavy" modules I'm doing this year.

Note Taking

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