STUDYING FOR THE BAR FINALS

We've looked at some of the basics for any student navigating or about to navigate the Nigerian Law School. Now, let's get into studying for the bar finals as a student hoping to emerge with the best possible result, a first class.

I'd like to begin with a disclaimer. I am going to try to be as neutral as possible, and will not point to any particular study method as some sort of fail-proof strategy to excel at the bar finals. However, I am going to focus on tips that I believe would enhance and optimise whatever reading strategy you decide to take, as well as lead you in the right direction if needed.

Furthermore, reading is just one part of the puzzle. It is possible to read harder than everyone else and still not perform as well as you might desire. This is because, no matter how many hours you spend reading, your conduct during the exam week and how careful you are to avoid mistakes, as well as the grace that you have to avoid any unfortunate circumstances, really are the deal breakers when it comes to making your desired grades.

Anyways, let's begin, shall we?

MAKING NOTES

The need to make notes at the Nigerian law school is a very controversial topic, even amongst first-class students. Several students are of the point of view that to excel in your bar finals, you have to make detailed notes. Others believe that making notes is a complete waste of time and that the time spent making notes could be spent actually reading.

On this, I am on the fence. I did make notes in law school; detailed typed notes that I have shared with some of the students currently in law school. I also, for about 10 out of the 17 topics across board, made written mind maps of my typed notes (until I ran out of time to continue with them). I made the notes because I am way too much of a scatter-brain to have to rely on multiple sources of information. I preferred having an organised material that contained all the information that I needed, so I made my organised materials.

However, as I mentioned in my previous blog post, making notes is not actually reading. In fact, once you pass the 100 days mark to bar finals, I believe that you have no business with making notes any longer. Making notes in and of itself does not amount to much in terms of retention. You forget about 80% of what you have written in your notes just a few days or even hours after making them. This is because making notes, especially the way most people go about it, is mostly passive reading. I believed it to be, in my case, a necessary evil because of the kind of person I was. If I could, I would not have made notes at the Nigerian Law School. But I did, and I do not regret doing so; I would be lying if I said that there weren't times at NLS when I felt that making notes had me a little behind my peers, especially because they were reading faster than I was at some point.

Nevertheless, note-making can be productive, especially when you are not just brainlessly rewriting chunks of text from a textbook, a statute or class slides. When you use note making as a means of breaking concepts down in a way that you can understand, processing the information and rephrasing it in a way that makes subsequent reading easier and more palatable, creating patterns that make things easier for you to remember (I did this a lot with sections of law), or creating summaries that would help subsequent reading become faster and easier, it is very productive. But as you can see, even in this productivity, it all tilts to helping you when you actually start reading and reviewing your notes.

For me, even while I felt that making notes originally had me a little behind my peers in my pace of reading, I am not going to lie, the benefits later on made it all worth it, especially after I converted my typed notes into flashcards. Those flashcards were so useful when it came to my active recall, and they made retrieving information so much easier. Again, when I started using NotebookLM, I fed my typed notes to the AI system, and they were the basis for the discussions, the practice tests and other things that I used the AI tool for.

However, I never fell into the trap of having a false sense of completeness and believing that because I had thorough notes, that meant that I had learned what I had written down. As I said, making notes was a necessary evil for me during the first part of law school because they made the latter part of law school a bit easier. Notes are only the starting material in terms of reading. You'll actually eventually have to read the notes. And you do not want to have spent so much time making notes that you are then choked for time when it comes to the real deal, i.e., reading what you have written.

The simple point I'm trying to drive is that when it comes to making notes, there is no hard and fast rule. Some people make notes and excel; some people don't and still excel. I usually recommend making notes but doing so as quickly as you can so that you can get to actually reading. But in the end, the key is finding what best suits you and following through with it.

PASSIVE VS ACTIVE STUDY

When it comes to reading methods, I generally hold no reservations on whichever one a person chooses to use. However, I do strongly oppose any reading method that involves more passive study than active study. Why? Because that's self-sabotage. You're setting yourself up for failure, and if you're not careful, you won't realise it until it is too late.

