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42 Student Law. 16 (2013-2014)
Take a Step Back and Reflect on Your Skills

handle is hein.journals/studlyr42 and id is 418 raw text is: AMY L JARMON Back and Reflect on Your Skils As another semester winds down, some law students will graduate and begin bar review. Rising 2L and 3L students will head for summer jobs, summer school, or study abroad. Now is an ideal time to step back from your academics and consider the important skills that you have learned. Those skills will assist you this summer. Bar studiers can maximize the skills they alreadv have. Graduates who took law school learning seriously should have the necessary skills to pass the bar on the first attempt. If they continue to work diligently in the coming weeks as they review legal concepts and complete practice opportunities, they will use their previously acquired skills to increase their scores and decrease their stress. Much of the legal knowledge for the bar subjects will already be stored in long-term memory for those graduates who actively pursued understanding and application of the law during their coursework. Concepts should return quickly with review for these bar stud- iers. Graduates who crammed and, as a result, did not retain information will have to relearn concepts. If they carefully distribute their studying throughout the entire bar review, they should find the extra time for this relearning. A poor grade in a law school course is an indicator that more time should be spent reviewing for the corresponding bar exam subject. By evaluating strengths and honestly assessing weaknesses, bar studiers can focus on correcting specific deficiencies rather than become para- lyzed by a past bad experience. Gradu- ates may have never taken a law school course for some subjects. They need to recognize that their successful study skills from prior courses will translate to success in learning the new bar subjects even with the short timeframe. In law school, students regularly condensed massive amounts of informa- tion to the essentials for solving new legal problems. Applying that information through practice questions cemented the concepts and increased exam-taking skills. It taught you important skills like how to approach questions, conduct 16 STUDENT LAWYER MAY 2014 ADVICE FROII/I THE IIUSIDE American Bar Association