Let me begin by explaining what these two terms mean. Passive study is simply consuming information without retention. It is the study equivalent of comfort food. It's easy. It feels productive. It feels like you are doing something. Your hands are flying through your notes, filling the pages with words. You're listening to a class recording. Your highlighter is breezing through the textbook. You're mindlessly rereading notes. It's the kind of study that you do when you're lying on your bed, flipping through a textbook like it's a novel. You feel like you're understanding what you are reading, and you believe that it translates to retention. But it doesn't. Most times, it just results in familiarity with the concept, meaning that if you come across it again, you are able to recognise that you have come across the concept before. But that doesn't translate to actually being able to remember what you have read.

On the other hand, active study is actively trying to produce knowledge. It's actively pushing your memory to retrieve information or to apply the information to any situation (like exam questions). It involves explaining concepts aloud without using notes, using flashcards to quiz yourself, practice testing, teaching the material to someone else, writing about a concept from memory, etc.

Active study is generally a very uncomfortable method of reading, especially at the beginning. It can be frustrating. It requires real mental work and often produces the uncomfortable feeling of failure when you have difficulty with recollection. Because of this, people tend to procrastinate or run away from active reading.

When I was in my 100 level, I read a lot of books about studying and came across several research works regarding these methods of study. I also came across different psychological strategies for effective study, like the Feynman technique, but I'm not going to bore you with psychology. I'm just going to go straight into the facts. I've never experienced a complete blackout in any exam. I also have never had to reread several times before an exam. In fact, when I tell people that I read certain topics 5 times or so in NLS, they assume that I actually reread my notes (in the regular way) over and over again. Nope. Not at all. I just encountered the topics in different ways up to 5 times before exams. In fact, I abandoned my notes about three weeks before exams, relying only on my flash cards.

Now, I do not claim to be the best guru in reading. But I do know the research, which, I must admit, some others already figured out on their own without having to be a self-help bore like myself. Did I apply all of them in law school? Nope, unfortunately not. I never managed to find a way to go about conquering the forgetting curve, and it bugged me a lot while in NLS. I didn't use the Pomodoro technique, which, if you've read my university post, you would know that I used a lot in my 100 to 200 level in the university. I didn't track my reading hours because what was there to track? I was always either reading or recovering from reading, so it was pointless.

My point is, my reading method in law school wasn't really the best out there. In fact, if I were to go back to NLS, there are a few things that I would have amended, even though I would have maintained the same pattern. But when it came to active reading, I was not lazy about it at all and spent a lot of time honing down on what I knew worked best for me. Because of that, I do believe my reading strategy in NLS was pretty solid and decent.

What was my reading strategy, you may ask? Well, I made typed notes. That took a LOT of time. I proceeded to make written summaries in a unique way (I used mind maps to break down complex topics into small parts). The mind maps were originally an experiment, but I stuck to them because they were fun and colourful and they made reading easier and concepts easier to remember.

At this point, I had already started a bit of active reading because to make mind maps, you have to process the information and break down concepts into formats conducive for a mind map. Also, I made those mind maps using the 'read, try to understand, then proceed to replicate what you remember without looking at the source material' method.

After that, I proceeded to make my Anki cards, which involved asking myself questions out of each chunk of information on my typed notes during my second reading process. Once I made my cards out of my first set of topics, I began going through them immediately. I made the mind maps during court externship, and I couldn't actively make them in court (they needed quite a bit of material), so instead, during times in court where I felt that I had gotten enough cases to fill my logbook, I would lower my head and go through the questions on my cards, quizzing myself over and over again. I also looked through the cards on the bus, keke, and just generally any single time I had some time to spare. The good thing about looking at the cards was that it really just involved pressing my phone, so it was very convenient for all sorts of free time. Again, I was actively engaging my brain, so I couldn't zone off while using the cards.

Of course, if I were to change one thing, I would have begun the card-making process before the court externship, because I believe that I would have gained a deeper mastery of its contents. I would have also fully utilised its spaced repetition pattern of asking questions, as the same was optimised to conquer the forgetting curve. Also, if I had really understood how effective the cards would be, I would not have even bothered with the mind maps (which I stopped after about 10 weeks because I felt like I needed to pour more energy into a more active form of learning).

My reading was predominantly focused on looking through the mind maps at first, and just flipping through the cards during free hours during the day (like breaks, when I was eating, when I was too tired to sit up and read, when I was waiting in line for food or some bureaucratic process) but about one month to exams, when I had gone through all the mind maps and my printed notes, I switched predominantly to the cards, going through and attempting to answer all questions while flagging all that were difficult to answer.

I also began reading with a friend about a month before exams, and we went through a PDF that had extracted all the focus points of NLS past questions. I was a tutor as well, so I also learned by actively teaching people during tutorials. And that was my reading method up until exam week.

I should also mention that a few weeks to exams, someone sent me a drive link containing drafts that had been converted to songs, and although I had already learnt most of the drafts at that point, they helped with 2 drafts in particular, both of which came out in exams. I only answered one, and it was really fun humming the song as I wrote down the draft in the exam hall (I still remember the song, by the way).

For my MCQs, I went through MCQs for the topics we were taught that week on Saturdays, using a pen and paper. I maintained the pen and paper method of answering the MCQs up until during chambers externship, when I replaced them with OMR sheets that I had printed out. I also actively participated in Law School Paddi MCQ battles every Saturday. When it was close to exams, I switched back to pen and paper because I wanted to make some jottings as I practised MCQs. I proceeded to revise all the weekly MCQs from the two different materials that I had gotten in a long note exercise book. That book eventually formed the bulk of what I revised the night before MCQs.

Remember, I am just telling my story. I am sure many other first-class students used different and even less flowery strategies. This is not a template as to how you must read to get a first class. I am just highlighting the fact that I read mostly by quizzing myself, and my written note-making was not just a mindless verbatim copying of material. I had to process information to both make the mind maps and the cards, and reading them (especially the cards) involved the difficult and often frustrating process of active recall.

No matter what pattern of reading that you engage in, active recall should take the main frame once you are done with getting an understanding of the topic. Remember that if you understand a concept, but have not stored it in your long-term memory before exams, your understanding is not going to be of any assistance at all. Passive reading might be low-effort, but actually getting things to stick using passive reading is very ineffective and time-consuming as well.

If I were to draft a reading method for law school, however you might want to go about it, here is what I would recommend:

1. Make notes if needed and use that opportunity to gain understanding of the topic (try as much as possible to process the information as you read it and don't mindlessly copy verbatim from your textbooks, slides or materials).
2. For the first phase reading afterwards, read your notes actively, with full attention.
3. Close everything and retrieve what you've read from time to time during your first phase reading. Write, speak, or sketch everything you remember. This is the commencement of the desirable difficulty that comes with active reading. But don't shy away from it. Lean into the discomfort.
4. Compare what you have said or written against the source. Note exactly what you missed, as the act of making mistakes and getting corrected is the whole point of active recall.
5. Revisit the same material 1 day, 3 days, and 7–10 days later using the same active recall or retrieval method, not rereading. Doing this will prevent the common pitfall of forgetting topics that you've spent so much time reading before. This is one step I wish I had focused on more.
6. After some time, try to mix topics rather than looking at concepts of the same type together. (This is where the cards really stood out to me, because after the first flip, the concepts were scattered based on levels of difficulty for me. I found this particularly useful in learning my RPC because after some time, I began to be quizzed randomly — for example, I might be asked on Rule 15(4) in a question, and the next question brings up Rule 36. Being able to remember random sections at a go helped me to actually gain mastery of the rules.)
7. Explain the topics to someone (real or imagined). You can give pretend lectures and make them fun and interesting. Remember that the more unique, interesting and engaging your reading sessions are, the more likely you are to remember what you read.
8. Of course, do not forget to look at past questions and MCQs.

PAST QUESTIONS AND MCQS

One very common pattern of active recall that all Nigerian Law School students have to engage in is reading past questions and MCQs. You cannot enter the exam hall without any knowledge of how the questions you are about to encounter would possibly look like. Most NLS students, at some point or the other, realise this, but some unfortunately find out a bit too late.

I advise that you get into past questions and MCQs as quickly as you can. You can start from your very first week by finding materials that arrange the MCQs and past questions according to the topics. An app I used, Law School Paddi, had some of the MCQs arranged per topic, but I also used about two more comprehensive materials that did the same. If you do not find similar materials for past questions, you can do as I did and manually search for the said questions yourself.

Also, don't just read the questions, then read the answers passively. Use the past questions to train your active recall, speed and accuracy. Answer the questions blindly without looking at any material, and then later, you can search for the answers to ascertain your accuracy. However, I would advise that you be very careful about the answers provided in some of the past questions that you might encounter. Many of the easily and widely accessible ones do not contain the official marking schemes and, as a result, can contain several errors that you might take to be the correct answers if you are not careful. If you are confused about an answer provided in any past question material, do not just take it in hook, line and sinker, but check your source materials or ask seniors or lecturers or your mates about the answer to the question.

Additionally, as much as you can, practise the past questions under timed conditions. You are given one hour to answer a hundred questions on the MCQ paper and three hours to answer four theory questions. I would advise that you practice the MCQs and past questions so much that you can answer the questions well below the time that is given for same. For MCQs, I suggest that you train yourself to be able to answer the 100 questions within 30 to 40 minutes and for theory, you should train to be able to answer the four questions within two hours.

This is because at the point of practising, you are not under exam tension, so you tend to be less cautious about the answers you give. Therefore, when you practise, you are much freer, and that means that you would tend to answer the questions faster than how you would answer in the exam hall. For instance, I trained myself to answer MCQs within 30 minutes, but in the exam hall, I finished within 45 minutes. For theory, I trained to be able to answer a question in 30 minutes and in exams, I didn't have so much time to revise, but I never submitted an unfinished work.

I strongly advise going through as many past questions as you can. At this moment, you can access the ones from all the way back to 2009; that's almost 20 years of questions. I assure you that if you look through all of them, with the consistent pattern of repeating questions in NLS, you would encounter a lot of question formats that would not confuse you in the exam because you have already seen patterns of questions like them and tackled the questions. Answering as many past questions and MCQs as you can in NLS is a major hack to getting a first class.

MENTORSHIP

Alongside your reading strategy, mentorship makes a real difference. I honestly do not know how a person can go through the Nigerian Law School without some form of mentorship, whether direct or indirect. The NLS presents such a unique and difficult situation that it helps a lot to have people who have done it before give you guidance on how it can be done.

During my time, I had a lot of mentors. I called, chatted and discussed with a lot of people who had passed through the Nigerian Law School and gotten the grades that I desired. Also, I was a facilitator in the Red Scroll Group, which was a group where those of us at NLS reviewed past questions every night and had mentors correct and advise us.

For those who do not know any seniors to talk to, the good thing is that, just like this post, there are a lot of write-ups and videos out there on how to excel at the Nigerian Law School. Also, during your stay, there will be a lot of webinars where your seniors can address you and give you tips to excel at NLS. Find every possible means to look for them and get the necessary information that you need so that you don't make costly mistakes that could have been avoided had you just asked the right questions.

USE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Beyond mentorship from people, it's worth talking about mentorship of a different kind: AI tools. I am a very big advocate of avoiding suffering as much as you can and always finding easier ways to get around things. There is really no reward at all for suffering, and the amount of time and difficulty it took you to understand concepts is not only irrelevant in terms of the grades that will be allocated to you, but also incredibly time-consuming.

Therefore, I recommend the WISE use of Artificial Intelligence in law school. AI can help break down concepts and sections that might be difficult to understand and help you understand them faster. However, I believe that for AI systems like ChatGPT, that is as much as its use should go. You cannot use ChatGPT to answer past questions or pre-class tasks. ChatGPT and most, if not all, other AI systems do not have sufficient knowledge of both Nigerian law and the NLS standard of answering questions. They will feed you rubbish if you attempt to use them that way.

In NLS, ChatGPT was particularly helpful in helping me understand complex sections of CAMA and other regulations. However, I found that the most versatile tool was NotebookLM. Using that AI system, I could upload my typed notes, create engaging podcast sessions, MCQs, summaries, digital mind maps, extract cases and sections, etc. NotebookLM was also less likely to hallucinate when I asked it questions because the answers were based on my notes.

Now, I do not know if that is the only possible use of NotebookLM. I am certain that you can use the system for many other things. But I found out about it a bit too late to really explore all its potential. However, I do advise that you use the tool and all other possible tools out there to make your reading faster and more efficient.

YOUR READING ENVIRONMENT

In NLS, I read everywhere: in cars, buses, kekes, walking down the road, at restaurants, etc. My reading was on a 'once I have time to' basis, and I did not necessarily have to create a perfect environment to read. There were times I read in a very noisy class. I read outside of my corridor, in the middle of my room, in the laundry room of my campus, in the reading rooms, in the common rooms, while court was in session, etc.

When it comes to a physical environment for reading, I do not advise being the sort of person who can only read in specific places. In my court externship, I encountered people who did not bother to open their books all through the court session (and my court used to close very late), because they were convinced they simply could not read in such an environment. I personally also do not prefer having to crouch down in the middle of court proceedings to read or read in the other inconvenient places that I have mentioned, but I was desperately fighting for time so my preferences really did not matter when it came to my reading environment.

However, when I could, I liked to make my reading corner comfortable. I preferred a big space to contain everything I needed, and as a result, I found pairing the sofas in the common room with my bed table was my preferred choice of reading space. However, there were times when I would feel the need to stay awake for long stretches of time and felt that the sofas were too comfortable for that. So I would head to the laundry room of the campus and sit in a very uncomfortable corner in the room (on top of a sink space), propping my bottom with a throw pillow to be able to sit for long stretches of time, and whenever I went there to read, sleep had no chance of finding me. I also would sit on the arms of the sofas in the reading rooms when I felt too comfortable on the sofa. 

Additionally, when we were about a month to bar finals, and I realised that I could no longer read in close proximity to my non-reading phone or any form of distraction, I ensured that I never read in my room or anywhere remotely close to the phone. So I would keep my phone in my room and head to the common room, which was a bit of distance from my room so that my phone and social media could be out of sight and out of mind.

Essentially, in NLS, I would recommend that you adapt to be able to read anywhere you can. However, if you have the chance to arrange your reading corner, ensure that it is comfortable (but not too comfortable; leave your bed as much as you can) and make sure that it is free from distractions.

SLEEP

On a related note, this is going to be a very small segment, but I feel the need to state that your success in NLS is not measured by how little you sleep during the process. Now, I would be lying if I said that the rigours of NLS would not require you to sacrifice sleep, but please, if you are burnt out from reading, take a break. Take naps. If your head is aching, if you are no longer comprehending what you are reading, if you are feeling sick while reading, it might be a sign that you need to shut your books and sleep for a while.

Also, know yourself and adapt your sleep schedule to what works best for you. I slept for about 5 hours daily because I liked reading very early in the morning, but I know someone who slept for 7 hours every night (because she could not function otherwise) and still got a first class. I slept at night and read in the mornings and afternoons, but I know first-class students who preferred to sleep in the afternoon after lectures to wake up at night and read till daybreak. Night reading is often viewed as the superior reading for some reason, but the fact that I almost never read from the hours of 10pm to 3am in the morning did not change the outcome I had at the end of NLS. In the end, it's what's in your head and what you put down in the exam hall that matters, not how little you slept or whether you never slept at night.

CONCLUSION

Now, this is just a guideline on the best and most effective patterns of studying for NLS. However, I feel the need to point out again that you should not get caught up in reading/studying patterns that do not work for you just because your friends, roommate, or whoever, are doing the same. Find what works for you and maintain that system.

This also goes into times and places that you choose to read. If you are a night reader, read at night; if you can read during the day, do so; if you do not like reading in the library, my friend, please don't go. You will not suddenly become more serious because you went to the library to read. Once your reading method involves more active recall, is effective and works well, there is no need to change it. If the times you prefer to read are the times when you feel alert, and your brain is the most optimised to remember, read during those times. There is no 'one size fits all' approach to getting a first class at NLS.

Next up, we'll be looking at tackling the externship phase of NLS. Good luck!